“This is probably the last few chapters of her life. And I made it worse. I lied to her and I betrayed her and I don’t know if I can forgive myself.” This is what a caregiver shared with me in therapy. She lamented over…

The plan was already made. The family had toured the memory care facility twice, signed the paperwork, and arranged for movers to collect her things the following week. But when they pulled into the parking lot, her daughter told her she would just be staying…

“I feel like I’m doing time for a crime I never committed.” That’s what one of my older patients said to me in our very first session after he was moved unexpectedly from his home into assisted living. He wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn’t being dramatic.…

I was settling in for a long travel day on an airplane — when I found myself in one of those unexpectedly meaningful conversations that remind me why I do this work. The man sitting next to me was in his early 60s. He and…

Imagine waking up every day not knowing whether to grieve or to hope. Whether to set a place at the table or quietly put the extra plate away. Whether to say “is” or “was.” This is the territory of ambiguous loss — and it is,…

What if I told you that nearly half of all older adults — not a small, extraordinary handful, but almost half — actually improve their cognitive and physical functioning as they age? Not maintain. Not slow the decline. Improve. I know. That probably feels like…

I want you to picture someone I’ll call Margaret. She’s 74 years old, sharp-witted, funny, and deeply engaged in her community. But lately, she’s been misplacing her keys more than usual. She blanked on a neighbor’s name she’s known for twenty years. She missed a…

Imagine sitting across from an 82-year-old woman who has survived the death of her husband, two of her children, and now — a diagnosis that threatens to reshape everything she thought her final years would look like. She has never spoken to a therapist before.…

If you spend any time on social media, you have probably seen it — a well-meaning post, shared thousands of times, warning that caregivers are so depleted, so selflessly devoted, that they often die before the very people they are caring for. It is a…

Have you ever caught yourself lying awake at night thinking, “What if I get dementia and don’t even recognize my own children?” Or maybe you’ve had a health scare and found your mind immediately leaping forward — “This is just the beginning. It’s all downhill…

Recently, a 73-year-old journalist reached out with a question I hear often in my work as a geropsychologist, but rarely see reflected in our culture: what do we do with the grief that comes with aging? She told me she’s known grief in the ways…

Living alone is a choice many of us treasure—the independence, the comfort of familiar surroundings, the dignity of managing our own daily rhythms. But what happens when dementia enters this picture? As a geropsychologist who has worked with thousands of older adults navigating cognitive changes,…