Foreword
Preface
Introduction: How to Become a Mindful Caregiver
1: Understanding the Caregiver Role: The Mindful Caregiver
2: What is Realistic to Expect?
3 : Self-Care Absolutely Matters
4: Incorporating Mindfulness into Self-Care: Creative Ideas and
Exercises
5: Inspiring More Meaningful Engagement: Finding Ways to Be
Together
6: Navigating the Maze of Resources and Services
7: Advocacy and Partnership
8: When the End is Near: Finishing Well
Nancy L. Kriseman, LCSW, is a geriatric social worker in private
practice. She provides counseling, consultation, and educational
seminars to family caregivers, and training and presentations to
organizations. She has over thirty years of experience working in
eldercare, focusing much of her professional career working with
family caregivers. She has published numerous articles on aging
issues. Her first book, The Caring Spirit Approach to Eldercare: A
Training Guide for Professionals and Families, won two national
book awards in 2005. She also has been a caregiver to her mother,
who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and lived with it for
seventeen years.
Find our more about Nancy at www.nancykriseman.com.
Nancy L. Kriseman's new book is an unusual and comprehensive guide
to bringing 'mindfulness' to family caregiving, and well worth
reading. ... The Mindful Caregiver is about so much more than
paying attention to the needs of others. In fact, the central
message of Kriseman’s book is that we, as family caregivers caring
for a family member or friend, need to pay attention to own needs
above all else. ... The Mindful Caregiver could be described not
just as a meditation on mindfulness, but as a top-notch 'how to'
book for caregivers. Her tips for finding a geriatric care manager,
deciding on an elder care facility, or advocating for your loved
one in the E.R., for example, seem comprehensive. As readers we
benefit from Kriseman’s long career working with elders and their
caregivers, and from her ability to write clearly and
compassionately. ... [W]hat makes The Mindful Caregiver
particularly compelling are the author’s descriptions of the
challenges faced by some of her former clients. . . . I appreciated
that Kriseman goes into detail for each scenario, offering us a
road map if we find ourselves in similar situations. Many readers
will see themselves and their families in these pages, and feel
both reassured that they are not alone and empowered to put their
own needs firsts.
*Caregivers.com*
If you are facing the need for caregiving in any manner this should
be one of your first stops on the path. Be guided by those
that have traveled this way before you.
*Well Spouse Association*
This pioneering book reflects Nancy Kriseman’s years of experience,
breakthrough insights, and cutting-edge knowledge. It is a true
gift to caregivers.
*Mary Erlanger, Ph.D., Geriatric Counselor/Professor*
The Mindful Caregiver is a book that should be “required reading”
for caregivers. Nancy Kriseman tells this story from the
perspective of having been a caregiver herself, as well as her
years of helping other caregivers. The mortality rate of the so
called “well spouse” is unacceptably high; the high depression rate
among caregivers also points to how caregivers often overlook their
own needs. Nancy’s book offers excellent examples of how to be a
mindful caregiver so that diseases, especially Alzheimer’s and
Parkinson’s, do not have two victims: the person with the disease
and the caregiver.
*Joyce Simard, MSW, adjunct associate professor at University of
Western Sydney, Australia; Geriatric Consultant; Professional
Speaker; Author*
Nancy Kriseman's book is unique and powerful. The Mindful Caregiver
offers both personal insights and professional experience on every
page. Nancy has been a hands on family caregiver herself for many
years, as well as professionally guiding and counseling family
caregivers through many challenges in their personal caregiving.
Her advice, and the stories she shares, offers a voice that every
caregiver can relate to and benefit from reading.
*Connie Goldman, author of Hardship Into Hope: The Rewards of
Caregiving*
Nancy Kriseman's book is full of pragmatic and helpful tools for
making caregiving easier, but really, her book is about a new way
of being a caregiver. Sharing personal and professional stories,
she skillfully describes a more intentional path, one that helps
caregivers stay resilient and healthy, not with a pill but with
self-awareness. Bravo!
*Pauline Boss, Ph.D., author: Ambiguous Lossand Loving Someone Who
Has Dementia*
A gifted writer mindfully melds personal and professional know-how
to encourage and inspire family caregivers. Kriseman’s pro-active,
positive words honor the spirit of family care relationships while
simultaneously acknowledging the losses in providing such intimate
care. Her step-by-step guidance will preserve family caregiver
strengths. Readers will immediately identify with the poignant
well-placed family caregiver quotes from recognition of a problem
through end-of-life care. If this was a medication, doctors would
be prescribing it to every well-intentioned but understandably
overwhelmed family caregiver.
*Lisa P. Gwyther, MSW, LCSW, Bryan Alzheimer's Disease Research
Center, Duke University Medical Center*
Nancy Kriseman has done a masterful job of applying the cutting
edge mental health concept of mindfulness to the emerging public
health crisis of caregiver burden. This book combines Nancy’s
unique perspective based on years of intimate work with her clients
and her personal experience as a caregiver for her own beloved
mother with Alzheimer ’s disease. This book is an essential read
for caregivers of the elderly and infirm as well as the
professionals who accompany them on this journey.
*Bruce E. Rudisch, M.D., adjunct faculty, Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences; teaching faculty, Emory University
Psychoanalytic Institute*
The Mindful Caregiver: Finding Ease in the Caregiving Journey is an
inspirational book that speaks to the spirit, heart, mind, body and
soul of both caregivers and their “care recipients.” Creative, well
researched, based on years of personal and professional experience,
and loaded with solid practical tips, meaningful anecdotes, and
humorous perspectives, Kriseman’s book has a positive, upbeat tone
that addresses the benefits as well as the burdens, the pleasures
as well as the pitfalls, inherent in the caregiving role. A must
read for every caregiver.
*Helen W. Coale, LCSW, LMFT, Atlanta, Georgia*
This is an informative book using mindfulness and self awareness to
ease the caregiver’s journey. [The Mindful Caregiver is] presented
in an easy and insightful reading style. . . .The use of case
studies throughout the book present pertinent issues, ideas and
strategies . . . [which] help negate the feelings of isolation and
loneliness. . . .I believe a caregiver reading this would find
their spirits lifted and find their personal fear and guilt
subsiding, for these reasons alone the book is worth reading. . .
.While the book is uplifting and positive it doesn’t shirk from the
realistic and in places honest picture of what it means to be a
caregiver. . . .The resources, appendices and bibliography . . .
are comprehensive and provide the reader with a starting point and
include an excellent appendix on how to evaluate a website. . . .an
excellent resource for carers. Its open writing style presents a
non judgemental uplifting read with no expectations placed upon the
reader. It can be read from cover to cover but provides useful
chapters to dip back into at a later day or if requiring a
therapeutic pick-me-up.
*Nursing Times*
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