This Week’s Note of Truth!
There’s an old hymn about not hiding your light…This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let us let the truth shine in all we do.
I Am Ignorant
At twenty-one years of age, I was a newlywed living on the eastern side of Washington State.
In 1974 I had married my high-school sweetheart who was enrolled in the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program at a local Washington university. I met my then-husband in high school while living in Honolulu, Hawaii where my family moved in 1965.
It was a beautiful, spring day when my husband and I walked hand-in-hand through the streets of the eastern Washington city looking for a restaurant where we could have a weekend lunch date. We approached a corner, my husband pushed the WALK button so we could cross the street, and when it flashed green we proceeded to walk across the street.
A woman approached us from the other direction on the crosswalk, pointed her finger at us, and yelled,
Thou shalt not mix with other races! You are an abomination!
I am white, my former husband, Chinese.
My happily married, joyful self was astounded at the hatred and intolerant attitude thrust our way. We had never encountered such vehemence when living in Hawaii as a young couple, so please understand how hurt and shocked I was. I was so taken aback, the first words that came out of my mouth were, “F*ck you!” My twenty-one-year-old self stood up for herself and her marriage partner in the quickest way she knew how.
As of this writing, in all my sixty-seven years of life, that is the only me-directed racism I have ever experienced. But that is not the case for people of color.
- I have never been pulled over for driving while being white.
- I’ve never been asked to prove that I belong in the neighborhood in which I was walking or riding my bike.
- To my knowledge, I have never been followed through a department store by a store employee or store security personnel while shopping as a white woman.
- Again, to my knowledge, I have never been turned down for a job for which I was highly qualified because of the color of my skin.
My current husband of twenty years and I have three daughters between us. My daughter is a beautiful mixture of Caucasian and Chinese, my husband’s daughters are Caucasian. While our girls were growing up, we instructed them on how to be safe when out and about; we helped them recognize dangerous, every-day situations they should try to avoid but we’ve never had to have “the talk” that so many parents have had to have with their non-white children, especially their sons.
- If asked, show law enforcement your hands and ask permission to get something from your vehicle’s glovebox.
- Don’t wear your hood out on the street and don’t put your hands in your pockets.
- If you get stopped, don’t run.
- And by God, please, please, just get home alive.
I have an educated knowledge and keen awareness of the issue but I lack sufficient experience to truly understand the challenges faced by many people of color. I am ignorant in the sense that other than that one incident forty-six years ago, I have not been personally hurt – emotionally or physically – in the manner in which so many have been, and still are.
I understand the sentiment, All Lives Matter, but Brené Brown offers the following in her book, Braving the Wilderness – The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone:
I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion…the humanity wasn’t stripped from all lives the way it was stripped from the lives of black citizens.
It is my hope that one day soon, we will all get it right. The general public learns more each and every time an incident of racism makes it to the news, but shouldn’t we have learned something more by now, given the number of horrid headline incidents that have occurred nationwide?
We all can do better.
I will do better.
This Week’s Note of Truth!
I have to believe that we all can handle the truth to get us through the toughest of times.
We are all a part of something big
A quote from the book Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times by Bishop Michael Curry & Sara Grace
There was once a wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. All was well and the wave was enjoying himself. He was just enjoying the wind and the ride, until one day he noticed what was happening to the other waves in front of him. They were crashing against the shore.
“My God, this is terrible,” the wave said. “Look what’s going to happen to me!”
Then another wave came along who asked, “Why do you look sad?” The first wave says, “You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?”
The other wave’s response: “No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.”
Everything we do has an effect on the rest of the world. Never think what you have to offer is of no use to someone else. We are all in this together; our combined acts of kindness and community efforts are genuinely worthwhile.
We are all a part of something big.
This Week’s Note of Truth!
I don’t want to live to see the day when truth is no longer our currency.
This Week’s Note of Truth!
Gosh, and we sure need to be open enough to want to discover them. Am I right?
This Week’s Note of Truth!
I would certainly like to live long enough for violence to be a thing of the past, and truth to be the standard by which we all live.
This Week’s Note of Truth
Agreeing with others just so you don’t stand out – but knowing the truth is far different from what was stated – doesn’t seem like a respectable way to conduct oneself.
This Week’s Note of Truth
It is certainly a good practice to allow statements to pass through our mind filters before accepting them as absolute truth. Doubt can be healthy when weeding out that which doesn’t ring true.
Lively Blog, Now a Book, The Dementia Chronicles
ABOUT AMIE, by Susan Wingate
I started blogging about my Mom, Amie, after she moved in with us―after the Alzheimer’s, the congestive obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and the schizophrenia nearly killed her living alone. I wrote close to twenty-five posts, after which, I compiled them into my book, The Dementia Chronicles. I hoped our story would help others who found themselves as a caregiver for someone they loved.
During a visit from Phoenix with my sister and grandmother, Mom fell down the last step of our stairs and broke her hip. Within two years of that visit, Mom had moved from Phoenix to Friday Harbor, Washington to live in a separate home on our island property.
Back in May 2003, on our wedding day, Bob had to assist my Mom to walk a mere five-hundred feet from her house to our backyard where we held the ceremony. A month later, Mom was in the ER experiencing her first respiratory attack after having smoked for fifty years.
For a spell, Mom kept at bay what doctors later diagnosed as COPD. In 2010, during another visit to the ER, x-rays showed scarring within and around her bronchial tubes, invading her lungs. Mom declined steadily after that with cognition red flags frequently appearing.
By 2013, she complained of electricians stealing her checks, hackers breaking into her old college records and stealing her social security number―two of the many stand-out issues she insisted were true. By September 2014, she could no longer drive so we disabled the car engine and lied to her, telling her the car was broken and that I would drive her anywhere she wanted to go.
Mom was furious. Her anger became exacerbated, exhibited by bouts of paranoia and more detailed hallucinations. As she grew physically weaker, we knew we had to move her into our home. So, in November 2014 we set out to revamp our garage into a studio apartment. It turned out beautifully―complete with an enormous stone fireplace to keep her warm. It was so wonderful, my husband, Bob, threatened to move down there himself.
Mom fought against the move, but the only other choice was putting her into a memory care facility. With few choices on the island where we live, she would have gone to a facility on the mainland―a four-hour ferry ride or costly thirty-minute flight away – not viable options.
After transitioning her to the studio apartment, Mom tried to escape. I found her huddled by our front door gasping for air, holding her cane and, sitting dutifully next to her dog, Teddy, his own leash in-hand.
But, the hallucinations grew stronger.
Within a month of the move, the big hallucination occurred. She believed someone had snuck into her apartment, shimmied across the floor on his back over to her fireplace and had stuffed crumpled newspaper into the chimney flue causing smoke to billow. It was a cold October but she opened all her windows to air out the room anyway. There was no smoke. There was no man stuffing newspaper. What there were, were sounds―tinny “plunks” whenever the gas fireplace kicked on and off.
After a month of fighting the hallucinations and failing, I started Mom on anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety meds. Within a few days, the visions calmed.
When she normalized, I learned many things, like, how much Mom loved grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate shakes. The in-home nurses told me I had earned an unofficial OTJ nursing degree.
One month later, after I finally figured out how to manage our lives with Mom’s, she died. I didn’t go out or to church for four months.
I still have moments when I hear Mom call for me―that’s how PTSD is. I remember screaming, anger flaring about anything and everything for six months after she died―fortunately, it was short-lived. But this is the thing, if I had a choice to do it again, I’d do it all over, the same way, but with more chocolate shakes and grilled cheese sandwiches for Mom.
AUTHOR BIO
Susan Wingate is a #1 Amazon bestselling author of over fifteen novels, many of which are award-winners. She writes across both fiction and nonfiction genres and typically sets her stories in the Pacific Northwest where she is the president of a local authors association. She writes full-time and lives in Washington State with her husband, Bob.
Follow Susan Wingate on Social Media:
This Week’s Note of Truth
I’ve found that avoidance doesn’t do me any good at all – as a matter of fact, it’s caused me great harm in the past. At 67 years of age, I’m wearing the mantel of transparency going forward.
Human Decency
I am thrilled that so many of us are exercising the control we can exert to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. We do so to protect ourselves and to protect others we will never meet.
What is so very troublesome, however, is that many still consider the virus as not being an important part of their day-to-day existence so they go out and about, not wearing masks, and not social distancing.
My concerted effort protects you – your lack of effort irresponsibly puts me and my loved ones in danger. You say you have a right to live as you please, even when doing so has proven to put others at risk, including yourself. There are daily news reports about those who previously criticized the virus as being nothing, then they have a personal experience with it and become instant, fervent evangelicals for wearing masks and distancing. “This stuff is real, folks.” or “My family member was hospitalized with it” or “I got it and I’ve never been sicker.” These victims became believers, but a day or two too late.
We are ALL inconvenienced by this virus but this is an inconvenience we can all live with, or we can die standing up for our decision to ignore proven guidelines that curtail it.
I will personally continue to protect myself and my loved ones which will also protect you. Would you please consider doing the same?
This Week’s Note of Truth
Starting today, July 1st, I am replacing my weekly good news posts with encouragement of a different sort – the value of truth. Being authentic to ourselves and toward others seems to be a healthy way to go about life. Truth is more uncomfortable than lying, but in the long run, it’s way easier. I hope you’ll enjoy the research I’ve done to provide you with these weekly notes.
This Week’s Good News!
Frontline workers, and every other person living in the age of Covid-19, find themselves stressed beyond their abilities. Wouldn’t it be great to have a break where you need not travel anywhere? Look at what this meditation company is doing for said people.
This Week’s Good News!
Imagine graduating from college, ready to enter the job market that has more or less shut down, and you have college debt to pay on top of all that? Wait until you see how several California college graduates received the surprise of a lifetime!
This Week’s Good News!
A mum in the UK devised an ingenious way for her toddlers to still be able to play with the next-door neighbors’ toddlers. Check out this story!
This Week’s Good News!
The domesticated animals among us want to help out too! Check out this story to see how the Dog-tor took care of frontline workers!
This Week’s Good News!
The 50th anniversary of Earth Day occurred in April, but even with distancing restrictions, it was possible to honor our planet – and it still is – as seen in this story.
The Surge of Knowing Everything About Everyone
Many of us have too much time on our hands; some of us use it wisely; some of us, recklessly.
I won’t go on and on in this post, I merely want to point out that we can’t possibly know all we need to know about a person without spending time with them, listening to them, and learning the life story that brought them to this very moment in history. Yet in social media comments*, I see judgments and declarations being made about people whom the commenter can’t possibly know well enough – or at all – to make such statements. A formerly buff man suffering from Covid-19, posts before and after photos of his decimated body and commenters declare the reason he looks so different is that he hasn’t been able to take his steroids for weeks. JUDGMENT MADE WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF THE PERSON INVOLVED. A story about a frantic mother looking for her child who wandered away from home is castigated by a stranger on social media who declares the mother probably had something to do with the child’s disappearance. DECLARATION POSTED FOR ALL TO SEE WITHOUT INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES OR THE PEOPLE INVOLVED.
Bullying on the internet has been around for quite some time and it is always unfair and ugly. With so much time on our hands and with such uncertainty filling everyone’s days, why add to the stress and fear by publicly berating perfect strangers by entering unfounded and unfair statements? Can’t we instead treat others in the way we also want to be treated? Imagine you are one of the individuals in the above stories, already devastated and at the lowest time in his/her life, and being berated and demeaned by callous and hurtful comments?
We can’t possibly know all we need to know about strangers to make intelligent statements about them.
And even if we did know enough, why post such harmful ugliness for all to see?
*I make a point of not scrolling through comments on posts – but when coming across an article of interest, several comments are always visible.
Making Tough Decisions About End-of-Life Care in Dementia, Dr. Anne Kenny
by Dr. Anne Kenny
Nearly 500,000 individuals are diagnosed with dementia every year. Year after year. As stunning as that figure is, it does not take into account the family members and caregivers who are subsequently affected by each diagnosis. When they are included, the numbers rise to an even more incredible level.
What this means in our society is a rapidly ballooning population of people faced with painful scenarios and the need to make vital end-of-life decisions for those who no longer can—a role for which most are largely unprepared. Sadness, confusion, guilt, anger, and physical and mental exhaustion become the norm for these families as the disease enters its final stage. The toughest decisions I ever made were about the life and death of my mother, who had lost her voice in decisions to dementia. But, I was one of the lucky ones: My 30 years as a doctor specializing in the care of older people and end-of-life care had prepared me to face these decisions. Yet, even with that advantage, I struggled. And my siblings struggled. The challenges that dementia and end-of-life decisions present can be – and usually are – overwhelming. When I looked for a resource to help my siblings, I found none. My personal experience compelled me to fuse my clinical knowledge, with everything I learned helping to care for my mother, into a book to help others. My family’s experiences guided me in what the book should include. As I reflected, I also realized the growth, hope, lessons, and transformation that occurred during living with a beautiful woman with dementia. While the sometimes-overwhelming nature of caregiving sent me to the bookstore looking for a guide, when writing the guide, I wanted to acknowledge the experience, strength, hope, and love that also accompanied the journey.
This book is laid out as a guidebook. Each chapter includes stories of families I’ve met and worked with during the last 30 years. These stories are meant to illustrate a common issue, concern or situation that occurs in late-stage dementia, and I hope that by seeing how others have met these challenges, others will see a way forward. This guidebook deals with the emotional aspects of being a surrogate decision-maker, communication with others at a challenging time of life, and the all-encompassing grief experienced in the process. Additionally, it provides information on dementia, its progression and the potential change in goals of care that occur as the disease moves from a chronic to a terminal stage. Finally, the book provides a view of the joy and fulfillment that can accompany assisting in the dignified death of someone you care for.
Author Bio
Anne Kenny, MD, author of Making Tough Decisions about End-of-Life Care in Dementia, published in 2018 by Johns Hopkins University Press, is a Professor of Medicine with specialty training and board certification in Geriatric Medicine, and Palliative and Hospice Care. She has been a practicing physician for over 30 years and has been recognized by her peers as a “Top Doc” in Geriatric Medicine. She has been honored with a Brookdale National Fellow and the prestigious Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar awards. Dr. Kenny has worked clinically as a geriatrician in nursing homes, assisted living, rehabilitation, and clinical outpatient settings. Dr. Kenny has found joy in her work with individuals and their families managing issues related to the diagnosis of dementia. Her experience in partnering in the care of these families touched close to home when her own mother was diagnosed with dementia. Dr. Kenny joined with her mother and her brothers and sister to provide the best care for her mother during the early and middle years following her mother’s diagnosis. Her expertise, coupled with her mother’s playful spirit and her sibling’s openness, support, intelligence, and compassion, allowed for the highest functioning and independence of her mother for several years. Dr. Kenny’s expertise and experience in inpatient and outpatient Palliative and Hospice care were called on when her mother reached the final stages of living with dementia. The Kenny family worked together for their mother’s graceful exit from this planet.
In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Kenny lectures to both healthcare professionals and the public on aging-related issues including navigating dementia, exercise, nutrition, hormone therapy, death and dying, and frailty. She is an educator of medicine and research skills. She has over 100 scientific publications and presentations focused on improving the care and functioning of older adults.
Connect with Dr. Kenny:
https://www.facebook.com/anne.kenny.5682944
This Week’s Good News!
For this week’s story, you don’t even need to click on an attached story, such as I provide each week. Instead, my good news has to do with something that happened to me.
The other day, I went on what I call my Square Block Walk (SBW). When my husband isn’t feeling like taking a walk or has just come in from working in the yard, I take off on a very fast one-mile trek. When doing so this particular time, I passed by a neighbor (he purchased my husband’s Honda Civic for his daughter a couple years ago.) This neighbor was on his riding lawn mower in his front yard; we waved at each other and I continued on. He turned off his mower and asked me, “Is your husband okay?” I stopped in the street, “My husband?” To which he responded, “Yeah, I’ve seen you walking by yourself a few times, haven’t seen your husband with you, and I was worried.”
I almost started crying. “Thank you very much for asking. He’s fine, but sometimes I take walks by myself. But it’s so kind of you to ask – you noticed something different in my routine and you showed enough interest to ask. That means the world to me.”
I hope my neighbor’s act of kindness towards me improved your day as much as it did mine!
Living: the ultimate team sport 