You will never regret being kind to your spouse.

In a strong marriage, the sexual expression of love is the sinew that ties two hearts together and forms the kind of bond we depend on to get us through life's greatest challenges. As we age, the intensity of physical passion burns more ember than flame, but the bonds of love can be just as strong, even stronger, than ever.

Alzheimer's forces a wedge in the relationship. Caregiver stress is more devastating than you imagined. Frustration and Anger barge into your home and wreak havoc in your daily world. Anticipatory grief destroys your dream of the future.

Whether the dementia caregiving journey takes a few years or a decade or more, love doesn't fade from a strong marriage. The challenge is learning how to express that love in a new way.

After marrying more than 150 couples, publishing 3 historical romance novels with Harper Collins, and being married for 41 years to a man I loved deeply, I've learned some things about weddings, romance, intimacy, and dementia. I share a few of those thoughts in this episode.

Mentioned in the episode:

John van Gurp's YouTube channel: John and Heather's Dementia Journey

Be sure to listen to episode 28 about how using improv can help caregivers enter the world of their loved one. Let me know if you'd like to be part of an online improv class where all the participants are dementia family caregivers.

I'm working a future episode about how it feels to have to care for a family member with dementia when you would never refer to that person as your "loved one." If that's you, please contact me. Email: zita@myspousehasdementia.com

You know that caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's or other form of dementia can leave your mind confused, your body exhausted, and your spirit depressed. Yes, and what if I said there's something simple that might help you survive the caregiving journey? Yes, and what if I said this something is fun and free?

I'm talking about improvisational theater, "improv" for short. Imagine a group of people on stage, making up a comedy skit as they go along. No experience required for what I'm suggesting in this episode.

I've been talking with my nephew, Stephen Gillikin, co-founder of an improv group in Los Angeles and founder of a virtual improv class, about how improv techniques might help family dementia caregivers "enter the world" of their loved one.

To read more about what I think could genuinely help family dementia caregivers, read the associate blog post on my main website, ZitaChristian.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Stephen Gillikin, Actor, Improv Teacher, my nephew

International Women's Podcast Awards

(Mentioned because out of almost 700 entries from 35 countries around the world, My Spouse Has Dementia was short-listed for the 2025 annual awards!)

Episode 27, interview with Marty Schreiber, author of My Two Elaines

In case you're wondering, I generated all of this content. Not AI.

“None of the books I read conveyed the ugly truth about caregiving: that it can destroy you – even kill you – if you go about it wrong.”

That's just a taste of the hard-hitting reality conveyed by author Martin (Marty) Schreiber in his memoir, "My Two Elaines." Elaine was Marty's highschool sweetheart and wife of 62 years when she died from Alzheimer's.

As a former governor, Marty was prepared for the political responsibilities focused on leading the State of Wisconson. As a loving husband to a wife with Alzheimer's, he floundered.

Marty talks bluntly about several aspects of caregiving:

• the benefits of being told the truth of a diagnosis
• the unique stress a husband faces when he is the caregiver
• how asking for help can challenge a man's masculinity
• how critical it is to enter your loved one's world when trying to communicate
• the inevitable anger and frustration of trying to fix the unfixable
• the danger of trying to cope with alcohol -- what Marty calls, "the caregiver's poison."
• self-reflection, regrets, and the importance of sharing personal caregiving stories

This is a love story. Sad. Strong. Encouraging.

Martin Schreiber's website: My Two Elaines

If you're caring for a spouse with dementia and are finding it hard to tell family and friends what you're going through, send them this link to Episode 23: The Caregiver You Love Needs Help

For 13 years, John Scully visited his mom in a nursing home. For the last 8 years of her life, she couldn’t talk. So he had other conversations. And they became a book. It’s called Visited Mom Today: Conversations Through the Lens of Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Mentioned in the podcast:

VisitedMomToday.com - The website of author John D. Scully

Alz Authors, a podcast that interviews authors of dementia caregiving memoirs.

I grew up listening to Walter Cronkite. He signed off each nightly newscast with “And that’s the way it is.” As a kid, I was often alarmed by the news. But I reasoned that if Walter Cronkite respected me enough to tell me the truth, then I could handle it. Yes, my reasoning was flawed. Mr. Cronkite didn’t know me.

In this episode, I share deeply personal stories from my childhood. That's when my first caregiving experience really began. Both of my parents had enough confidence in me to tell me the truth, even at five years old.

Still, decades later, Mr. Cronkite's respect and my parents' confidence helped me find the resilience I needed to care for my husband. He had Alzheimer’s. Today’s family dementia caregivers need someone who respects them enough to tell them the truth. Caregivers need the truth to make a plan -- for minimize the chances of falling, to recognize what might be a urinary tract infection (UTI), to serve food not likely to cause choking, to adjust the household budget to hire a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant), to ask the hard questions about the real costs of memory care facilities. Sometimes, we can plan only one step at a time. But one step IS progress.

I hope that in hearing my childhood story, other caregivers will be able to look into their pasts and recognize times when they found strength. Now is the time to draw on that strength. We need to survive.

This episode is a message for the caregiver to send to someone else, someone who doesn't know, or doesn't understand, the stress the caregiver is going through.

I liken that stress to driving alone, in an old car, up a steep mountain on a narrow, twisting road with no place to pull off. There are no guardrails. The caregiver's spouse is at the top of that mountain, dying.

I created this episode especially for the caregiver whose spouse has Alzheimer's or other form of dementia. While statistics vary, approximately 40% of family dementia caregivers die first -- meaning, the caregiver dies before the person with dementia dies. Stress can be deadly.

If you are not a caregiver, but you love someone who is, you might think of the caregiver as a strong person, someone who can "handle it." Don't be fooled. Many caregivers are simply too proud to ask for help.

In this episode, I share some of the stressful situations I confronted in caring for my husband. He died of Alzheimer's. I also offer ways to help the caregiver you love.

I also invite listeners to contact me via email or voice mail (go to https://myspousehasdementia.com) and let me know what obstacles you face in trying to help the caregiver you love.

"Between now and dead, you've got a purpose. Don't be timid."

Before she retired as a hospice chaplain, Reverend Victoria Burdick faced her own death several times. In her 30s while in divinity school, she wrote a series of essays she called "Lunch with Heron." In one of those essays, "The Tall Ships," she recounts the breast cancer diagnosis that led her to the Festival of the Tall Ships in Europe, and her harrowing ordeal crewing on a ship with a captain and crew who were rarely sober.

One night, exhausted after an 18-hour shift at the helm, and weak from the cancer drugs she was taking, Victoria, mother of two young girls, came face-to-face with what was now an 8-week prognosis. Her self-determined transformation empowered her to survive. The day she pulled her rigging knife on the captain--the day she caught him molesting his young daughter-- confirmed the strength growing inside her.

Victoria is descended from seven generations of sailmakers, seafarers, and what she proudly terms "warf rats." Growing up on the water prepared her for the ordeal described in the book and movie "The Perfect Storm." Yes, she, her father, and other members of her family's crew were on one of the ships caught in that storm.

It comes as no surprise that when faced with the diagnosis of cancer, she sought to do battle on the deck of a ship, a place where she had once before beaten death.

Victoria personifies courage and the determination to survive, two qualities needed by those of us caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's or other dementia.

The "Lunch with Heron" essays are not published. Victoria Burdick graciously agreed to share one of the essays here with the hope that her experience might inspire others. You can learn more about her and her work at her website: AuthenticCeremony.com