Kathy Lawrence
Caring for a mother-in-law with cancer
Adrienne Gruberg, founder of The Caregiver Space, shares how she adjusted family life to care for a mother-in-law with Lymphoma whilst her own husband battled lung cancer. My mother-in-law, Sylvia – all four-feet-ten inches of her – was a spitfire of a lady! At eighty-nine, she was one of the most resilient people I had […]
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Walking the hospital corridors in dad’s shoes
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous.Our storyteller talks about their experience of life as a hospital in-patient and shares how they came to appreciate their dad’s perspective after seeing behind the curtain of NHS patient care. I’m not normally a hospital patient. I do spend a great deal of time as a visitor […]
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Mum didn’t tell me about her major heart surgery
Written by Rebecca Lenton This week’s storyteller is Clare Tanner. When your aunt mentions that your mum’s having surgery and you had no idea – what do you do? Clare shares her experience of her parents’ preference for privacy and desire to not worry her by not telling her about it! Mum is 70 in […]
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Parents are many things. Is a burden one of them?
Written by Kathy Lawrence There’s been discussion on our Twitter feed this week about our article on not making parents feel like they’re a burden. Is this too negative an approach? Should we be focusing on the positive? Here’s a view from our office. I would hate my parents to ever feel like they’re a […]
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Why my parents never came to live with me
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous. We’ve asked many people about their experiences of living with their parents in later life. In our latest story, our storyteller explains why she didn’t make that offer. Why didn’t my parents move in with me when they needed help? I didn’t invite them and they wouldn’t […]
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Gaining new freedom by moving in together
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous and names have been changed. It was a tough decision, but Sally’s move to the UK from her native South Africa to live with her son and his fiancée has given her renewed independence. I live with my fiancée Carter and his mother, Sally, who’s in her […]
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Are sex and love taboo topics for you and your parents?
Don’t be afraid to talk to your parent about love and sex, advises Relate counsellor and author, Barbara Bloomfield. They’ve got the same hopes and dreams as you have, but are probably just a bit shyer of talking about it. After my mother was widowed in her sixties, I used to see quite a bit […]
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And Fred came too: the struggle to care for a grieving step-parent
This week’s storyteller is Barbara. When Barbara’s mother passed away, Barbara was left to care for her mother’s second husband who stayed on in the granny flat. Despite Barbara’s best efforts, it was hard to make the relationship work. My father died 33 years ago, and eventually Mummy met and married Fred, who was some […]
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How tradition makes living with dad the obvious choice
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous. Their cultural background made the decision to share a home with a widowed parent easy for one family. Our storyteller explains how the arrangement works and its ups and downs. My husband and I married 14 years ago. For the first 5 years of our married life […]
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Older but not over the hill
Written by Rebecca Lenton This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous. There’s a societal habit of associating old age with decrepitude. Because someone is elderly they automatically can’t do things for themselves. They can’t hear and see as they used to and therefore they’re considered incapable. This widely shared assumption seems to create an […]
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