RESOURCES
Before I Lose My Own Mind: Book Resources
Meditation & Relaxation AUDIOS For Dementia Caregivers
The following meditation and relaxation audios are produced and recorded by Dr. Beverly Thorn. Initially produced as tools to help patients manage chronic illness and pain, they are critical in managing the stress associated with being a dementia caregiver.
Stress First Aid - 20 Breaths for Stress
This 5-minute audio helps guide you to focus on your breath for stress relief by teaching belly breathing.
Breathing Space Meditation
This 6-minute audio will teach you how to focus on and observe your breath as it travels in and out of your body
mindfulness Meditation
This 16-minute audio expands the use of breath awareness to help you observe the ebb and flow of thoughts and feelings without judging them or getting caught up in them.
Meditation: Deepening Relaxation Strategy
This 18 minute audio helps people deepen their sense of relaxation using guided imagery
Book Recommendations
- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande … On our mortality and end of life care.
- The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life, by Katy Butler … On stages of life and our end of life choices.
- In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, by Amy Bloom … Memoir on Alzheimer’s dementia and choosing a hastened death.
- Hope for the Best. Plan for the Rest, by Sammy Winemaker & Hsien Seow… on navigating a life-changing diagnosis.
- Mother Lode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver, by Gretchen Staebler … Memoir of a daughter caring for her mother with dementia.
- There at the End: Voices from Final Exit Network, Jim Van Buskirk, ed…first person accounts of people coming to terms with end of life decisions for themselves and their loved ones.
Websites
- Reducing your risk for dementia (from Alzheimer’s.gov)
- The Five Wishes document is useful resource for starting a living will and considering end of life issues. There is a small one-time fee, but it is easy to update as circumstances change. (from Fivewishes.org)
- The Alzheimer’s Association is a great resource for information and hosts a 24-hr support hotline for caregivers. (from Alzheimer’s Association.org)
- A Caregiver’s “Bill of Rights” (from Caregiver.org)
- For information about local care agencies, and options for financial support, your Area Agency on Aging is useful.
- Seven stages of Alzheimer’s Dementia (from compassionandchoices.org)
- NIH on palliative and hospice care at the end of life (from NIH.gov)
Copyright 2025. all rights reserved
Beverly E. Thorn, Phd.
Email: bthorn@ua.edu