Alzheimerglowers

 Welcome to Glow-2009!!!

Thank you to all our ‘Glowers’ across Canada, the U.S. and around the world for supporting primary care givers in your cities, your towns, in your neighbourhoods or perhaps in your own home.  

We want to make ‘Glow 2009’ brighter than ever before.

We are approaching October 1^st so please mark your calendar so you all do not forget to remember 8 p.m.

Since January 2006 we have been members of the Alzheimer Society forum http://www.alzheimer.ca/forum/ and we have learned a lot about the hidden skills to cope with a loved one with Alzheimer’s through others caring and sharing in the forum. We too have had the opportunity to share our struggles and strengths in dealing with a loved one being eclipsed by Alzheimer’s.

There are books and other aids to help inform us of the devastation of this disease and information on how we can better serve the loved ones we are trying to give quality of life to but the behaviours, wants and needs of the afflicted must be understood and the primary care giver is many times thrown into the role and foreign life-long struggles of dealing daily with these demands. Caregivers feel lots of despair with no place to turn as their turmoil turns into never ending tears.

You see, the focus is always on the afflicted, however, this disease claims two victims. It compromises primary care givers in all aspects of their lives; it can destroy other family relationships, destroy the primary care givers health, their careers, their retirements, their futures, their finances, their time, their mental and emotional well being and devours all their strength and resources and puts them into isolation and hopelessness.

The tears, depression, stress and feelings of being alone goes far beyond the afflicted but are passed on to the primary care givers.

We want to light their pathway and bring recognition to their endless efforts.  

The members of the Alzheimer’s forum (link in this site) can help many primary care givers by ordinary people like you and us, sharing experiences of what works and what doesn’t. It is a place to vent, share, learn, cry, and sometimes even laugh. This forum is a wonderful lifeline of hope and recognition that lights the plight of all primary care givers.

(A special thank you goes to the Alzheimer’s Society  of Canada for offering us their forum to find help and hope!)

"Come Glow with Us 2009" by turning one one string of Christmas lights at 8 pm on October 1^st

-forward a photo with your FIRST name, city/town, and country to alzheimerglowers@lycos.com

-we may post your photo of hope on our ‘Come Glow with Us’ – '09 Glow-4  page.

We want to thank each of you for bringing awareness to all primary care givers. Remember that one candle can light another so every string of lights can join another to give light and hope to the hundreds of thousands of primary care givers who suffer in darkness with their loved one.

Please, feel free to use your email to share our challenges and encourage your family, friends, co-workers, neighbours to 'glow' at 8 pm every October 1st.

Thanks!

Jennifer, Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada

Cindy, Arichat, Nova Scotia, Canada

This site is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of unpaid primary care givers who sacrifice our time, energy, health, finances and sometimes our lives to lead our loved ones with dementias through the daily darkness of their illness. We are their voice, their hope and their future and through our eternal bonds of love we will be given the strength to endure....We hold a torch up to light the way for our loved one's journey with dementias.

Please join us......