Lady-Links: Growing Pains That Are Anything But Painful

The word is spreading about Lady-Links and the meaningful relationships we have established with the ladies in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  As Lady-Links, we have planned for growth in our organization, and now that it’s here, we are ready!

We have spoken, written, and published about our experiences as Lady-Links.  Our community has an in-house television production studio and recently we brought an update on Lady-Links with the offer to train volunteers who wanted to join us.   The response was a room filled with ladies eager to learn more about Lady-Links.

Much of our good reputation comes from our community residents who see a change in the ladies we visit whom we call “dear friends.”  After our visits, these dear friends are typically more social, many even making eye contact and engaging in conversation and activities for the first time in months.  As a result, we have families of those in cognitive decline request that we visit their loved one, as well as we have requests from ladies who want to be trained as Lady-Links and be involved in our friendship visits to our dear friends.  It is a win-win situation.  Everyone enjoys and benefits from our friendship visits.

This is wonderful…we are growing…both in the number of  ladies who volunteer as Lady-Links and in the increased numbers of dear friends we are able to visit.  It’s followed by growing pains that are anything but painful.  It’s amazing, remarkable, and a cause for celebration.  With support from our community administrators, we are improving our training and communication to reach more volunteers and dear friends than we even imagined!