This Family First sculpture recognizes our global family impacted by the increase in degenerative long-term illnesses such as Alzheimer’s/Dementia, our increasing awareness and action on a national level to make support programs for families impacted by dementia more available and accessible, our very local effort here to create virtual and physical sanctuary for families affected by long-term illness and disability, the reality that our heart and soul commitments to our blood-relatives speak first for most and that family connections grow where hearts glow together.
Drs Reinhard Fescharek and Therese Jonveaux, design conceivers, co-creators, and co-stewards of the Art, Memory and Life Garden at the University Hospital of Nancy, France presented their healing gardens project at the Dementia Care @ AAIC conference yesterday. Read an abstract of their research: Healing gardens and cognitive behavioral units in the management of Alzheimer’s disease patients: the Nancy experience. After the Art and the Environment session, I invited them to join me for a walk along our wheelchair-accessible MargFMac Front Garden Loop yesterday. We enjoyed and discussed the invitations and inspirations of the emerging garden spaces and they shared with me some of their wisdom and lessons learned from their project.
A presentation that brought tears to my eyes from the Art and the Environment session yesterday was Bird Tales, created by Randy Griffin RN MS HNC and Ken Elkins of the Audubon Society, and presented by Kathleen Maher of Candlewood Valley Rehab and Health Care Center, New Milford, CT. Learn more about this program and how to replicate it at your own home and/or healthcare facility!
Moving forward with a listening heart,
vision, inquiry, and action,
~ Mary