Lauren Flake - Grief & Texas
My mother forgot my seventeenth birthday. My junior prom had been the evening before, and I slept over at a friend’s house. When I walked through the front door with my overnight bag that Sunday morning, I fully expected a “Happy Birthday” greeting from my family, yet I received none. Exhausted from the late-night shenanigans […]
I never wanted to be the grief girl but I lost my mom to Alzheimer’s. I’ve been a writer since I was 9 years old. In fourth grace language arts class, I soaked up sentence diagramming and essay structure like it was manna from heaven. Words and language became my currency, and crafting fictional short […]
I love writing letters to my mom but it took me months to write a “Letter to Me” for my dear friend Kelly Smith at Mrs Disciple. Kelly and I met through Jen Hatmaker’s For the Love launch team this summer and have maintained an online relationship over the last few months, sharing encouragement and […]
Need gift ideas for someone with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia? Christmas shopping was bittersweet while my mother was living with Alzheimer’s. She loved Christmas and the tradition of Santa Claus, and I looked forward to exchanging gifts with her every year. Yet, the further she progressed into dementia, the more difficult it became […]
A counselor once told me that my mother would be more “accessible” to me after she died than when she was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. I didn’t fully understand what she meant at the time. She thought I was going to be able to communicate with my dead mother? Yet, shortly after my mom died, […]