The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Oh, man, this sucks. Harrell was a solid dude.
Pretty basic; I assume my loved ones love me.
I'm dealing with this right now as a child. Parent's are past the stage of "ha ha senior moment!" forgetfulness, but can still operate on their own mostly. They aren't forgetting to eat or bathe and aren't getting in fights with strangers. But, multiple times over the past year, one has been pulled over for driving at night with no lights on.
The best way to take care of them is to take care of them as far as they'll let you, and then be willing to fight for that extra 20% that they don't want, but you know is necessary. The love comes in being willing to fight that fight and not build resentment towards them.
The useful thing I was surprised to find is how much going through photo albums or other "memory media" helps both parties. Long term memory often stays intact well into Alzheimers and dementia, so the mom/dad feels familiar and safe when talking about 20,30 years ago. For me, it helps reinforce the concept that even though they are deteriorating now, they were, at one point, like Superman and Superwoman to me and the facts of the past are still very much real.
The next big mental hurdle I can see is when the required care becomes too much and we have to go assisted living. Trusting your loved ones to strangers is ... trusting your loved ones to strangers. That doesn't sit well with me at all right now.
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