We had the honor of being invited to attend an LBD Support Group recently. It reaffirmed our belief in their value. They remind caregivers that they aren’t alone. Others are having the same or similar issues. When one member talked, we saw others nodding their heads. Yes, they’d been there. They knew. And sometimes, they had an answer. Something that has worked for them and might work for the speaker.
Like most support groups, there were people there in different stages of caregiving. A woman considering residential care with great guilt but equally great exhaustion. Another who had been through the same experience not long ago and was now beginning to see how she, with some restorative “me time” in the evenings, was able to be a better caregiver for her loved one. One woman who asked a question that received several answers but none she hadn’t tried: “I feel better knowing I’ve done all I can.”
A lone man in the group asked, “Do women ever get LBD?” And the unspoken question, once that was answered positively, was “and why aren’t the male caregivers here—the husbands and sons?” Sadly, we seldom see many men in support groups—even the online ones. They miss a lot.
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