Inhoudsopgave van October 2017 - Guideposts

Cancer and Courage ESPN reporter Holly Rowe (page 28) has been fighting cancer for two years. In our exclusive video, she talks about how she stays positive. guideposts.org/hrowe Four Fall Prayers Autumn ushers in a bountiful feast for the senses, and Guideposts blogger Bob Hostetler offers prayers of thanksgiving for the season. guideposts.org/fallprayers Talking to Alzheimer’s Improvisational theater actor and family caregiver Karen Stobbe (page 55) offers simple ways to connect with someone in your life who suffers from dementia— including her tips for how to start and sustain a conversation. guideposts.org/kstobbe Autumn’s Pleasures Fall is a time rich with simple pleasures. Enjoy our gallery of photographs that celebrate the changing colors all around us as well as the cozy traditions of the season. guideposts.org/fallpleasures.…

When I was a girl, it was a treat to visit Grandpa and Grandma. I loved their German accents. Grandpa always made time to play with me. He could be stern, but he was kind—and sometimes I deserved a good scolding. “I tell you, stay out! I don’t vant you to get hurt!” he’d say if I tried to play with his tools in the garage. I’d ask him questions I had about the world, like what was behind the stars? “More stars, of course!” he’d say. This particular day, my parents were quiet in the car on the way to my grandparents’ house. I didn’t mind. I was already thinking about the fun things I’d do with Grandpa. “You run along and say hi to Grandma. Dad and I…

Loneliness can sneak up as you grow older, especially if you lose your spouse, as Lynne Nichols did. In a 2012 study, 43 percent of people over 60 reported feeling lonely. That study and others have shown that lonely or socially isolated seniors are at a greater risk for functional decline, memory loss, stroke and heart disease. We asked recreational therapist Denise Leonhardt, life enrichment and wellness director at the Good Samaritan Society in Waconia, Minnesota, for tips on active aging and preventing loneliness. Get involved. Bible study, fitness classes, choir, game nights, garden club…the type of activity, as long as you enjoy it, isn’t what matters most. “It’s more about the social interaction, which alleviates loneliness,” says Leonhardt. “All of our programs bring people to a common area so…

A HEALING HUG The storm raged. I turned off the car and leaned back against the seat. The thunder and the pelting rain weren’t enough to silence my thoughts. I was in a dark and empty lot. The only light came from the restaurant sign. I was outside my favorite place, Luby’s, which had just reopened after months of remodeling. It was like a second home, the place where I ate while studying for grad school. A place where I felt like I belonged. They served real comfort food, and the wait staff was friendly—everyone except for Mrs. Franco, who rolled her eyes when I couldn’t decide between the fried okra and the mac ’n’ cheese. In the light from the Luby’s sign, I studied a photograph. In it, I…

I’m no softie. Far from it. I need to be a little hardhearted or I’d tear up over almost every story we publish. But I have to say it was hard not reaching for the Kleenex reading ESPN reporter Holly Rowe’s cover story this month. She shares with us her experience with a rare form of cancer. She calls cancer a journey as much as a disease. Along that difficult road, Holly has found new friends, unexpected grace and prayers that sustained her when little else could. It is a road so many people have gone down, even many of you. As Holly tells us, it has both tested and strengthened her faith. This is a story you will want to share with people who have taken this journey themselves…

FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS, i’ve had a constant companion, one that’s made me feel embarrassed and scared and vulnerable. Yet it’s also opened me up to people and experiences more wonderful than I could have ever imagined. Cancer. It’s more than a diagnosis, more than a disease. It’s a journey, one that some of you have been on too, though perhaps not as publicly. Not that I set out to go public about desmoplastic melanoma, the rare and aggressive form of skin cancer I’ve been dealing with. I’d already had a tumor in my chest removed. Then my cancer recurred, and in February 2016, I was in the hospital for a second surgery, to remove a tumor under my arm. While I was waiting to go into the OR,…

MY GIRLFRIEND, ALLISON, AND I pulled up in front of a nondescript two-story house in Waltham, Massachusetts—a workingclass suburb of Boston. The house had two units and was where Allison had grown up. Her mom, Terri, lived in the top unit. Her grandmother lived downstairs. Allison and I had met in New York, where I worked in publishing and she was in TV news. We’d been dating about six months. It was time to meet Allison’s family. Given that this was a tight-knit Italian Catholic clan (and I’m Jewish) that had a protective attitude toward Allison, the stakes were high. I tried to remain positive. In fact, I’d spent a lot of my life trying to remain positive. Ever since I was a teenager, coping with my parents’ divorce and…

As Karen Stobbe discovered, caring for a family member who has Alzheimer’s can be overwhelming. Home Instead Senior Care, with author Molly Carpenter, created Confidence to Care, a dementia care guidebook for family caregivers. Here are some key techniques to help minimize your loved one’s behavioral symptoms and care for them at home: Enter their world. The person with dementia makes sense to herself. Don’t argue with or correct Mom if she’s confused or delusional. Go along with it. If Mom says, “I’m waiting for Dad to pick me up” (and Dad is deceased), say, “Tell me again how you and Dad first met.” Validate their feelings. Reassure your family member that he is loved. People with dementia may get frustrated and lash out at the ones they’re closest to.…

“Being a person of faith means that all of the phenomena of the world are seen through a lens of gratitude to something bigger than you.” actress and neuroscientist MAYIM BIALIK, who stars in The Big Bang Theory “Waiting to feel brave so that you can act brave? Sorry. The only way to develop courage is to act brave until you feel brave.” MARTHA BECK, life coach and author of Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live “When our failings run deep, God’s love runs deeper.” MARY C. NEAL, M.D., from her book 7 Lessons from Heaven: How Dying Taught Me to Live a Joy-Filled Life “That’s the beautiful thing about grace. Even when we don’t see it, it’s there, working its way into…

AFTER YOU! For more than 20 years, I worked in the parks and recreation department of Lakewood, California. The job involved phone calls around the clock and a lot of evening meetings. As if that didn’t keep me busy enough, I’m active with several committees at church and I fly to Florida at least once a month to visit my mom I recently retired and now have plenty of leisure time. I use it to return a favor I know I was always grateful to receive when I was still working: going ahead of someone else in line at the grocery store. Whenever I see a fellow shopper who looks harried, I step aside to let that person go first. Time is a luxury I’m glad to be able to…

“ MOM, JUST GIVE IT A TRY.” My grown son Danny was on the phone from Colorado. “Fifty-five-year-olds don’t do online dating,” I said. “We meet people the old-fashioned way.” “Hah!” replied Danny. “And how’s that working out for you so far?” “I don’t want to date,” I said. “I have Walter.” Walter was my rescued dog. Danny laughed again, then turned serious. “It’s been 12 years since Dad died. You’re all alone there in New Mexico. It would be good for you to meet people. Alexa’s mom met someone on the internet, and now they’re engaged.” Alexa was Danny’s wife. Her father had died of cancer a few years earlier— the same disease that took my Rick when he was just 44. Some days, I felt like I was…

IN THE SUMMER OF 2010, I WAS INvited to Fort Carson, Colorado, to address an Army unit returning from Afghanistan, one with a high suicide rate, which is why I’d been asked. I was there to talk about how I dealt with my own trauma as a Holocaust survivor and as a psychotherapist As I climbed the podium, I wondered what I, a former ballet student, had to offer these men and women of war. I reminded myself that I was there to share the most important truth I know, that the biggest prison is in your own mind. And in your pocket, you hold the key: the willingness to release yourself from judgment, accepting and loving yourself for who you really are— human, imperfect and whole. “My mama told…

Just as her savings and retirement funds from more than 20 years of teaching were about to run out, Christy Cha- chere (Stronger Together, page 68) heard about a job as a direct support professional at her local Volunteers of America chapter. “I don’t like working in an office,” she says. “And I like variety.” Every day on the job is different—she helps two clients with basic tasks like getting groceries and haircuts. Plus, they get to do fun things like go bowling. In client Andrew Chilton, Christy has found a fellow reader. The two spend a lot of time on outings to bookstores and libraries. For other America’s Angels stories, go to voa.org /guideposts. You’ll see how Volunteers of America helps our nation’s most vulnerable. The Choice is the…

RENEWED TIES When Guideposts published my story, How Love Survives (March 2017), about my husband and me finding ourselves again after caring for my parents during their final years, I received extra copies of the issue. But I didn’t know who would want them—I was the last living member of my immediate family I decided to send the magazine to people who had known my parents well. I hadn’t seen some of them in decades, but they’d been an integral part of our summers at the lake. Copies went off to Minnesota, North Carolina, Florida, Canada. Phone calls and letters came soon after. I even went to Fort Myers, Florida, for the ninetieth birthday of my “Aunt Ann” Jannelli. Her husband and my dad had shared a tank in World…