Category Archives: Rediscovering happiness

I am very happily married to Peter Watt and have two sons, Charles aged 22 and Matthew aged 23. I was born in 1958 in a small country hospital and grew up in a farming community near Cleve in South Australia. Diagnosed with a rare younger onset dementia when I was 49, possibly semantic, myContinue reading “Keep Dreaming”

I am 63, my mother is 90. I am still working. She lives near me in a retirement home with extra help. I see her everyday and see myself as her general coordinator rather than her caretaker. Before I can feel connected to my mom I must make space for it. This is after IContinue reading “Magical things happen”

There are a lot of moments when I feel profoundly connected to my father, and as the disease progresses, the ways and spaces through which we connect adapt themselves without my noticing. Every time I come through the front door of his home, I feel the shine in his eyes, welcoming me, and his limpidContinue reading “Secret to Being Happy”

When I had him evaluated by an elder care program, Dad did indeed prove to have mild cognitive impairment.  He was characterized as an “Emerald” in the kind GEM system they used.  Each impairment had its own gem symbol.  And that was how I came to view my Dad in this new light – asContinue reading “Circle of life”

For some people their lives go by with ups and downs, but they are essentially happy from childhood to later life.  Friends, family, work and also their love lives combine to form a positive vital and chronological whole in which bad times, those that there are, remain eclipsed by the happiness experienced.  This is how my life hasContinue reading “Happiness within misfortune”

I feel like a rich woman… Rich in knowledge…  I began a new stage on my journey of training, growth and learning; an adventure of the kind I like; learning, listening, testing and finding out about a way of being with elderly people who are feeling disoriented. This stage is that of Validation, a communicationContinue reading “I feel like a rich woman”

Since my consciousness started to become autonomous, I began to seek the meaning of my life in literature, music, travelling, in my contact with Nature, getting to know things, people and diverse places, the more different the better, and in the love of the people I have around me. I was looking for an answerContinue reading “Thank you”

June of 2016. A neurologist confirmed the suspicion that had lingered for a couple of years: my father has Alzheimer’s. The news arrived with no great fanfare from the hands of a professional who, at last, put a name to what my mother, my brother and I had instinctively known. “Dad is not right, he’sContinue reading “A sea of gifts”