Sometimes supporting our siblings can lead us down the path of reexamining our childhoods and family secrets. For a time, my dad would ask me to listen to the Divorce Tapes, too. “You need to know what kind of person your mother is,” he said, but like everyone else, I refused. I was going to ..read more

“Regardless of the form they take, the unfortunate truth is that the experience of being human includes crucibles. Worse still, crucibles involve suffering—physical, psychological, or both—and they are unavoidable. For some people, crucibles are devastating and leave a wake of pain, cynicism, and even a shorter life expectancy. But for others, crucibles—in spite of, or ..read more

“Our drive to seek out happiness is a muscle that we can develop. So is our ability to relish experiences. And almost anyone can learn to amp up their reward sensitivity by training themselves to notice and savor their positive emotions. That’s even true for people with depression and anxiety who struggle to experience pleasure ..read more

On Monday afternoons, my friend Pam and I go for walks. Sometimes there’s a destination: the library, post office, Whole Foods. But more than anything, we talk. She’s good at drawing me out. We met at the hospice where my husband lived for five weeks, before lung cancer took him. In August, at a National ..read more

The reality of his dementia has settled into my psyche, like a snow globe that’s glitter finally came to rest on the base. But encountering cruel systems or people shakes it up again. It’s one thing to experience him losing a word or a memory or a capacity when it feels unavoidable—the steady if non-linear ..read more

It was visiting time at the hospital, and the corridors were full of dutiful middle-aged sons and daughters. The woman who held the ward door open for me was balancing a formidable stack of Tupperware boxes: home-cooked food, in case the nurses were too busy to make sure her elderly father ate. Why hadn’t I ..read more

Violent altercations between residents in long-term care facilities are alarmingly common. Across the country, residents in nursing homes or assisted living centers have been killed by other residents who weaponized a bedrail, shoved pillow stuffing into a person’s mouth, or removed an oxygen mask. A recent study in JAMA Network Open of 14 New York assisted living homes found that, within ..read more

Growing up, I never heard anyone use the term disabled. I heard about “special needs” kids, but that was reserved for children with intellectual disabilities. The other kids who had chronic medical conditions were just “sick,” if we got to see them in the world at all. The women in my family with lifelong orthopedic ..read more

Stephen Jacob Smith digs into why elevators are so rare in residential buildings in the US: “Elevators in North America have become over-engineered, bespoke, handcrafted and expensive pieces of equipment that are unaffordable in all the places where they are most needed. Special interests here have run wild with an outdated, inefficient, overregulated system. Accessibility ..read more

My dad had a bad death. The lead-up was long – a decade-old stroke had forced an early retirement from carpentry – but the end was abrupt, avoidable. Shocking. … The last time I saw my dad, we were touring senior living apartments I’d convinced him to consider after a family member approached me with ..read more