Our garden has always been our work in progress and so it is with my own healing. I’m getting there. I have to do a bit every day and only pay attention to my own timing. When I hurt myself in a pretty awful skiing […]
All lives go through times of discouragement and hard news and it is then that we can turn to the very small things that bring us joy and allow them to lift us up. Parkinson’s is such a long disease…once it begins it goes on […]
Nobody wants to live without companionship and connection. These are basic human needs we all have. As a wife and mother and daughter, sister, aunt, cousin and now mother in law I relate to how relationships flow and shift, when they are healthy. Nobody has […]
Those of us who have pets can usually know if our dog, cat or horse is out of sorts or happy. It is this same reading of energy we naturally do with them, that I am learning to do with Andy. One of the strangest […]
I say, “With Parkinson’s old things become new things.” In my 30 years of life with Andy, before Parkinson’s- from age 17-47 for me- he is the one in our partnership who planned for our mutual goals. I was a willing and creative partner and […]
I like to and am able to move to many types of music and I also love to be in synchrony with Andy. He doesn’t have the ability to adjust to the variety of music life presents and so it is up to me to […]
I know this symptom could become another reason for Andy to stay out of the public eye and grow more isolated. In my moment of feeling grossed out, I also know emphatically that we need to find a way to live well with this too. […]
Incurable disease is a life sentence.Let’s reemphasize that.Incurable disease is a life sentence not a death sentence. I thought that Parkinson’s disease hijacking Andy’s voice and rendering him a forever whisperer was as bad as that could get, until we were in speech therapy for […]
Parkinson’s has an effect on a patient’s voice and therefore on their ability to communicate. During Andy’s first 10 years living with Parkinson’s, his body shook like hell. The list of what he couldn’t do anymore was extensive and grew longer as time went on. […]
The seasons of life rightly include different people at different times. Parkinson’s is a disease that often isolates the patient- not because of contagion but because the symptoms can make one feel unfit to be out in the world. The world can also be unsafe […]
