Tangible and Intangible

It is so hard for me to believe it is the middle of November already. The weather yesterday was warm and beautiful here in Ohio which was such a treat.
This week my partner, Ginny and I went to a conference put on by the Alzheimer’s Association in Erie, PA, to promote our Brainy Day Program www.hippocampus-hq.com. Listening to the presentations made me think again about how important it has been over the years to create and provide activities for individuals with dementia and their care providers. It renewed my passion again for this field.
One of the discussions that came up in another of our travels included a compliment stating that the Brainy Day Program was something tangible that could be beneficial in many ways. That comment and some of the things said in one of the presentations at the conference had me reflecting on the tangibles and intangibles of dementia.
So much of what is truly important in life is intangible: love, acceptance, feelings of worth and purpose, and the things that touch the spirit to make each person unique. Likes and dislikes as well as interests and choices and even the need to be validated, all program individual DNA. That is still true even when dementia has imposed upon a life.
During the conference presentation on validation, the presenter, Pastor Joan Edgar, quoted from Benland, saying “We are more than body, brain and breath.” She discussed our role as care providers and included in that role the opportunity to touch the spirit of the person who has dementia with our own spirit. In sharing validation, Joan rekindled in me the admiration I have for Naomi Feil, who wrote The Validation Breakthrough. I saw Naomi at work when I first started in my career and the impact she had on me then will be with me forever. I watched as she used her validation technique on a woman who no longer spoke but yelled out most of the day. By the end of the session the woman was able to share that when she was a girl in Nazi Germany she peeked out her window and watched as her girlfriend was shot. She carried the pain of that terror with her until the day when Naomi helped her release it and validated the horror of how devastating an experience it must have been. At the conference, Joan shared a 6 minute video of Naomi on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrZXz10FcVM which shows Naomi reaching the spirit of another woman through her validation techniques.
With validation the tangible is the touch, the voice and the movements. Naomi shows that what seems so elusive to so many who work in the arena of dementia; that of reaching the person still in there, is possible when we are willing to connect.