The Dwindling
A Daughter's Caregiving Journey to the Edge of Life
Statistics Canada tells us that 46% of Canadians, 13 million of us to be precise, have provided care to a family member or friend with a long-term health condition, disability or aging need at some point in our lives. In 2012, the last year a head count was actually done, one in four Canadians were caregiving.
It is a physically and emotionally challenging job, and can be financially injurious too. There are no guidelines and very little respect or help for us. There’s often no end in sight. No wonder so many caregivers become isolated, depressed and sometimes even sick ourselves. Why do we assume “that’s life”? Should we leave it at that and accept the lot of caregivers?
Janet Dunnett doesn’t think so. She’s an author and ex-caregiver, who licked her wounds for a while after her parents died in Calgary, but then wrote about that decade. Passages author, Gail Sheehy, calls her memoir “daring and compassionate.”
Janet wants to share her story with other caregivers, but also gather their stories. She believes our collective understanding of what excellence looks like in care at the edge of life might be the stuff of social change. We do not need not be shrill to speak our truth to power and have our voices heard. We just need to talk about it.
In this session, Janet will get the ball rolling by reading from her self published book. Then she wants to hear from others. What are the insights and hard won convictions about what matters most when time is short? Most of all, what would we boomers like our own edge of life care to be like when it is our turn to dwindle?
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