Mama Therese's birthday gift

Please join me in honoring my mama, Therese, for her 60th birthday by chipping in as part of a small army of people who love her, to make it possible for her to recieve some massage and craniosacral sessions. Cierra Dunn of Inner Rhythms Body Wisdom is a wonderfully skilled and compassionate practicioner who I have worked with and befriended. Her empathy and firsthand understanding of the trauma of the prolonged, anticipatory grief of losing a close family member to dementia is deeply resonant to our family's situation. I have placed the goal at a number that would get her 3 full sessions, but if everyone we are reaching out to chipped in around $20, we could easily gift her with more time.

If this page has been shared with you, it is because you care for my mama, Therese, and in many cases, also for my papa, Johnny, who she has been married to for nearly 27 years and loved for something close to 30. The last handful of years has been profoundly harrowing for our family, and no one has felt this in the core of their being more than Therese. Since Johnny's formal dementia diagnosis in 2019 and more specifically frontotemporal dementia in 2020, she has walked beside and managed every step of her beloved husband's rapid decline. I have witnessed this more than anyone, and this past year has been particularly difficult as Johnny has declined more swiftly since the summer. Every day I am home I see how much of herself Therese gives, as Johnny is to a point of barely being able to do anything on his own. Caregiving burnout is an incredibly real thing, she and I feel it in our marrows, and there is nothing more I would want to gift my strong, tender, loving mom on her birthday than the chance to be cared for and to recieve some balm for the trauma that she is experiencing and will continue to experience as Johnny's illness progresses.

Let us all contribute in whatever way we can by gifting Therese with nourishment, respite, and care. Not only will her receiving bodywork be supportive to our whole family, but her recieving evidence of the love so many people have for her will be just as powerful.