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Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Dancing with Dementia blog tour with Jemi Fraser




Snippets


Thanks so much to Marcy for letting me visit the blog today!

Marcy always has the most beautiful pictures as her headers. They’re snippets of life and remind me of the way Dancing With Dementia developed.

The book is the story of our journey through the early steps of our dance with dementia. It’s also a guide for other families facing these first steps. We hope what we’ve learned (so often the hard way!) will help others as they learn to dance with dementia.

The majority of the book is devoted to our journey and to Lizzie, our mom.

Because we had no context for what regular aging looked like (all of our relatives live in Scotland), we were taken by surprise by dementia. We missed a lot of clues that some things weren’t progressing as normal. We brushed off a lot of incidents as Mom being Mom or as random odd, behaviours instead of recognizing those behaviours as the norm.

As we started to realize the depths of the problems, I started recording them in writing. Not with the intention of writing a book, but with the intention of helping us remember weird events and when things happened.

When someone suggested putting all of our learnings into a book, the fabric of the book was already begun. Snippets. These snippets needed to be rewritten, organized, and woven together into a cohesive whole, but the format worked.

For us, recognizing dementia came in a series of small hints and puzzle pieces. Bits and pieces of life that seemed separate but really weren’t. The underlying themes were there, we just didn’t have enough experience to recognize them.

We hope our snippets of love, laughter, tears, joy, and sorrow can help others facing these first steps in the dance of dementia.

How about you? Have you read/written a book that was told in short, bite-sized stories? Do you enjoy those short stories all connected within a larger storyline?
 


It’s a pleasure to be participating in author Jemi Fraser’s DANCING WITH DEMENTIA, Recognizing and Coping with the Early Stages of Dementia Blog Tour through MC Book Tours today.

Jemi is offering a tour-wide international giveaway of an Amazon
Gift Card. More information on the giveaway is listed below.

Recognizing and Coping with the Early Stages of Dementia

by Jemi Fraser
◊ Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir

◊ Publisher: Just Jemi Books

◊ eBooks

◊ ISBN-13: 978-1-9991258-1-3

Dementia and Alzheimer’s touch the lives of millions around the
world, but so much is still unknown.

As first-generation Canadians, we didn’t recognize
the early warning signs. We didn’t know the differences between regular aging
and the early stages of dementia. We’ve made mistakes but we’ve learned a lot.

DANCING
WITH DEMENTIA
will help you:

•Identify those early warning signs

•Use visuals to improve communication

•Choose your words wisely

•Redirect and reassure

•Stay calm and cope with your own emotions

•Consider nursing home options

•Improve caregiver self-care

We’ve learned to dance the early steps of the
disease with our love and laughter intact. If you are looking for help
recognizing early signposts along with practical ways to cope with early
Dementia and Alzheimer’s, this book is for you.



DANCING
WITH DEMENTIA
buy
links:


Amazon.com              Amazon.ca          Apple Books   
 
Barnes & Noble          Kobo


Add DANCING WITH DEMENTIA
to your Goodreads shelf

For those
who aren’t familiar with the author, here’s a bit of background on her.

Jemi Fraser
writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction work focuses on the ways
that dementia has impacted her family. Her fiction work varies from
contemporary romance to suspense and flash fiction. Years as a teacher have
taught Jemi that life is short and that happy endings are a must.

Jemi lives
in Northern Ontario, Canada where snow is always a topic of conversation and
the autumn leaves make everything better.

For more on
Jemi and her writing, visit her following sites:

Amazon
Page

      
BookBub      Goodreads   
 
Facebook   
 
Twitter   
 
Quick
Tips Videos

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

This
tour-wide giveaway is for a $20 Amazon Gift Card. The giveaway is
open internationally.

To enter the
giveaway, just click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the
instructions. The widget may take a few seconds to load so please be patient.
If the widget doesn’t show up, just click HERE and
you’ll be directed to the widget.

Thanks for
stopping by and be sure to follow Jemi on her week-long tour
HERE. You never know what you
might find out. I hope dementia hasn’t touch your family or friends, but in
case it has do you have any tips to share on dealing with this terrible
disease?




a Rafflecopter giveaway


25 comments:

  1. Your book will help a lot of other families. It is easy to brush off some stuff as just getting older when it's really not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope so!! It's such a confusing disease - for everyone!

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  2. Congrats to Jemi on the book and such a educational one as well!

    ReplyDelete
  3. A huge congratulations to Jemi!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks so much, Marcy! I so appreciate you allowing me to visit your blog and your support!

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  4. Marcy, thanks for being a part of Jemi's tour.

    I agree with Alex, it's easy to brush off things as just getting older when it really isn't.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly!! Brushing those moments off is something I wish we could go back and change!

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  5. Hi,
    I enjoyed the short bite stories. For me, they lightened up the seriousness of the theme. It was good to see the humour.
    Shalom aleichem,
    Pat Garcia

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Pat! Humour is such an important tool in all aspects of life - and dementia is no different!

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  6. Huge congratulations to Jemi. I am thrilled to see her very valuable book featured on so many blogs.
    It was a book which made me cry, made me laugh in rueful recognition and filled me with awe.
    The title says it all - I love Jemi's families attitude to dealing with this challenging and heartbreaking issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're a sweetie, Sue! As you know, the struggle to help someone with dementia is a huge challenge!

      Delete
  7. Congrats to Jemi! I wish this book had been out when I was first helping my mom with her dementia. It sounds like a great resource.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Natalie! I wish we'd had something as well. It's a tough thing to learn as you go!

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  8. I admit, I have no idea what to look for. Sounds like an interesting book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's SUCH a difficult disease to spot/recognize - at least in my opinion. With our hindsight glasses on there were many, many signs we missed!

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  9. I'm trying to do my memoir that way, small snippets. We'll see... I think I've been working on it for too long. LOL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It can be exhausting! Those snippets were the best way for me too!

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  10. Thank you for providing information about the early steps.

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    Replies
    1. Glad to help, Starzine. It's such a confusing and confounding disease!

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If you're interested in my blog I'm interested in your comments.