Here are 100 books that Voices Of Alzheimer's fans have personally recommended if you like
Voices Of Alzheimer's.
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I founded the All-Weather Friend, which is about helping friends get through difficult situations. My first book, Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course for Friends and Relatives, tells how to help people living with dementia. I’ve had hard times in my life—my husband’s brain tumor and suicide, my father’s dementia, infertility, miscarriage, my brother’s sudden death, and other things that flooded me with grief. But my life is filled with joy; I’ve learned that joy comes from God and from a compassionate connection with friends and people we love. I write and speak about “informed compassion.” I hope you’ll visit my website, where there’s a great dementia resource page with contributions by many readers.
Moments of joy are often all that can be had by
people in the later stages of dementia when life is lived moment by forgotten
moment. What people may not realize, though, is that while the memories of
joyful moments (an ice cream cone, petting a dog, looking at pictures, taking a
walk) may be quickly forgotten, the emotion of joy will linger.
Brackey tells
us how to create moments of joy for our loved ones with dementia and that
people with dementia have much to teach us about ourselves.
The beloved best seller has been revised and expanded for the fifth edition.
Jolene Brackey has a vision: that we will soon look beyond the challenges of Alzheimer's disease to focus more of our energies on creating moments of joy. When people have short-term memory loss, their lives are made up of moments. We are not able to create perfectly wonderful days for people with dementia or Alzheimer's, but we can create perfectly wonderful moments, moments that put a smile on their faces and a twinkle in their eyes. Five minutes later, they will not remember what we did or…
I founded the All-Weather Friend, which is about helping friends get through difficult situations. My first book, Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course for Friends and Relatives, tells how to help people living with dementia. I’ve had hard times in my life—my husband’s brain tumor and suicide, my father’s dementia, infertility, miscarriage, my brother’s sudden death, and other things that flooded me with grief. But my life is filled with joy; I’ve learned that joy comes from God and from a compassionate connection with friends and people we love. I write and speak about “informed compassion.” I hope you’ll visit my website, where there’s a great dementia resource page with contributions by many readers.
The author, a retired bishop and professor emeritus
at Duke Divinity School, has not only written this book to tell about his
journey as a caregiver to his wife, who died of frontotemporal lobe dementia, but also provides (free of charge) a set of truly excellent companion videos
churches can use to educate their congregations about dementia.
Carder writes
about the transformation in his understanding of love as he learned new ways of
relating to his wife, realizing that she, in her infirmity, had become his
teacher about love.
Dementia diseases represent a crisis of faith for many family members and congregations. Magnifying this crisis is the way people with dementia tend to be objectified by both medical and religious communities. They are recipients of treatment and projects for mission. Ministry is done to and for them rather than with them.
While acknowledging the devastation of dementia diseases, Ken Carder draws on his own experience as a caregiver, hospice chaplain, and pastoral practitioner to portray the gifts as well as the challenges accompanying dementia diseases. He confronts the deep personal and theological questions created by loving people with dementia…
I founded the All-Weather Friend, which is about helping friends get through difficult situations. My first book, Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course for Friends and Relatives, tells how to help people living with dementia. I’ve had hard times in my life—my husband’s brain tumor and suicide, my father’s dementia, infertility, miscarriage, my brother’s sudden death, and other things that flooded me with grief. But my life is filled with joy; I’ve learned that joy comes from God and from a compassionate connection with friends and people we love. I write and speak about “informed compassion.” I hope you’ll visit my website, where there’s a great dementia resource page with contributions by many readers.
While there are many great memoirs about
Alzheimer’s, this one is unique. It’s almost an adult picture book that quickly
gives a realistic sense of what living with mid-stage Alzheimer’s is like.
Henderson, a former history professor, carried a tape recorder around with him,
documenting his daily thoughts and struggles. Photographer Nancy Andrews made
stunning black-and-white photos to accompany Henderson’s observations.
It takes
little time to read Henderson’s book, but the understanding it conveys is remarkable. It may be hard to find since it is over 20 years old, but it’s
worth the effort.
We all want peace. We all want a life of joy and meaning. We want to feel blissfully comfortable in our own skin, moving through the world with grace and ease. But how many of us are actively taking the steps to create such a life?
I founded the All-Weather Friend, which is about helping friends get through difficult situations. My first book, Alzheimer’s: A Crash Course for Friends and Relatives, tells how to help people living with dementia. I’ve had hard times in my life—my husband’s brain tumor and suicide, my father’s dementia, infertility, miscarriage, my brother’s sudden death, and other things that flooded me with grief. But my life is filled with joy; I’ve learned that joy comes from God and from a compassionate connection with friends and people we love. I write and speak about “informed compassion.” I hope you’ll visit my website, where there’s a great dementia resource page with contributions by many readers.
Although this book may not seem to fit the list,
it’s one of the best books on loss I have ever read, and I’ve read quite a few. Dementia is about loss, after loss, after loss. Yes, there are moments and
times of joy. And yes, it challenges and expands our love, faith, compassion,
and sense of self. But dementia is, indisputably, about loss.
I read this book
shortly after my husband’s suicide, and it comforted me at a time when comfort
was hard to come by. My Southern Baptist mother also read it and, when she
finished, held it up and said in her practical, down-to-earth way, “This is a
book I will read over and over again like I read the Bible.”
Rabbi Wolpe’s
book is beautifully written and wonderfully wise, and I recommend it to
everyone.
Some losses are so subtle they go unnoticed, some so overwhelming and cruel they seem unbearable. Coping with grief and experiencing loss overwhelms us in ways that seem both hopeless and endless. In painful moments like these, we must make a choice: Will we allow the difficulties we face to become forces of destruction in our lives, or will we find a way to begin learning from loss, transforming our suffering into a source of strength?
A theologian with the heart of a poet, Rabbi David Wolpe explores the meaning of loss, and the way we can use its inevitable…
An author of a caregiving memoir myself, I’m also a former magazine and newspaper editor who has had the opportunity to read and write about many topics. For the past five years, I have been a manager and director of AlzAuthors, an online global organization that offers the world’s most comprehensive collection of books and blogs on Alzheimer’s and dementia. To say I have done a lot of reading on this subject is an understatement. I’ve been honored to work with so many talented and big-hearted authors who share their Alzheimer’s and dementia experiences. Being immersed in the Alzheimer’s world through AlzAuthors has given me insight into many of the best memoirs on this subject.
Andrea Couture’s father, a well-known, recently retired surgeon, develops Alzheimer’s at the age of 67. As someone who also lost a parent at a young age, Embracing What Remainstouched a deep place in my heart. I connected with how she processed her emotions through her writing. I also appreciated the way she balances her grief over his disease with the gratitude and joy she discovers in each moment. This is a beautifully written memoir!
***Finalist in Next Generation Indie Book Awards***
Andrea struggles to mourn a man who is still alive as she witnesses her father decline into the depths of Alzheimer’s. Denial and devastation color her life when she learns her father, Richard, a recently retired surgeon, is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 67. Her dream to grow closer with him is crushed as the reality of his disease is fully realized. Andrea, a mother of three young children, learns to balance motherhood with daughterhood as she grapples to accept her father’s fate. Andrea rides an unpredictable wave…
I am a caregiver who became an author. Both my parents had dementia. I found few books written from a personal perspective to give me guidance, so the journal I kept ultimately became the book I wished I could have read during our dementia journey. The journey didn’t end for me with the death of my parents. It led me to form a non-profit with two other dementia authors. This passion project has become a global community of authors who have written about Alzheimer’s and dementia from personal experience. Now more than 300 strong, we provide quality resources for caregivers and others concerned about dementia. Learn more at AlzAuthors.com.
Based on Kathryn Harrison’s daughter’s observation about her grandma, Weeds in Nana’s Garden is a metaphor that compares the weeds in a garden with the “weeds” that take over a person’s brain when they have dementia. Kathryn wrote and illustrated this engaging book to help her own children better understand what was happening to their beloved grandmother. I loved both the story and the brightly colored illustrations. Although written with children in mind, I believe it has a message for people of all ages.
A young girl and her Nana hold a special bond that blooms in the surroundings of Nana’s magical garden.Then one day, the girl finds many weeds in the garden. She soon discovers that her beloved Nana has Alzheimer’s Disease; an illness that affects an adult brain with tangles that get in the way of thoughts, kind of like how weeds get in the way of flowers.As time passes, the weeds grow thicker and her Nana declines, but the girl accepts the difficult changes with love, learning to take-over as the garden’s caregiver.Extending from the experience of caring for her mother,…
The plan was insane. The trap seemed to snap shut on Bruce and Maggie Tate, an isolation forced on them by the pandemic and America's growing political factionalism. Something had to change.
Maggie's surprising answer: buy a boat, learn to pilot it, and embark on the Great Loop. With no…
An author of a caregiving memoir myself, I’m also a former magazine and newspaper editor who has had the opportunity to read and write about many topics. For the past five years, I have been a manager and director of AlzAuthors, an online global organization that offers the world’s most comprehensive collection of books and blogs on Alzheimer’s and dementia. To say I have done a lot of reading on this subject is an understatement. I’ve been honored to work with so many talented and big-hearted authors who share their Alzheimer’s and dementia experiences. Being immersed in the Alzheimer’s world through AlzAuthors has given me insight into many of the best memoirs on this subject.
I can’t even imagine having both parents diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on the same day. But Jean Lee handles this situation with grace and devotion. Through her parents’ letters, she shares their love story. Ed and Ibby have a beautiful bond as do their daughters, yet the girls face a challenging road of caregiving that is sad, humorous, and touching, but always a model for how to love well. In Jean’s book, she casts a spell of nostalgia, faith, and whimsy, pulling the reader into a circle of intimacy.
What would you do if both parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s?At the time of their diagnosis, Ed Church struggles to his feet, yelling, “How dare you use the A. word with me,” while Ibby wags her finger at the doctor scolding, “Shame on you.”They protect each other, Ibby by asserting, “We’re not leaving our home,” and Ed reassuring, “We’re just fine.”About his driving Ed defends, “I’m an excellent driver, I’ve never had an accident.” When their daughter, Rosie, finds dings in Ed’s car, he dismisses, “Someone must have bumped into me.”After Rosie moves them to assisted living, convinced they are…
Both of my parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on the same day. The time period from the beginning hints of subtle oddities in their behavior and cognition, through their diagnosis and until their deaths was a decade. I worked full time as an elementary teacher during their illness and had always read to solve problems. Therefore, I sought any authors who would share their personal experiences with me. These stories sustained me. They saved me. They allowed me to know I was not alone. From that experience grew my own memoir, Alzheimer’s Daughter.
Susan Landeis dealt with rejection and jealousy from her own mom as she was a little girl and through her teenage years. What does one do when an estranged parent is diagnosed with dementia and needs care? It is a rare individual who reacts with the kindness and forgiveness of Landeis. Because of that generosity and love, or perhaps because her mother forgot the meanness and rejection she inflicted on her daughter in years past, Susan and her mom grew a beautiful relationship during those caregiving years, giving them both comfort in the end.
Susan always knew her relationship with her mother was different from that of other mothers and daughters. As a young girl, she struggled to cope with her mother's unpredictable behavior, rejection, and abandonment. At the age of sixteen, she left home and put it all behind her. Years later, her mother was diagnosed with a devastating illness, and Susan was suddenly faced with the difficult decision to care for both of her parents. In this inspiring, soul-searching memoir, Susan tells the story of a troubled childhood, her struggles as an adult, and her determination to find peace with her mother…
I am a registered nurse, author, and dementia daughter. As a nurse and hospital case manager, I spent many years caring for people living with dementia and their families. This inspired me to write a novel, Blue Hydrangeas, an Alzheimer’s love story. I soon encountered difficulties marketing my book. I reached out to two other dementia daughters I’d met online who had also written books on the subject from personal experience and together we founded the non-profit organization AlzAuthors.com. Our mission is to carefully vet resources – stories of personal caregiving – to help busy caregivers find the information and inspiration they need for their own journeys. To date, we are 300+ authors strong.
Michael was an executive in a Fortune 500 company when he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 49. What followed was a cascade of losses: career, income, purpose. Not one to give up easily, Michael turned his efforts and energy to dementia advocacy, speaking across the country and internationally at conferences and before Congress. His book tells the story of his newfound passion and work with raw honesty.
Imagine having a mysterious illness take over your mind. Over the next 10 years, you try to navigate a health care and social system that is not equipped to address what is happening to you. As you slowly lose your ability to think and remember, you have to try to hide the losses to protect you and your family financially. You encounter doctors who are at best baffled, and order a series of nonspecific, redundant, and uninformative studies. If you want to know what it is like to walk in the shoes of one person with Alzheimer’s, read this book,…
My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership,…
The inspiration to write about Alzheimer’s came from my own life. My grandfather had the disease. He and I were very close and it broke my heart when I realized I’d been forgotten. He only remembered my voice, that it sounded like a little girl he used to know. I wanted to capture the truth of that in a story. Sadly, dementia is so common, but for some reason, we don’t talk about Alzheimer’s as openly as we do other diseases. Kids need to be able to have everyday conversations about what they might be experiencing in regards to whomever they know with the disease. My hope is that books like Flowers can help.
Sticky Notes centers on a parent who has early-onset Alzheimer’s and is told from the perspective of a 10-year-old boy, Foster. The voice is a genuine one and the writing is heartfelt, as Foster compares his own forgetting to Dad’s forgetting and sometimes convinces himself that there is no need to worry. The confusion and lack of clear discussion with Foster about what is happening is a real challenge for many dealing with the disease. As the forgetting gets worse and Dad begins to change, Touchell documents the family changes that Foster and his mother go through too, with a sensitive touch.
For fans of The Thing About Jellyfish, a touching story about the power of love and family in the face of a parent's early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Ten-year-old Foster has always loved listening to his dad's stories. But lately, Dad's memory hasn't been so great, and Mom's placed sticky notes around the house to help him. As Dad's condition worsens, it's Foster who will need to look deep into his heart and remember for them both.
Sticky Notes is a touching story about the power of love and family in the face of a parent's Alzheimer's disease, and a moving reminder…
