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“Speak, Memory” – Lynn Casteel Harper On New Ways Of Understanding Dementia

Nearly 7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, most of them elderly, with 10 percent of people over the age of sixty-five affected. But as prevalent as it is, the condition is still widely misunderstood and stigmatized.

You may know someone with dementia: a parent, a grandparent, a spouse, a colleague. For me it was my gran, my beloved maternal grandmother, who lived next door when I was growing up. She had Alzheimer’s, the brain disease that accounts for the majority of dementia cases. She died in 2012, her symptoms having steadily intensified in her final years, a progression familiar to many: first she forgot words, then names, then how to drive her car. I remember visiting her on sunny afternoons after I had moved away from home, when she was no longer able to converse. We sat in her living room in companionable silence, the wall clock ticking louder than I remembered it ever having done before. I’d think of sentiments I wanted to express but couldn’t. Somehow it seemed enough for her that I was there.

Free Access: AgingME + Dementia Action Alliance Cookbook

We partnered with the Dementia Action Alliance to create a cookbook by and for people living with dementia. The cookbook includes recipes directly from individuals living with dementia, information about organizing your kitchen to make it dementia-friendly, nutritional and healthy diet information, protective kitchen aides, and much more. The cookbook is available for free here:

https://daanow.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CookingOurWay_062623-1.pdf