It’s special to prepare for holidays in ways that add joy to our lives.  During this time of the year, we use some of our Lady-Links visits to make Easter crafts.

This brings joy in several ways….first is the joy of making the crafts while sharing memories about how we celebrated Easter when we were children.

Of course, there’s memories of church services with the resurrection message, followed by Easter Egg Hunts and family meals and celebrations.  Many of us had special Easter dresses complete with new shoes and maybe even an Easter bonnet.  Some of us remember being in Easter parades.  Lots of laughter is always shared when we talk about helping our mothers dye and decorate the eggs on Saturday that just happened to be used by the Easter Bunny when he hid them for us the next morning!  As children, the logic of all that didn’t have to make sense!

The second joy we receive from our Easter crafts is knowing that they will be given away during the related events that our community has for our residents.  It is a good feeling for all of us to know that we are sharing our joy with others once again this year as we have done in the past.

The activities we do at our Lady-Links visits serve many purposes.  They spark cognition and inspire conversation. They promote feelings of team work and success.  Since we give our crafts to others, we provide an opportunity for  altruism that our dear friends don’t experience very often as they progress in their various stages of cognitive decline.  Such charitable feelings promote an attitude of “I’m still needed” that is so beneficial in all of our lives.  The result is joy…joy in doing and joy in giving….and that’s what our Lady-Links visits are designed to do.  May you have a joyous Easter Season.

As Lady-Links, we make every effort to reach out to our dear friends in ways that are meaningful to them during our weekly visits.  Each dear friend (the precious ladies we visit who are in various stages of cognitive decline) has her own unique interests and former favorite  pursuits.  As a result, we choose activities distinctively targeted to engage a specific dear friend.  Most of our dear friends enjoy crafts, games, cards, music, or show and tell sessions.  However, recently we began visiting a new dear friend whose interest was reading….only now as her cognitive decline increases, her comprehension and retention levels have decreased.  Yet she continues to love books prompting her to ask us to start a book club that she could enjoy.

Having never done this before with any of our dear friends, we knew that we needed to formulate a type of book club in which she could be an active participant.  The problem was how to achieve that because when memory impairment occurs,  typically it becomes difficult to remember what was read.  We decided that what she wanted most was to be a part of a group who shared a love of books, not to “report” on a book herself.  We felt that could best be accomplished through what we call a “Reading Club” rather than what we think of as a formal “Book Club.”  With our Reading Club, each Lady-Link would bring a book and discuss its plot .  In addition we would talk about our love of reading in general. Topics such as how as children we learned to read, what books were popular when we were in school (remember Dick, Jane and Spot?),  and how we first learned to use a library would be great discussion starters.  It would be a very informal, enjoyable time with our dear friend involved in active listening and then joining in the discussion about what we shared. Most Lady-Links have a few favorite books in our homes that we’ve read so many times that the jacket covers are showing signs of wear and tear.  In addition to our own collections, we are blessed to have two well-stocked libraries in our retirement community.  Finding books wasn’t hard given the resources we have.

We decided to visit, two at a time, with each of us bringing a book we read  (either recently or in the past).  Each Lady-Link would tell the plot of her chosen book in “story” form, stopping along the way with questions for the group that could be easily answered.  Examples of our questions are

• What if …..?
• What do you think happens next?
• What kind of similar experience have you had?
• How would you react if this happened to you?
• How do you hope this book ends?
• What about this book did you like?

We’ve found that in telling the narrative, it is best to focus on the main plot rather than the sub-plots.  Too much detail will cause confusion and can become overwhelming. By keeping our story telling short with a simplified version of the plot and pausing to ask open-ended questions,  our dear friend is able to remain actively engaged.

 At the Reading Club visits, we’ve all come away with a joy about what transpired there.  We’ve gotten to know one another better through the reading material selected and our responses to the questions.  The interaction has been delightful, and everyone has benefited from our Reading Club visits.

Reaching Out through Reading helps us all keep connected to one another and to the world around us.  Although for some there may be difficulty in looking at a printed word and discerning its meaning, just hearing stories and making appropriate connections to what is being said is a way to keep anyone’s love of reading alive.

Continuing to learn is an important part of being a productive person.  But at Lady-Links, we consider it a priority.  We want to live up to our name and our slogan when visiting our dear friends who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  The best way to do that is by learning about the aging process and neurological diseases and their effects on the brain.  This updating of knowledge from seminars and workshops plus lessons we’ve learned through experience from our weekly visits help us continue to develop the necessary skills to enrich the lives of our dear friends.

As we engage our dear friends in activities they enjoy, we want to help them maintain links to important parts of their lives.  Our dear friends have a need to love and to be loved; a need to have friends and to be a friend; a need to contribute something to society and to benefit from what society gives; and a need to feel a sense of security and success.  The more we understand Dementia (an umbrella term for changes in memory, thinking or reasoning) and its related causes, we can help our dear friends link to those areas which promote quality of life.

We live in a retirement community that encourages making choices to maintain healthy living.  As a result, the Alzheimer’s Association brings programs to our campus to help individuals and families receive the information they need to understand the risk factors of the  disease and to navigate it if it occurs.  Our Lady-Links regularly attend these sessions to receive updated information and support in making our visits to our dear friends effective and beneficial.

By understanding how the disease progresses, we can anticipate changes or adjustments that are needed.  This allows us to continue to enrich the lives of our dear friends through love and laughter as we engage them in activities.

Lady-Links are lifelong learners!  That’s an important part of who we are and how we are able to maintain those important links in life as we connect with our dear friends.

 

 

St. Patrick’s Day is fun to celebrate with anything green!  At our Lady-Links visits we enjoy making crafts that represent each holiday, and recently our crafts had a touch of the green to them!

With visits to the dear friends in our community who have some type of cognitive decline, we find ways to make crafts representing each holiday engaging as well as fun.

Our activities serve to inspire topics of conversation and these St. Patrick’s Day crafts certainly did that. We’ve shared memories about looking for four leaf clovers and how, as children, we were sure we would find a pot of gold if only we could discover the end of a rainbow!

We’ve recognized the symbolism of the Trinity in the shamrock and the cross.  We’ve engaged in plenty of laughter as we recounted avoiding “getting pinched” by our classmates when we were children if we didn’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day.

Our crafts are fun to make, plus they are a “treasure” to those residents in Memory Care and Assisted Living who receive them.  It’s a way to bring joy to our visits as well as to give joy when the crafts are distributed.  Everyone has a story about the “wearing of the green.”  Why not engage your friend or loved one in cognitive decline in a St. Patrick’s Day activity this year?  Who knows…when you do that, perhaps you’ll find something that’s more rewarding than green or even gold.  The Lady-Links think so!

Lady-Links make visits to ladies in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline.  We engage them in activities they enjoy.  Each dear friend we visit has unique experiences and interests.  Some enjoy games, some enjoy crafts, some enjoy music, and the list goes on and on.  Currently we have nine dear friends we visit,  and the activities we enjoy with each one are specific to her needs and abilities.  That requires training on our part, including meeting occasionally to practice the activities without our dear friends present so that we can discuss how to make the most of each visit.

For games such as Rummikub or Scrabble or Uno, we want the experience to be pleasurable.  We follow the rules of the game but often make slight modifications such as not setting a time limit on someone when it is their turn to make a play.

We discuss how to offer help when needed, but not too quickly as to be offensive nor too late so that she becomes frustrated and can’t figure out what to do.

With our crafts, we discuss adjusting the complexity of the project by determining which part is best done by our dear friend with our help during the visit or done ahead of time by our craft manager.

We preview the crafts and determine topics of conversation that might be inspired when working on them.  For example, crafts involving the sun might encourage conversation about summer vacations when we were children….or even games we played outdoors in the summer.  We’ve found that our dear friends can relate best to memories we share from childhood or young adulthood.

Holidays, such as St. Patrick’s Day, always are great discussion starters.  Seasons of the year are another.  We try to select crafts that are easy to complete, colorful and pleasing.  Thinking of positive, encouraging conversation ahead of time in our planning sessions helps facilitate discussion at the visits.

Training always serves several valuable purposes.  We want to have the knowledge and skills that will make our visits successful.  Keeping updated on how to communicate with those in cognitive decline, understanding how to encourage them through our visits, and discovering ways to engage them in activities that are beneficial are topics we address in our training sessions.  Training is an important part of the Lady-Links experience and something that is crucial to the continued success of our relationships with our dear friends.

Lady-Links enjoyed plenty of fun as we got in the swing of things at a Valentine’s Day Party at the Assisted Living/Memory Care facility in our retirement community.

It was a great way to have fun while “swinging to the beat” of favorite songs from the 1950’s.  Some of the Lady-Links even got into the spirit by wearing poodle skirts.

Residents enjoyed the the upbeat mood of the party that day and the valentines we made and distributed throughout the week.

Lady-Links have made and shared valentines every year since we began our visits to our dear friends in various stages of cognitive decline.

So…come on and join the fun…invite your friend or loved one with cognitive decline to join you in celebration.  It doesn’t have to be restricted to February 14th.  Having great friends and letting them know they are special can be celebrated year-round!

Getting in the “swing of things” benefits everyone emotionally and physically, and even stimulates memories of enjoyable times from years ago.  According to Lady-Links, that’s what makes a great Valentine event or any event for that matter…enriching lives with love and laughter.

We’ve had a great time making valentines at our recent Lady-Links visits.  Our dear friends enjoy this activity so much.  Not only do they get to make the valentines, but they know their creations are going to be given away to those who will really appreciate receiving them.  It’s such a good situation…special valentines made by special dear friends, designed for special new friends.

As we made the valentines, it was fun to talk about memories associated with childhood valentine parties and events.  Some of us shared how we worked hard as children to create home-made cards for our favorite teacher.  Remember our elementary school parties….valentine box and all?  What fun to give and receive valentines with our classmates.

Conversations about what we did as children are always enjoyable, providing a connection between all of us!

Making the valentines as a team assures our dear friends of feeling successful.  And that’s the real reason behind our visits….to bring joy and love into the lives of each dear friend!

 

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!

 

 

Friendship is the reason Lady-Links was organized.  The idea began when one of us heard the husband of a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s say that the quality of her life would be improved if she had a friend.  That sparked the beginnings of organizing visits to women in our retirement community who are in various stages of cognitive decline.

Our visits are filled with qualities that enrich our bonds of friendship with our dear friends.  We’ve found that encouragement, kindness and helpfulness, sprinkled with love and laughter, make for a meaningful relationship that will stand the passing of time.

It’s not about how much we accomplish…although our crafts are easy and fun to make.  It’s about the attitudes we share during our visits.

Lady-Links…enriching lives with love and laughter.  Isn’t that what we all hope friendship will bring?

 

What do you value in life?  We tend to ask ourselves that question when we are setting goals as each new year begins.   January is a perfect time to make plans for reaching our goals based on what we value. At our Lady-Links planning sessions, we set goals for our visits with the women who are in various stages of cognitive decline that live  in our retirement community.  We believe that these ladies we call dear friends deserve to be a part activities that create meaning in their lives and to find reasons to laugh, rejoice, and love.

Lady-Links value our relationships with our dear friends and find that our visits enrich our lives as well as theirs.

To demonstrate what we value in the visits with our dear friends, we focus on several areas: Communication, Collaboration, and Commitment.

Communication:

We begin each visit with a smile and keep that friendly body language going throughout the visit.  We’ve found that even when our dear friends don’t fully understand what we’re saying, they completely understand what a smile means!

Collaboration:

We value team work.  We work together as a team to complete a project or activity. That way, everyone contributes and feels successful.

Commitment:

Lady-Links are committed to bringing love and laughter into the lives of their dear friends. We do this by actively listening, supporting and respecting each other regardless of cognitive ability, and by expressing kindness.

We are planning for a very successful year with visits filled with what we value most!  We know it will be a very good year!