Book Recommendations
What ACAPcommunity is Reading
Keeping Love Alive as Memories Fade: The 5 Love Languages and the Alzheimer’s Journey by Debbie Barr
Across America and around the world, the five love languages have revitalized relationships and saved marriages from the brink of disaster. Can they also help individuals, couples, and families cope with the devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)?
Coauthors Chapman, Shaw, and Barr give a resounding yes. Their innovative application of the five love languages creates an entirely new way to touch the lives of the five million Americans who have Alzheimer’s, as well as their fifteen million caregivers. At its heart, this book is about how love gently lifts a corner of dementia’s dark curtain to cultivate an emotional connection amid memory loss.
This collaborative, groundbreaking work between a healthcare professional, caregiver, and relationship expert will: Provide an overview of the love languages and Alzheimer’s disease, correlate the love languages with the developments of the stages of AD, discuss how both the caregiver and care receiver can apply the love languages, address the challenges and stresses of the caregiver journey, offer personal stories and case studies about maintaining emotional intimacy amidst AD. Keeping Love Alive as Memories Fade is heartfelt and easy to apply, providing gentle, focused help for those feeling overwhelmed by the relational toll of Alzheimer’s. Its principles have already helped hundreds of families, and it can help yours, too.
The Dementia Care Partner’s Workbook by Edward G Shaw MD
The Dementia Care Partner’s Workbook is a new resource from Companion Press that is both a support group participant’s manual and self-study guide for care partners who have a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia. Its ten concise lessons not only walk you through the types, brain biology, and progressive symptoms of dementia but also offer practical tips for managing behaviors, coping with emotional issues, prioritizing self-care, and planning ahead—everything from diagnosis to end-of-life.The Manual provides general information about establishing and leading support groups, counseling skills for leaders and co-leaders, how to handle challenging group participants, step-by-step instructions on how to run each of the ten individual weekly meetings (including meeting-specific handouts), and lots of practical advice.
The Dementia Care Partner’s Workbook includes a forward by world-renown dementia educator Teepa Snow, who said, “This resource offers what is so needed in dementia care: a combination of practical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual support for those who have to make the journey. This workbook provides individual family members with greater awareness, knowledge, and skill to improve life, relationships, and care throughout the disease process.”
A Leader’s Manual for Dementia Care Partner Support Groups by Edward G Shaw MD
If you’re thinking about starting a support group for dementia care partners, this leader’s manual is for you. Now available as a book! For the digital downloadable guide, click here. The Dementia Care Partner’s Workbook is a new resource from Companion Press that is both a support group participant’s manual and self-study guide for care partners who have a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia. Its ten concise lessons not only step you through the types, brain biology, and progressive symptoms of dementia but also offer practical tips for managing behaviors, coping with emotional issues, prioritizing self-care, and planning ahead—everything from diagnosis to end-of-life.
If you are a medical, mental health, or other healthcare professional wanting to lead a support group for dementia care partners, or a layperson with a heart for those “on the journey,” A Leader’s Manual for Dementia Care-Partner Support Groups is the comprehensive resource you need. The Manual provides general information about establishing and leading support groups, counseling skills for leaders and co-leaders, how to handle challenging group participants, step-by-step instructions on how to run each of the ten individual weekly meetings (including meeting-specific handouts), and lots of practical advice from co-authors Dr. Edward Shaw, physician, mental health counselor, and former dementia care partner, and Dr. Alan Wolfelt, world-renowned thanatologist, grief counselor, and author.
The handouts and worksheets are number coded for easy cross-referencing with the content of The Dementia Care-Partner’s Workbook. This is also the perfect companion resource for A Support Group for People Living with Dementia: The Leader’s Manual for those interested in offering support groups for people living with dementia and their caregivers.
A Support Group for People Living with Dementia: The Leader’s Manual
A Support Group for People Living with Dementia: The Leader’s Manual is the comprehensive resource you need to lead meaningful support groups for those on the journey with Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia.
Authored by mental health professionals, a dance professor, and a neuroscientist, the Manual provides information about how to start and lead a support group for people living with dementia. It provides 10 sessions of enriching experiences to support mind, body, and soul using cognitively engaging activities, improvisational movement, and emotional processing.
It is the perfect companion resource to A Leader’s Manual For Dementia Care-Partner Support Groups and the digital download version for those interested in offering support groups for people living with dementia and their caregivers.
Meet Me Where I Am by Mary Ann Drummond, RN
Meet Me Where I Am is a wonderful guide, particularly for those who interact with someone who has Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia. With incredible sensitivity and warmth, Ms. Drummond draws from her experiences with patients and families through her almost-30 years as a registered nurse. Through opportunities to “walk in the shoes” of one who is suffering from cognitive diminishment, Drummond shares valuable understanding about the diseases and specific tips as to how a family member or caregiver may respectfully, compassionately and effectively interact with a loved one, patient or client. Cautioning that the disease offers no guarantees as to responses from one day to the next, Drummond focuses on helping the reader understand the world in which the loved one lives and the role of caregiver attitudes, emotions, words and actions.
A Bittersweet Season: Caring for our Aging Parents and Ourselves by Jane Gross, The New York Times reporter
A Bittersweet Season is a very personal story of the author’s caregiving journey with her aging mother along with her frank and hard-learned advice on what to do – and what not to do – when caring for an aging parent. Many of the lessons are difficult to hear – her appraisal of the assistive living model, Medicaid spend-down plans, and our broken Medicare health care system – should be a wake-up call for us all. Her description of Thanksgiving dinner with her mother in an nursing home will resonate with many adult children. Ultimately, if you read this book before you need it, you will feel better prepared and if you read this book while you are in the midst of caregiving, it will reassure you that you are not alone in your caregiving role.
Juggling Work and Caregiving By Amy Goyer, AARP Home & Family expert
A staggering 42 million Americans face the challenges of caring for a loved one while working. Although caregiving can be a richly rewarding experience, the role comes with enormous responsibilities—and pressures. AARP’s gentle guide provides practical resources and tips that are easy to find when you need them, whether you’re caregiving day to day, planning for future needs or in the middle of a crisis. And equally important, this book helps you care for the caregiver—you. Author Amy Goyer, an expert in aging and families, provides insight, inspiration and her own poignant story as a live-in caregiver to her parents.
Elder Rage, or Take My Father… Please!: How to Survive Caring for Aging Parents By Jacqueline Marcell
Elder Rage is the story of a highly accomplished daughter’s tenacious love for her father as he spirals downward into Alzheimer’s disease and her equally strong love for her mother who tries as hard as she can to hang onto the husband she once knew.
Facing the Finish: A Road Map for Aging Parents and Adult Children By Sheri L. Samotin
Through rich real-life stories of challenges and successful strategies, Facing the Finish shows us how to plan for aging, helping us take control of our future rather than being at its mercy, whether in relation to our parents or ourselves.
