Don't leave yet
Subtitle: how my mother's Alzheimer's opened my heart
By: Constance Hanstedt
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Berkeley, CA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 185
ISBN-13: 9781631529528
Subjects: Family relationships; Patients; Alzheimer's disease; Caregivers
Description: As a young girl in the Midwest, Constance Hanstedt was consumed by fear -- of her parents, especially her disapproving mother, Virginia; of social situations; and of people in general. Even as an adult she remained guarded around her mother, avoiding conflict at all costs. Still, when Virginia developed Alzheimer's, Hanstedt did what the perfect daughter she'd always struggled to be would do: she returned to the Midwestern town where she was raised to help care for a mother who could no longer care for herself. In Don't Leave Yet, Hanstedt recounts her journey toward facing her fears and rising above the past; her mother's unrelenting bitterness regarding life, even as she loses memories of it; and her unexpected discovery of an emotion that reaches beyond familial duty: compassion.