BlogHer - Elders - Comments

I've sooo been there...

zazupitts — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:58:38 -0500

....minus the snake, of course.

Or....getting the panicky phone calls from a parent who has had another "accident," and needs help with a cleanup. They feel embarrassed about the situation, and acting annoyed will only shame them.

Putting a calm, matter--of-fact tone of voice really helps, doesn't it?

I would just recite, "That's what mops are for!", get out the rubber gloves and start scrubbing.

Your parents are very lucky to have a daughter like you!

Living in Caregiverland

www.Caregiverland.com

You can't keep morality out of it!

Blacknright — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:12:34 -0500

I love these pro-choicers who want to keep morality out of laws. You can't do that, that is what laws are! Okay why can't men rape then (and I ask this as a rape victim myself!) if we are not going to bring morality into it. I mean men are going to rape anyway, shouldn't we make it safer for them to do so. Think of how many men have been killed while attempting to rape a woman! Think of the lives we could save if we could just let men rape women when they felt the need to do so. The premise is utterly insane and so is abortion. We are talking about another life here and that life has the right to be safe from harm. As for the life of the mother arguemnent, that is bogus and every pro-choicer knows it! We are living in the 21st century not the 1st century. Abortion is unnecessary to save the life of the mother! There is only 1 type of pregnancy that puts the mother's life in grave danger and will kill the child as well, that is the ectopic pregnancy which abortion makes more of! That's right if you have an abortion your are more likely to suffer an ectopic pregnancy later on! In fact there have been too many stories of women who had an ectopic and who were regular abortions and ended up dead! Therefore these killers couldn't even save the life of the mother!

And don't give the song and dance about the horrors of abortion days gone by. If a man gets killed while trying to rob me, do you think I am going to give a rat's ass? He shouldn't been trying to rob me! So if you die while trying to kill another human-too bad! Maybe if you hadn't tried to kill that other human being you would be alive! And that whole coat hanger is a myth! Women weren't sticking coat hangers up in themselves, and if you are, you get what you deserve! I am adopted so I take offense that I don't belong on Earth because my "mother didn't want me!" Well whether she did or not doesn't matter! She did the right thing! She let me live and gave me to people who were able to provide for me. I love my biological mother, she was messed up and knew that raising me would do the same thing to me. Therefore she had enough love for me to give me a home. Adoption is not heartless, adoption is the most courageous, loving thing you can do!

ROE MUST GO!!!!! And even "Roe" agrees and is trying to get her own law overturned. Abortion is dead! Long live the child! To all the real mothers out there, God bless you, fertility is God's gift of divinity unto Womankind! Only women and God can create human beings, so stop betraying him and womankind everywhere by trying to be like men! Men were made of dirt, we were made of bone-we are stronger than men! Don't believe the liberals-they are liars! Women are not victims, we are survivors! Women are not weak-we are a powerful force. Women are not whores- we are divine daughters of the Most High God! We are royalty, we are beautiful and stop looking at your circumstances and start looking at solutions. Real solutions, life giving and life perserving ones! Even in the most horrendous of circumstances there is a still a way out that includes saving the life of you and your child. We are better than the wanton trollops that liberals try to paint us as! Believe in yourself, believe in God, but never this liberal ideology that has done more to destroy womankind than chauvinism ever could!

Dena

http://www.blacknright.wordpress.com

Hang in there, sister!

zazupitts — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:29:30 -0500

I've been there... so your words truly resonate with me! Your family is so lucky to be able to pull together to deal with the 24/7 task of caregiving.

For me, gratitudes and prayer helped me through the dark periods -- it sounds like you already have embraced that practice. Sometimes, just writing out my gratitudes every day and thanking our Creator was enough to bring me out of a negative spiral.

Finding little joys to share with your LO bring so much meaning to your life when you are caregiving -- just sharing a smoothie with a favorite topping, or watching an old movie with the LO can mean so much.

I'll pray for you...

Living in Caregiverland: www.Caregiverland.com

Thanks for sharing the info

Candelaria Silva — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:28:30 -0500

Thanks so much for sharing the info. I'm going to check out Nancy's site. I'm especially glad that you replied since I was away at a board meeting in Vermont and didn't have time or access to my email.

http://blog.candelarisilva.com

Good and plenty!

Thanks for your comment

Candelaria Silva — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:26:31 -0500

My daughter always wants me to listen and only give advice when she asks for it explicitly.

http://blog.candelarisilva.com

Good and plenty!

Change is overwhleming

Candelaria Silva — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:25:20 -0500

Wise comments as always, Nordette. (1st let me apologize for my alte response, I was at a board meeting in Vermont and on lock-down for 12 hours. By the time I got back to my lodging, I just needed to crash.)

I definitely know that ageism and assumptions around what one knows because of one's age go both ways.

Change is difficulty and sometimes frightening. The media sends all sorts of messages about who we are and what we're interested in because of our age, gender, orientation, ethnicity, etc., so sometimes we think we know who people are just because of what they look like.

I'm trying to listen more, talk less and not judge people by their skins so quickly.

http://blog.candelarisilva.com

Good and plenty!

Some ideas

Candelaria Silva — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:20:43 -0500

I'm sorry I'm just getting back to you. I was in the mountains at a board meeting that kept me on "lock-down" from 8 in the morning until 8 at night.

If you hire a facilitator for your meeting that would be the best way to deal with your dilemma. If you can't, you might ask another staff member to act as facilitator. Also, make sure you have an agenda (with approximate times for how long each item you're working on should be). Establish ground rules at the front as to how the meeting should be conducted. Ask that those who talk a lot, listen more and vice versa. Ask people to count to 5 before they make a comment. I would also recommend employing a talking stick.

As part of visioning, it is often good to do brainstorms either in the whole group or in duos and trios (depending on how the group is). Explain that the visioning brainstorm is just to gather ideas - not to evaluate them. Each group should have a recorder who writes down the ideas and they should select who will report back to the whole group.

These are some of my best ideas. You can go to my website and send me an email via it, if you'd like more details.

I'll cross my fingers for you and your colleagues.

http://blog.candelarisilva.com

Good and plenty!

Listening for Change

Nancy White — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:55:09 -0500

Great article Candelaria - I really enjoyed and resonated with the story - for both positive and negative behaviors on my part. One of the things I notice about women of my generation (I'm 15) is that in our desire to "help" we sometimes really screw up. We provide answers instead of asking questions.

I would love to know what younger women would most want from us (even if that is "shutting up!") Any thoughts from our younger sisters?

Nancy White
Full Circle Online Interaction Blog

Sounds like church

Nordette — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:30:21 -0500

As I read this, I kept thinking that it sounds like old school church, where the "mothers" of the church shake their heads almost everytime a younger woman has an idea.

I'm getting older, as we all are, and I know that I've gotten annoyed with the dismissive attitudes of younger women sometimes. Since people online often don't know each other's ages and sometimes you can't tell by a photo I've gotten annoyed with younger people assuming I don't know something and start giving me advice. But I get annoyed with people of any age who do this, especially when I can see they're giving me advice that they'd know not to give me if they'd read what I wrote in the first place. :-)

A young man, early 20s, former co-worker, sent me a message after I sent him an invitation that went out automaticallly to my address book asking him to join a social network. He sent me this response telling me he was so happy to see I was getting out online. Big assumption on his part. I sent him back an email that said I had a website when he was a freshnman in high school and didn't own a computer. Even my MySpace page was older than his. He's a southern boy, so he knew not to sass me back. ROFL.

On the tech issues, the younger women presenting social media tactics and the older women not wanting to do it, I think it's fear. You see the world as you know it slipping away and that if you want to move forward and not die, you'll have to change and learn new stuff. It can be frustrating and sometimes demoralizing. You're afraid that you no longer matter or won't matter for much longer.

I used to think people who left their VCRs on OO:OO:OO and it blinked all the time while they refused to to figure it out for themselves were being babies. Now I realize that they were just overwhelmed and tired of having to adapt to world change, and now that the world is changing more rapidly, it's not gettin any easier for the aging.

Most of my friends and family in my age range think I'm strange to be online. More trouble than its worth and no value whatsoever, they think.

Good post, Candelaria.

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer CE & you can find her other stuff through Her 411.

that's a great link

mashadutoit — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:27:58 -0500

And its synchronicity all right, because one of the big things I have to research for this meeting is how to visually comunicate ideas, or use images to shape ideas. Fabulous!

Nancy White

Maria Niles — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:52:09 -0500

Hi Masha (and apologies for further thread hijacking Candelaria),

I also don't see a way to message you privately but I do group moderation (which overlaps with meeting facilitation techniques) and have used visual/graphic recorders to work on groups with me. There are some who do both the meeting facilitation and visual recording and others who prefer to prefer to concentrate on just recording and have someone else facilitate. I think it is a fantastic tool that leads to great results.

In addition to any wonderful information I'm sure Candelaria might be able to assist you with, you might want to check out the blog of friend of BlogHer, Nancy White, who is one of the leaders in this field.

http://www.fullcirc.com/wp/

BlogHer Contributing Editor
PopConsumer
Beyond Help

Meeting blues

mashadutoit — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:38:30 -0500

I cannot figure out how to send you a private message - so I hope you dont mind if I usurp this thread with a question. It is brought on by your mentioning of Debra Friedman Vinci's graphic facilitation technique.

Myself and my colleagues are about to go into a big curriculum planning meeting. In the past, these meetings are always bedevilled with some members constantly dragging the discussion down, limiting other people's ideas with quibbles about procedural limitations.

We badly need to figure out what our vision is, and then we can deal with the practical implications of how to fit that into our administrative structure later. This has gone on for so long that we are all very angry and negative.

We get on with one another on a personal level, but this process has gone bad.

Do you have any links to share with techniques we can use in a meeting to lift the conversation out of old ruts and arguments?

I'm a big fan of the Greenhouse Project 2

zazupitts — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:51:03 -0500

I heard the founder speak on NPR and found it incredibly inspiring as well. A lot of the suggestions he has suggested are NOT that expensive to implement for nursing homes and assistive living facilities, if these ideas are implemented when the facilities are constructed.

At this point, many of the nursing homes are older facilities that will need to be torn down in the next 20 years -- so this is a perfect time in our generation to get this movement going and ensure that the next round of facilities are designed around the Greenhouse concept.

And.. loved the idea of addressing the residents of the facilities as the "Elders," which is a mark of respect and communal inclusion.

Living in Caregiverland

www.Caregiverland.com

You're right about it being

AgingHipster — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:52:18 -0500

You're right about it being not so tongue-in-cheek! As if there weren't enough to worry about, I have added 'maintenance' to my list. Thanks for the long citation.

Jan

AgingHipsters.com

Those little moments make it worthwhile...

zazupitts — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:02:35 -0500

I know what you mean!

Mornings are best for folks with dementia...they're brighter, cheerier and more alert. And the routine of someone helping them with their morning ritual is kind of comforting -- especially if they are a caregiver like you!

Sometimes you just have to treasure the good moments... and realize that when LOs return back to their state of dementia, they're still loving, spiritually aware, joyful human beings.

Living in Caregiverland:www.Caregiverland.com