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Getting Older means WE R ALIVE AND EVOLVING

Women can be beautiful and amazing – it is time WOMEN like YOU & I 2 Believe in OURSELVES – JOIN me!

From Kristi Horner Courage to Caregivers

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Caregivers have to make many important decisions that affect their loved ones, their families, and themselves. These are HARD decisions, and they can weigh heavily on our minds, adding to our burdens and our stress. It’s all part of the long journey of caregiving, but that journey can get a little easier when you realize that you do not have to travel it alone.

That’s why it’s so important to know who’s on your team, which is our Caregiver Management topic this week. And while this might make you think first of your support network – those family members, friends, coworkers, neighbors, or community members that you know you can rely on – this week we want to focus on your professional support team, who can be just as essential in times of need or crisis. To ensure that you’re prepared for anything that might come up, your team should also include professionals you can turn to when you need help with medical, financial, legal, emotional, and social issues.

If you’re familiar with my personal story, you know that I founded Courage to Caregivers as a result of my experience providing emotional support to my brother who was living with mental illness and lost his battle to suicide in 2014. Then last year, I became a caregiver again when a motorcycle accident left my son with a traumatic brain injury. His life and our lives were changed forever. Through both journeys, I have felt alone many times, but I also have learned about the many different types of professional support that I needed on my team. These types of support can include:

  • Doctors, nurses, medical support staff
  • Psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors/therapists, social workers
  • Attorneys
  • Financial planners, investment bankers, commercial bankers
  • Insurance agents/brokers
  • Emotional health/respite care team

At Courage to Caregivers, we hope to be included on your team, too, not only as a source of inspiration and motivation – standing by your side, cheering you on, and believing in YOU – but also as a resource to turn to whenever a need arises. As you build your team to include professionals in the areas listed above, you may want to check out our Resources page for help.

And finally, don’t forget that YOU are the captain of your team. You build your team to support YOUR goals and YOUR needs. Courage to Caregivers is proud to be on YOUR team.

Kristi Horner
Founder and Executive Director
Courage to Caregivers

Please Be Kind!

Sharing:  http://postcoffeeprewine.com/posts-2020/

An Amazing Start for Sherapy

Today was an amazing day, the first of many Sherapy: Therapy with Sherry Amatenstein. Sherry is an NYC-based psychotherapist and author. Her podcast is a little unconventional for some. Still, it is becoming more traditional, especially to Millennials, as well as working professionals who want to participate in therapy but are limited on time and travel. Each episode of Sherapy is a 50-minute therapy session. The aim is to demystify and destigmatize psychotherapy. Too many people in distress still suffer silently. None of the participants are her private patients. On Sherapy, a person can receive complimentary therapy and remain anonymous. If interested, please contact Sherry at sherrymsw@earthlink.net

I am so excited to have Sherry Amatenstein on our podcast show real she may be heard by clicking on https://newclevelandradio.net/sherapy-real-therapy-with-sherry-amatenstein-3/real-therapy-with-sherry-amatenstein_podcasts/ – choose a streaming service to listen to this podcast.

Sherry Amatenstein (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) is the author of The Complete Marriage Counselor: Relationship Saving Advice from America’s Top 50+ Couples Therapists; Love Lessons from Bad Breakups; and Q&A Dating Book.

She writes advice columns for www.womansday.comwww.thirdage.com andwww.brides.com, and is frequently called upon to give relationship advice on many national radio and TV programs, including The Today Show, Early Show, Inside Edition, GMA Live, CBS News, and HuffPost Live.

I hope you will enjoy the show and learn more about yourself by listening to others share their journeys.

Pro-choice Thanksgiving: Amy Ferris

Pro-choice Thanksgiving:

A lot of my friends – tons of friends – are alone this year, this Thanksgiving. Many folks are estranged from their families; from friends or from a life they once had & held.

I know this feeling. Estrangement.

And I will tell you that there were many days – many days – more than I care to count – where I’d rewind, replay, re-adjust, re-calibrate, recall, & review all the crazy ass-shit that went down, all the shit that went sideways & just blew up. Imploded. The pain was unbearable. And what I can tell you, what I know – most of the guilt & shame & regret we carry around – schlep around – is not our own. It’s not. We inherited it; a collection – a greatest hits album – an entire lifetime of family history: the anger, the shame, the guilt; years of he said, she said, they said. Fuck you, no, no fuck you. fuck you more. Years of crap. Years of garbage piled on top of more garbage.

Years of mistakes & wrong turns & rebellion that are treated like felonies instead of misdemeanors – without forgiveness, or acceptance. There is nothing worse than having the past thrown up in your face over & over & over again. To be reminded of all the crazy crap you did when you didn’t know better. When all you wanted was to be seen, to be heard, to be held – when all you wanted was to be loved.

And the truth is – the rub is – everyone has their own shit.

Everyone has their own guilt.
Everyone has their own crap that they have dealt out, that they spewed, that they tossed into the heap.
Everyone has stuff that they need/want to hide, keep secret. Everyone has stuff they want hidden deep – way deep – kept in the darkness.

Everyone.

We are all broken. We are all filled with shards and jagged edges and sharp pointy pieces that can hurt like a motherfucker. We are all imperfect creatures. Each & every one of us, and my heart breaks, cracks, for all my friends who will sit alone this year wishing for forgiveness over stuff they said or did when they were younger. Foolish. Over mistakes they made because all they wanted was to be loved or liked, over actions they took, words they said, because they wanted a piece of a memory, a token of a love from someone they once cherished, adored. A reminder to hold. Wishing to hear the words: I’m so sorry. To hear the words: I was wrong. To hear the words: I hurt you, abused you, mistreated you.

We treat our own so unkindly and we wonder why the world is so deeply chaotic, so deeply troubled, so deeply wounded, so deeply steeped in pain & suffering; so unforgiving, so horribly mean-spirited.

We wonder.

So for all my friends and all the folks out there who are deeply, deeply pained, who are sorrowful during the holidays because they have been discarded, dismissed, forgotten, left out – please know this – we get to choose who we wanna share our lives with. We get to choose who we want in our lives. We get to choose the folks who lift us, inspire us, make us feel like we swallowed the sun. We get to choose who we walk side by side with, and stand with. We get to choose who we love. Blood may be thicker than water, but water is so much easier to clean up.

So, please, love yourself.
Please, forgive yourself.
Believe in the greatness of your own life.
Believe in your beauty.
Believe in your own amazing, stunning, messy, complicated, gorgeous life.

And if anyone – one soul – makes you feel that you are not worthy, not enough; if anyone makes you feel small, insignificant, less than – they do not deserve the privilege of you.

I hold you tight.

Ray Goldberg _Shares her BEAUTIFUL STORY

Ray, thank you for allowing us to post the link to your story https://medium.com/@rayngoldberg/the-three-stories-where-i-have-to-deadname-myself-644985dc26eb

You are an amazing individual that I am proud to call friend, and almost MISPACHA (family.)  As we approach 2020 many changes in our world/society are evolving and if we are lucky we can journey in life that makes us feel whole.  Too many of us have traveled down many paths taking right turns when we felt the urge to turn left, or going straight when we saw something on the horizon to our right.  It takes courage to climb a mountain but when we do and we reach the APEX we can agreed that the sight is beautiful.

I hope your beautiful story will enlighten and encourage others to live life and dance as if no one is watching!

https://medium.com/@rayngoldberg/the-three-stories-where-i-have-to-deadname-myself-644985dc26eb

Thank You Melinda Smith YOU MAKE ME FEEL H A P P Y!

https://www.facebook.com/melinda.s.bilfield/videos/10220066690122588/?t=164

Amy Ferris words about MOM

Today I get to read about my mom here at Writers Conference – thank you so much Victoria Zackheim – and I want to share with you how I came to know that I had become the woman she always wanted to be.

It was the last time I saw her. She was in an Assisted Living facility; I now refer to our last visit: Assisted Loving.

I went to spend 10 days with her. I stayed at a hotel nearby, walking distance. Our visit was hard. Some days she was feisty and difficult and irritable, and on others she was tender and frail and gentle. Some days she had no idea who I was, one others I was her Amy; some days she was filled with rage and howling noises, other days she was silent and watching cartoons – her favorite. She wore a soiled nightgown and her hair, once coiffed weekly and curled, was now full on gray and stick straight.

She had once been a beauty – a beauty queen – she was now small and shrinking into her own skin; disappearing physically and emotionally.

I spent time down at the bar at the hotel I was staying at, and went back to my room. Undressed, washed up, got into bed, called Ken and chit-chatted for a while. In the middle of the night I got up to pee. I stopped at the full length mirror, and I looked at myself – full on – naked; and I saw myself: a woman who never had kids, a woman who followed her heart even when her heart was cracked & chipped & yes, broken; a woman who was feisty and crazy-ass and yes, often testy and impatient; a woman who went for her dreams and never gave up even when it felt wholly fucking impossible, a woman who chose a creative path – writing; a woman who chose unconventional and rebellious and shaky as her foundation; and as I stood there looking at my body – a body that was slender but not tight, a body that was strong but not muscular, a body that had so many hidden scars that had turned into stardust, and I knew in that moment, in that hotel, in front of that mirror that I had become the woman my mother always wanted to be.

And in that moment, in that hotel, in front of that mirror I let go of much of the anger & much of the disappointment & much of the bitterness I held onto for so very long and replaced that with a profound appreciation that she – a woman who gave up all of her dreams of being an artist and all of her hopes of living a creative life and her desire to be unconventional – that she brought me into this world.

***Thank you Amy for these beautiful words.  They reflect so much that is in my heart about my own momma!”

Sherapy with Sherry Amatenstein

I am so proud and excited to be introducing you to a new podcaster who will begin with us in January 2020. Her name is Sherry Amatenstein, LCSW, who is an NYC-based psychotherapist and author. Sherry will be creating SHERAPY, and you can read all about this right here on the website. 

In keeping with the theme of awareness and finding the path to travel or detour in life, this nationally known psychotherapist will be sharing your stories with our listeners. Sometimes it is easier to be anonymous (faceless, nameless) when you begin to open up. I agree with Sherry; we must not be afraid of what we think our frailties are; instead, we must strengthen our inner selves to love life to the fullest.

If you have a story or want to share issues, please contact us here at newclevelandradio.net, and your information will be sent on to Sherry Amatenstein. You need not reveal any information to us other than a name and email so Sherry may connect with you.

Sherry portraits

2020 is going to be a big year for all of us at newclevelandradio.net, and you don’t need to be in Cleveland, Ohio, to become part of the big picture, your PORTRAIT!