Healing Your Grieving Heart When Someone You Care about Has Alzheimer’s: 100 Practical Ideas for Families, Friends, and Caregivers

Navigating the challenging journey that families and friends of Alzheimer's patients must endure, this heartfelt guide reveals how their struggle is as complex and drawn out as the illness itself. Confronting their natural but difficult process of grieving and mourning, the study covers the inevitable feelings of shock, sadness, anger, guilt, and relief, illustrating the initial reactions people commonly feel from the moment of the dementia's onset. Healthy and productive ways to acknowledge and express these feelings are suggested along with 100 tips and activities that fulfill the emotional, spiritual, cognitive, physical, and social needs of those who care about someone afflicted with this debilitating disease. Special consideration is also shown for caregivers, whose grief is often complicated by the demanding physical attention that patients require.

Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD is a speaker, a grief counselor, and the director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition. He is the author of The Journey through Grief and Understanding Your Grief and the coauthor of Healing a Child’s Heart After Divorce. Kirby J. Duvall, MD is a family physician and an occupational-medicine specialist. He is a faculty member of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. They are the coauthors of Healing After Job Loss and Healing Your Grieving Body. They both live in Fort Collins, Colorado.