Category Archives: Transitions

My Mother’s Voice

12 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in The Healthy Life, The Writing Life, Transitions, What's the Buzz?

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I wrote an essay—the first of many I will write—about my mother’s slide into the quicksand and darkness of dementia. I published it on my blog, and the editors of BlogHer honored it with a Voice of the Year Award for 2012. I’m proud of this, but not solely for the reason you might think. I’m proud of this essay because it exists, because I was able to write it at all. I managed to descend into that frightening pit of despair and start to tell my mother’s story, to return her voice to her, to leave something of her to this world that she left 12 years ago. This was not an easy thing to do, and I will have to do it again and again and again, until her story is fully told, until her voice is finally heard. It will be difficult, and I know there will be times I’ll be afraid to continue.

She was an intensely private person, but in this respect I think she would want me to keep going. She would want people to know, because, sadly, she was one among millions who have disappeared into the maw of Alzheimer’s, and who will continue to disappear until a cure can be found. Maybe if enough stories get told, if enough attention is paid, something that might be enough will be done, and the disease (the irony of my word choice isn’t lost on me) will itself become a memory. It happened with smallpox. It could happen again.

According to Alzheimer’s Disease Research, a program of the American Health Assistance Foundation, more than 5.4 million Americans are believed to have Alzheimer’s disease; by 2050, as the U.S. population ages, this number could increase to 15 million. There are nearly 36 million people living with dementia worldwide, and this number is likely to increase to more than 115 million by 2050.

The essay, “‘Have You Met My Daughter?’ My Mother, Her Alzheimer’s and Me,” is one of 80 essays representing 80 bloggers included in the Voices of the Year anthology, published by BlogHer in conjunction with Open Road Media.

The anthology will be available for download (from Amazon and iTunes) on Oct. 30, but advance orders are available now. Here’s what Amazon says about BlogHer and the book:

BlogHer is a unique media company created by women, for women, and—most importantly—with women, women like those whose voices you’ll read in this collection. Each year, BlogHer—the largest network of women who blog—hosts an initiative to identify the very best work from across the blogosphere. Submitted by the community, selected by a committee, and presented at the world’s largest blogging conference, the pieces presented here have it all because women live it all—online and off. Humor. Inspiration. Food. Family. Style. Sex. Politics. Tech. Career. Dreams. BlogHer’s Voices of the Year reminds us of the transformative power of blogs to connect us all via powerful storytelling.

My thanks to Elisa, Lisa, and Jory—the co-founders of BlogHer—for envisioning this project, and to Donna Schwartz Mills, a member of BlogHer’s conference programming team, for helping to administrate it. I’m humbled by the honor, and honored that my mother’s story will reach a wider audience.

My Gift to You: A Chance to Win ‘The Digest Diet’

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Special Events, The Healthy Life, Transitions, What's the Buzz?

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The recipes in this book are delicious and fun to prepare.

Thanks to the good offices of Reader’s Digest, I’m happy to announce that I have a beautiful, jacketed copy of The Digest Diet to give away. Here’s how to enter:

Visit the round-up post about my Digest Diet journey and leave a positive comment. That’s your “entry form.” Just a few caveats, however:

  • You have to live within the contiguous United States;
  • There has to be a way for me to get in touch with you to notify you that you’ve won. If you’re not sure that I have your email and postal addresses, please go to the contact page (found above the masthead in the drop-down menu under ‘Who is the Midlife Second Wife?’), and send me an email with that information. (There’s no form to bother with, but that’s where you’ll find my email address.) I do not and will not share your information with any third party;
  • If I am unable to reach you by email to notify you that you’ve won, I will draw another name;
  • And of course, you need to enter by leaving a comment on the round-up Digest Diet post. (“Enter by leaving.” I like that. Think I’ll start a meme to that effect!)

I’ll pick the winner sometime this weekend, and announce it next Monday here on the blog. Good luck, everyone!

The Digest Diet Day 21: Did I Do It? Am I Done?

02 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Food for Thought, The Healthy Life, Transitions

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This isn’t really a diet book, in my opinion. It’s more a handbook for a healthy way to eat.

Yes, I did it! I reached my implicit goal: to get my weight below 200. I now clock in at 199 pounds 8 ounces, for a grand total loss of 9 pounds 6 ounces. Yay me! Yay Digest Diet! Let’s recap, shall we?

I started the Digest Diet three weeks ago, weighing in at 209 pounds 4 ounces. I’m a 56-year-young thyroid cancer survivor with a job where I spend most of the day sitting in front of a computer in my home office. If you were paying careful attention, you can count three significant factors in that previous sentence: age, the loss of the body’s metabolism regulator, and lifestyle. These factors gave rise to my weight gain over the years. My issues with weight have been pretty consistent: I’ve needed to lose a good bit of it, and I’ve lacked the proper motivation.

There’s no motivator quite like telling the world what you’re up to. I believe one reason I’ve found success on this diet is because I’ve checked in a couple of times a week—not just here, but also on the Digest Diet Twitter hashtag (#DigestDiet) and their Facebook site. The community of Digest Dieters in the blogosphere has been incredibly supportive, as have the staff at Readers’ Digest.

If you’ve been tracking my progress, you’ll recall that my explicit goal was to lose 15 pounds. Although I fell slightly more than five pounds short of that goal, I’m satisfied with my results. The big deal for me, at least psychologically, was not to see the numeral two leading off the numbers of my digital weight. I cannot tell you what this means to me. I also went down a bra size, too. (I’m not much for measuring myself—I’ve always sort of gone by how my clothes fit and look on me—so I don’t have those stats.)

But let’s take a look, shall we? Here are my before and after pictures:

After

Before

When I tell you that this is the best diet I’ve been on, these are the indices I used:

  • I continually lost weight. I might have plateaued a day or three, but I never reversed direction. The trajectory was down, down, down. And I hope you can tell from the photos, but the sleeve on my shirt is looser than in the first photo, the girls look more reined in, and one of my middle bulges is nearly gone.
  • My self-esteem trajectory was up, up, and up.
  • I had more energy. It was easier to take extended walks for exercise—at minimum one mile—because I didn’t get winded and my knees didn’t hurt.
  • My skin has more clarity.
  • With one or two rare exceptions, I’ve absolutely loved every recipe I’ve prepared from this book—so much so that I plan to incorporate almost everything I tried into my regular routine. And here is the answer to the second question in my headline: I’m not done. Not by a long shot. Not only do I not want to see weight creep again, I want to continue this pattern of healthy eating. And I promise to check in with you down the road to let you know if I’ve done so.

Here’s what I cooked for dinner the other evening, toward he end of the diet. My husband loved this, and so did I.

Spaghetti with Super Mushroomy Marinara

I’ll try, before the end of the week, to share the recipe for this pasta dish. Coming from someone who is half-Sicilian, you know you can trust me when I tell you that this satisfied my pasta fulfillment requirements.

Now, three minor caveats about the Digest Diet:

First, it will help enormously if you love to cook, don’t mind cooking frequently, and have access to a good market with a wide array of produce, seafood, and the occasional esoteric item, such as almond oil. Fortunately, I love to play in the kitchen and a fabulous market recently opened up within walking distance of my home, so I enjoyed pulling these recipes together. But do note that there is a time, labor, and shopping factor involved here, and this diet will require a level of commitment that must take those factors into account.

Second, I’m not sure I would have been as successful on the diet if I were working full-time away from home. The flexibility that being self-employed gives me enabled me to weave the demands of frequent cooking, shopping—and yes, eating—into my day. You’re eating five times a day on this diet, not three, so those with a different daily schedule might find it all a bit challenging. If you are willing to be more organized and dedicated, you’ll do fine. Trust me. Two days into this you will want to keep going. When you see the results and experience how you’re starting to feel, you’ll find it’s worth spending the extra time in the kitchen and at the market.

Finally, there are no guidelines in the book about eating out in restaurants while you’re on the diet, something that my husband and I do about twice a week. (We just avoided restaurants for the duration.) I did, however, find a page on the Readers’ Digest website that addresses this issue. Perhaps a subsequent edition of the book could incorporate the great information on the website.

Last Friday I had a lunch meeting with a client, my first foray into a restaurant since starting the diet. I chose a tossed green salad with feta cheese, grilled chicken, walnuts, and cranberries in a raspberry vinaigrette. I ate some of the cranberries but felt they might have too much sugar, so I left most of them on my plate. Once you’ve been on the diet for a week or so, you’ll get a sense of what foods to avoid and what foods will help you continue to release those damn fat cells.

Would I recommend this book to someone struggling with weight? In a New York minute! I have tried so many diets throughout my lifetime, and nothing—I repeat, nothing, compares to the Digest Diet in terms of results. At no time did I feel I was starving or denying myself of something delicious to eat.

Do you believe that some things in life are just meant to be? I do. I was meant to go on this diet, right now. Here’s the sign the universe sent to tell me so. Do  remember the chocolate chip/coconut/walnut cookie from my first Digest Diet post? You know, the “Royale” from Richmond’s Café Caturra? Here’s a photo to refresh your memory:

The restaurant doesn’t make this cookie anymore. They changed distributors and no longer have access to the required ingredients. Now if that’s not a sign from the gods, I don’t know what is.

(Just don’t ask me how I know.)

Related posts:

How to Buy the Book

13 Things You Didn’t Know About the Digest Diet

The Digest Diet: Day 18 and Wow! The Loss I’ve Seen

A Fat Releasing Salad that’s Good and Good for You

The Digest Diet: Day 13 and Slowly Getting Lean

The Digest Diet: It’s Day Eight and I’ve Lost Weight

The Digest Diet: Day 3 and 2 Pounds Free

21 Days of the Digest Diet: Days 1-4, There’s a Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On

Buh-Bye, Cookie. I’ll Be Blogging it Off With the Digest Diet

The Digest Diet: Day 18 and Wow! The Loss I’ve Seen!

27 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in Food for Thought, The Healthy Life, Transitions

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This is more than a diet book. It’s a food book.

I know what you’re thinking. The Midlife Second Wife has really done it now. She drank the Kool-Aid. Have you not been following this? Kool-Aid is not allowed on the Digest Diet. But yes, I agree with you. Two exclamation points in one headline is a tad zealous. In my defense I could not help myself. Why? I weighed myself this morning and since starting this diet 18 days ago, I have lost nearly nine pounds. (Eight pounds six ounces, for the sticklers among you.) I am less than one pound away from my implicit goal: to get my weight under 200 pounds. Put another way, I began at 209 pounds four ounces, and I now weigh 200 pounds eight ounces. I have lost eight one-pound packages of butter, for crying out loud. Can you blame me for expressing a bit of fervor?

How is this even possible? I have rarely felt hungry, I haven’t had a single craving for anything I used to consume with such abandon, and I really enjoy preparing the foods in this diet book. To call it a diet book, however, seems wrong, somehow; I think—and I hope the coming weeks will bear this out—that this is really a food book. A book on the best food to eat, how to eat it, and how often.

Collateral benefits? I’ve had a few. My knee joints are not as painful as they once were. I have more energy. And my skin has much more clarity than it did two-and-a-half weeks ago.

Let me tell you what I had for lunch recently. No wait. I’ll show you first.

Gazpacho served with five-grain whole wheat bread and skim milk

Here’s how easy it was to prepare this lunch. First, go to the market and buy a small
boule (French for ball) loaf of five-grain whole wheat bread and a carton of skim milk. For the gazpacho, which is served cold or at room temperature, grab a couple of plum or Roma tomatoes, a cucumber, a small red onion, and—if you don’t already have some stored in your refrigerator—flaxseed meal. You probably have the rest of the ingredients in your pantry (red wine vinegar and Cayenne pepper). Then, do this:

Spicy Blender Gazpacho
—Makes One Serving

Coarsely chop two plum tomatoes, one-half of a cucumber (peeled), and one-eighth of a small red onion. Throw ’em in the blender. Add two tablespoons of flaxseed meal. Then, to your taste, add cayenne pepper and red-wine vinegar. Blend for about as long as it takes you to pour a half-glass of skim milk.

And that, my friends, is that. Delicious. And as I’ve found so often with these recipes, I couldn’t finish the entire serving. I’m going to have the one-quarter cup or so of gazpacho for lunch today with a tuna, egg, chickpea, and arugula salad (with buttermilk dressing, if you can believe it) that I made for lunch yesterday.

I’d hang around and tell you more about all of this, but it’s time for my mid-morning snack. What am I having, you ask? It’s a dreamy little concoction that reminds me of a prune Danish without the pastry. I stir two chopped organic prunes into one-quarter cup of low-fat ricotta cheese and add a pinch of cinnamon to taste.

(The book calls for dates but I don’t have any; I do, however, have a package of organic prunes in the fridge. It also asks for fat-free ricotta but I wasn’t able to find that.) Even using low-fat rather than fat-free ricotta, I’m on a roll. And it’s better to be on a roll than to have one around your middle. My roll, dear friends, is deflating as we speak.

Other than providing me with a copy of The Digest Diet, Readers’ Digest is not paying me to blog about my experience on the program. (If I lose the weight I hope to lose, that will be compensation enough.)

The Digest Diet: Day 13 and (Slowly) Getting Lean

22 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in The Healthy Life, Transitions

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Shrimp Soup from the Digest Diet—delicious and satisfying

Well, here it is, the 13th day of the Digest Diet, and I seem to have plateaued a bit. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve lost six-and-a-quarter pounds and for that I’m grateful. I’m still on the downward trajectory—and that’s better than the alternative—but I’m trying to determine why the weight loss has slowed.

Several factors come to mind. First, last week a couple of events sort of knocked me off schedule. I didn’t eat any prohibited food, but I actually missed an afternoon snack and a dinner meal one day, compensating by having my afternoon snack in the evening. The practice of skipping a meal—or even a snack at this point—is one to avoid if at all possible. When you don’t eat, your body is tricked into thinking it’s in starvation mode and therefore clings to the fat for dear life. A paradox, but then so is the fact that women in France who eat butter- and cream-laden foods remain thin because they drink wine with nearly every meal. My resolve for the coming week: stay on track.

The other possibility is the fact that on the fifth day of the diet I shifted into its second gear. The Digest Diet is divided into three phases:

  • Fast Release
  • Fade Away
  • Finish Strong

During the first four days, the weight really came off—I lost three-and-a-quarter pounds by the end of this phase. I also enjoyed two delicious shakes each day and only one snack. I’m presently in the Fade Away phase, with only one shake per day and two snacks. The “Fade Away” phase is rather like a Mediterranean-style diet, with lots of green vegetables and protein, and it allows me a four-ounce glass of red wine at dinner (if I skip the wine I can have a handful of red grapes for dessert). I’m sure that diet results are as varied as people are, but I also wonder about something else.

I’ve heard that muscle weighs more than fat. I’ve been walking fairly regularly, and this past week I did get up to two miles. My legs look and feel more toned, but is it possible that my weight loss isn’t quite as dramatic right now because I’m replacing fat with muscle?

In an earlier post I stated my weight loss goal: to lose 15 pounds. I’m almost halfway there with eight days remaining in the program. I’m confident that I’ll make it, because even though I’m in something of a holding pattern, the meals on this diet are delicious enough, interesting enough, and filling enough, that I have no desire or intention to bail out.

It’s time now to prepare my lunch—a “Fade Away” shake. Tomorrow will be the last day of shakes on the diet, and I have to say I’m going to miss them. I don’t miss pizza, but I know I’ll miss these shakes.

Not missing pizza? That strikes me as another positive, and therefore another plus for the Digest Diet.

Other than providing me with a copy of The Digest Diet, Readers’ Digest is not paying me to blog about my experience on the program. (If I lose the weight I hope to lose, that will be compensation enough.)

The Digest Diet: It’s Day Eight and I’ve Lost Weight

17 Monday Sep 2012

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Bell peppers cut into short strips are sautéed with fennel and garlic in this delicious dish.

I won’t leave you hanging. So far I’ve lost five-and-a-half pounds on the Digest Diet.  This is amazing to me, not because I’ve never lost that much weight so early in a diet before, but because, with a few rare exceptions, I haven’t felt hungry or starved. I’m eating well—good, wholesome, healthy food—and it’s mostly been delicious. I wasn’t wild about a snack of green pepper boats stuffed with low-fat Ricotta cheese and sprinkled with pepper, but then I’ve never been a fan of raw green pepper. I love Ricotta. I’m half-Sicilian, for goodness’ sake. All of the meals I’ve prepared, using recipes from the Digest Diet book, have been superb. Take a look at this photograph, for example. Yes, those happen to be green peppers. They’re accompanied, however, by red and yellow bell peppers and sautéed in extra-virgin olive oil with fennel and garlic. Delicious.

And what a wonderful feeling to use salt again. I always cook with Kosher salt, using sea salt as a finish when a recipe warrants. The recipe for Peperonata with Fennel called for a generous pinch of fine sea salt. I buy coarse-ground, but since I have a mortar and pestle I simply ground the salt to the desired consistency and keep it nearby for later use.

I served this dish with a 4-ounce grilled boneless pork chop for Saturday’s dinner. And guess what? I enjoyed it with a 4-ounce glass of red wine—a robust Zinfandel. If this is what losing weight tastes like, well, I do believe I can keep this up for the full 21 days!

The recipes in this book are delicious and fun to prepare.

Everyone will tell you that it’s not enough to eat mindfully; it’s important to exercise, too. Monday through Friday last week, I walked one mile each day. I took the weekend off, and probably shouldn’t have. But this focused commitment to walking regularly is not in character for me. When I was walking regularly, it was only three times a week. (I wrote a post about the health benefits of walking last year. I’m disappointed in myself for not keeping the momentum going, but I’m trying. I really am.)

So this morning, after drinking a mug of hot lemon water (that’s not in the Digest Diet, but actually a regimen a good friend recommended years ago, when I was recovering from surgery for a broken leg), I walked a mile in my favorite park.

Here’s a picture, taken last year, of my favorite place to walk. (It’s too early in the season to make way for goslings.)

I like to listen to French music when I walk. I wonder: if I continue to lose weight thanks to the Digest Diet and regular, brisk walks accompanied by the French chansons of Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet, do I have to count my weight loss in kilos?

Other than providing me with a copy of The Digest Diet, Readers’ Digest is not paying me to blog about my experience on the program. (If I lose the weight I hope to lose, that will be compensation enough.)

 

The Digest Diet: Day 3 and 2 Pounds Free

12 Wednesday Sep 2012

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I made this delicious Kale and Chick Pea Soup for dinner on Day 1. John liked it, too!

As I write this I’m into the third day of the Digest Diet. It’s nearly noon, I’m not even hungry yet, and I’ve lost two pounds.

I’ve been dreading writing about the poundage issue. I’m the one who removes every bit of jewelry, eyeglasses, and shoes before getting on the scale in the doctor’s office. Yes, I shave a few of them off my driver’s license renewal application. I’ve never uttered the numbers aloud to anyone, really. But if I’m going to do this, and have any hope of inspiring you to a healthier lifestyle, I need to ‘fess up. The morning I started the diet, I weighed (closes eyes, takes a deep breath) 210 pounds.

This picture, taken this morning, is my “before” picture. Note that I had already lost two pounds since Monday.

In my defense, somewhere along the way I lost half-an-inch. I have no idea where it went. But this morning when I weighed myself, I had lost two pounds, so maybe the pounds and the half-inch are in that nether place where lost things go—socks in the dryer, pens and keys—hanging out and having a good laugh about what it was like to have once been part of me. I like to think I gave them a good time.

For as long as I can remember, I was five-feet-seven-and-a-half inches in my stocking feet. Until I wasn’t. I also weighed 125 pounds on the day of my first wedding. I have fond memories of that 21-year-old body. And it saddens me to admit that even then, I thought I was heavy. (My second husband, bless his heart, told me early in our relationship that he “loves every inch and every ounce” of me. I ask you: Am I not the luckiest gal in the world?)

Let me be clear: I’ve never had an eating disorder of any sort, unless having a gusto for gastronomy to go with my zest for life can be called a disorder. (It can’t. And it shouldn’t.) But I was always aware that I tended toward the upper regions of the scale. My first conscious memory of this was shopping for school clothes and being directed to the rack on which the 6-Xs hung. Still, I was never really what you would call obsessed with my weight. I liked my body well enough—and I appreciate it even more now, even when certain parts tend to make their presence known in the way of aching joints and lower back pain. And even when the inventory of my “parts list” has been diminished by numerous operations. No, my attempts at dieting were typically triggered by a special event or a special outfit. And they were always, until reaching life’s midpoint, successful. The best diet up until this one was something published in Glamour Magazine in 1974—”The Do and Don’t Diet.” I would love to find a copy of this somewhere.

But here I am, trying this Digest Diet, and I have to say how impressed I am. The shakes are so filling that a couple of times I haven’t been able to finish them. They’re delicious, and so is the soup I made the other night. (Tonight I’m going to make a shrimp soup.) I’ve walked one mile each day for the last three days. With the exception of yesterday, when I slept in because I was plainly exhausted, I’ve felt energized. I recognize that what I’m doing is retraining myself how to eat. The book, written by Liz Vaccariello, explains the theoretical underpinnings of the recipes and food plans. Certain foods are fat releasers, others are fat retainers. The fact that all of this has already been figured out and tested, using current science, makes it pretty easy to follow. I measure ingredients, but I don’t have to weigh anything, count any calories, or keep track of points or carbohydrate grams. The premise that I love the best about this diet is that I’m eating whole, natural foods. I’ve been tempted by try those quick-fast meals and prepared shakes, but I’ve always feared the slippery slope of their preservatives and artificial ingredients.

So what are my goals for this? My first goal is simple: to remain on it for the full 21 days without backsliding. My second goal is to lose 15 pounds. That will get me below 200, something I haven’t been for a very long time. Bound up with these goals are others, like feeling more energetic, reducing pain in my joints, and finding the motivation to exercise everyday. The fact that I can likely achieve these goals while improving my health is a tremendous bonus.

I’ll have more to say about body image in a future post. But for now, I’d like to share with you an article that really touched a nerve with me. Tell me, has anyone ever made you feel bad about the way you looked?

Related article:
“Being Hip,” by Amy Sue Nathan in HuffPost Divorce

 

Other than providing me with a copy of The Digest Diet, Readers’ Digest is not paying me to blog about my experience on the program. (If I lose the weight I hope to lose, that will be compensation enough.)

The Man Who Wasn’t There: A 9/11 Post Revisited

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

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I took this photo last November at the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Sept. 11, 2012—A note to the reader: I published this post last year in honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I would like to share it with you again, today, as we acknowledge another sadly inevitable milestone, and leave you with these words from the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay:

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

—From “Dirge Without Music”

Please click here to read the post.

May the victims & heroes who lost their lives find eternal rest; may their loved ones find solace.

Buh-bye, Cookie. I’ll be Blogging it Off With the Digest Diet

06 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by in The Healthy Life, The Writing Life, Transitions

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Do you see this? This is a cookie. A rich, chocolate-coconut-walnut-laden cookie from one of my favorite lunch restaurants in Richmond, Café Caturra. Take a good, hard look at it. I’m certainly going to. Because if good intentions have anything to say about it, this cookie and I won’t be seeing each other for a long, long time.

Sigh. It is a delicious cookie. I enjoyed every decadent crumb yesterday for my mid-afternoon snack. With coffee, of course. And then I promptly decided to join Team Digest Diet. Starting Monday, September 10, I will officially begin the Reader’s Digest’s “Blog it Off!” campaign. For 21 days, I will study this book, follow its guidelines, try its recipes, and—if there is a God—watch the pounds melt away. I’ll also blog about the process.

I’m telling you this because I’m going to need all the moral support I can muster. Eating delicious food is one of my favorite pastimes. Dieting? Not so much. But as I’ve gotten older—and especially since I had to bid farewell to my thyroid gland after it went and turned on me by developing cancer—the pounds have crept on. I know how important it is to my health to lose weight and exercise more. I’ve been bad about this, especially as I’ve gotten busier and more sedentary. (Computer, I love you but we’ve got to stop meeting like this. Is there an app that will boot me out of the house for a nice, long, invigorating walk? I didn’t think so.)

And so this diet challenge. I discovered The Digest Diet at the BlogHer conference I attended in New York City last month. Reader’s Digest, one of the conference sponsors, had a suite at the Hilton where I happened to saunter in one day because I heard they had cupcakes. (They were delicious. But they were from a different book—Reader’s Digest’s new Taste of Home Best Loved Recipes. Oh yes. I’ll be trying some recipes from that book, but after the diet challenge, as a reward for good behavior.)

In the interest of full disclosure, the kind folks at the Reader’s Digest suite gave me a copy of the diet book to try. (They probably saw me eating the cupcake.) And at my request they also sent me a copy of Best Loved Recipes, from whence the cupcake recipe came. But that’s it. There was no expectation on their part that I’d do anything with either book. This is something I want to do because, as I’ve already established, I need to lose some weight. And, as you already know, this blog is chock-a-block full of recipes, and I’m always on the lookout for more to share with you. Reader’s Digest is not paying me, either.

Now that I’ve dispensed with that business, I will tell you that because I signed up for the challenge, I will be checking in with you a couple of times a week to let you know how my experiment with the book is going. (I’ll share some of my favorite recipes from the Digest Diet, too.) And I’ll be tweeting and facebooking about it. You know, I’ve tried Weight Watchers before and enjoyed great results, largely, I suspect, because of the communal nature of the enterprise. But since I’m working from home (alone) and on the computer all day anyway (walking for exercise the exception), I view social media as just another way to supplement my efforts to lose weight. It’s kind of like keeping a food journal, but in a very public way.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a huge step for me—not just the jumping-on-the-diet wagon part but the being-so-public-about-it part. I’m a little fearful of things like letting the world know how much I weigh. Nevertheless, one of my editorial missions for this blog is to present you with good information and resources. If this diet works for me, you’ll observe it happening. If it doesn’t—for whatever reason—you’ll see that, too. You’ll learn while I learn. (And if I lose my resolve or willpower, I hope you’ll cheer me on.)

So there you have it. Starting Monday. That gives me the rest of today, Friday, and the weekend to gear myself up for the Digest Diet challenge and strengthen my resolve to leave the sweet treats and rich foods behind me for a while. After all, turnabout is fair play; they’ve certainly remained on my behind for a while.

Other than providing me with a copy of The Digest Diet, Readers’ Digest is not paying me to blog about my experience on the program. (If I lose the weight I hope to lose, that will be compensation enough.)

Winning ‘Voices of the Year’ Post to be Published

08 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Midpoints, Relationships and Family Life, The Healthy Life, The Writing Life, Transitions, What's the Buzz?

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Mother with Alzheimer's

My mother, Angela Alyce Monia Abookire

Early readers of The Midlife Second Wife will remember this post about my mother, but since writing it last November, a few things have happened in its brief existence that justify a return engagement. The post, originally titled “A Tale of Two Deaths: Losing my Mother to Alzheimer’s,” received a “Voice of the Year” award at BlogHer’s recent conference in New York City. Out of some 1,700 entries, BlogHer selected only 110. This is quite an honor for me and I’m humbled by the recognition, since there’s such a huge talent stream flowing through BlogHer’s Women’s Publishing Network. I’m also proud to announce that the post will appear in an e-book anthology being published by BlogHer and Open Road Integrated Media. You might be familiar with Eileen Goudge’s novel The Replacement Wife. Open Road is her publisher. I’d say we VOTY winners are in extremely good company.

BlogHer Voice of the Year AwardI don’t believe that a publication date for the e-book has been decided yet, but as soon as the publishers make that determination I’ll announce the news here and let you know how you can purchase a copy.

Now that my mother’s story is going to have a life beyond the blog, I’ve retitled it. I am also preparing myself mentally and physically for the daunting task of completing her story—possibly for a future book. This post was originally intended to be the first installment in a series—and you’ll be able to read future installments just as soon as I can get them written—but now I’m rethinking the whole writing project. It’s quite possible I’ll end up with a book. We’ll see.

Here then, is my proposed first chapter of Have You Met My Daughter? My Mother, Her Alzheimer’s, and Me.

Have You Met My Daughter? My Mother’ Her Alzheimer’s, and Me

A person with dementia (or Alzheimer’s Disease) suffers two deaths.  The first death occurs when you discover the illness taking hold, erasing the vivacious mind and the vital spirit of the person you once knew. The second death is when the physical body expires. For these reasons, a bereaved person who loses a loved one—first to dementia, later to death—grieves twice. And although much has been written about mid-lifer’s—the so-called “Sandwich generation”—caught between caring for ill or elderly parents while still raising children, perhaps there is room in the literature for one more account. In November 2011, to mark National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month and National Family Caregivers’ Month—and in honor of my mother, whose name was Angela—I began to write a series of essays about how I loved her and how I lost her. Not once, but twice.

“Have you met my daughter?”

This was the question my Mom, who had impeccable manners, regularly posed to co-workers or acquaintances when introducing me to them for the first time.

“Have you met my daughter?”

This was the question my Mom regularly posed to the women seated withher at a table in the secured-wing of the assisted-living facility where I regularly visited her. Without fail, each time I entered the room, she would ask these same women:

“Have you met my daughter?”

There was, of course, tremendous solace in the fact that despite her illness, Mom did recognize me as her daughter. Nevertheless, it was heartbreaking to see how her memory, her very sense of self, had deteriorated. The signs had been there for a while; it just took time for me to connect the dots.

Mom had always been what used to be called “high-strung.” She suffered from panic attacks, and was fearful of many things, including learning how to drive after my father died.

She had also always been something of a pack rat. Today there is a name for this: compulsive hoarding. But at the time when I was grappling with this issue in terms of my own mother, I did not know it was an illness for which there might be a treatment; I simply put it down to another of her eccentricities. I would clear out as much of the clutter as she would permit (there remained piles that I was forbidden to touch), and a week or so later, my efforts were obliterated. It was not at all unlike Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain.

After several years of this, the hoarding had gotten so out of control that I began to fear for her safety. I was finally able to convince her that she needed help, and she allowed me to hire a cleaning woman to do her laundry, dust, vacuum the floor, and keep the bathroom and kitchen clean.

It was ultimately the cleaning woman—or, more to the point, the existence of the cleaning woman—which brought home to me the awful realization that something was far more seriously wrong with Mom than eccentric hoarding.

She and the cleaning woman didn’t hit it off, largely because Mom did not like anyone else touching her things. The woman, goodhearted and a good worker, called me to complain about what she could see was a losing battle. I was struggling over how to handle the situation when it resolved itself. Mom called me late one night in a real panic; I needed to come over at once. There was a terrible problem.

When I arrived, she pointed to a hole in the dining-room window screen—no larger than two inches in diameter.

“That woman you hired is stealing from me,” Mom said in a tremulous voice tinged with outrage. “Do you see that? That’s how she’s getting in. She’s sneaking in, crawling in through that hole.”

To be continued …

NOTE: The Alzheimer’s Association is not responsible for information or advice provided by others, including information on websites that link to Association sites and on third-party sites to which the Association links. Please direct any questions to weblink@alz.org.