“It’s very easy to get hooked. Once you're hooked, you’re kind of emotionally dependent on this person. You've enjoyed the conversation so much that even when you start getting a little bit of red flags, you don't feel like shutting it down because you've now had this person in your life that you've been chatting with. So, you don’t stop talking to them.”

“You really, literally have to grieve for a while. It's not just you're mad, some idiot tried to screw you over. You feel like that void. Where's my chatting buddy? Where's my person? Because that person becomes really important to you emotionally for everything you've been venting about your life and all of a sudden, poof, it's just gone. It's a really hard thing to deal with.”

“If you get on a dating site, meet the person. Go have a cup of coffee with them in the first week to say, hey, let’s just see if we even have a connection or not. Let's not waste both of our time. Why not cut to the chase? That's the first really piece of advice, I would say to check their picture and try to meet with them as soon as possible.”

“I think that we've seen amazing response from individuals on our social media platforms when we talk about the brighter side of aging, what it could be and what it has been until recently. Honestly, until recent history, people lived with their families for their whole life, and they took care of their elderly, and the elderly were wise decision makers… In America, we're fragmented, and we've lost that.”

“The United States spends more money than any other country on healthcare, and they're one of the worst, if not the worst of developed countries and outcomes. When you hear that a couple times, you kind of get immune to it, but then you kind have to sit back and think about that. And that's what the first year of residency really made me do. I asked myself, why is that the case? And the staffing issue of healthcare workers is why I believe we have the poorest outcomes.”

“If I had to leave you with one thing, I think that one of the biggest issues and the ways that we can help caregivers is to respect and invest in more healthcare workers and continue to support one another in the meantime until the healthcare workforce can catch up to the need. And the ways that we can support one another is to share resources, caregiver to caregiver. That's the most important. Your churches, your volunteer groups, your families, your friends. We have to keep doing that until the workforce can catch up. So, thank you, all of you caregivers for taking care of our patients when we can't, and we're going to try and catch up as fast as we can.”

“By the time you get to be our age, it shouldn't be all that easy to figure out what your personality type is because you've grown and matured, hopefully now those who know you really well, who know you when you're at your best and know you when you're at your worst, not just the kind of pretty picture you give the world, they will know, but ideally grown and matured. And that's a really important element of our being at this point in life and living your best life is really living in your strengths.”

“Well, one of the biggest things I think is for women especially is in younger years, the friendships came from children. You took your kid to softball or ballet or whatever it is you did. And the other mothers who were there were an obvious connection point for you in the office, you had the people you worked with, and maybe you went out to happy hour with them or whatever you did, but you connected. You had a logical connection. But then when that job is gone, the kids are gone. It's like, okay, what do I do now? How do I make friends?”

“We have quite a few pieces that generally address the grief topic, but more from a senior woman perspective as it is really different because as I said, we've been caregivers, we've taken care of people, our parents, by the time we get to this point.”

“Whether it's doing some stretches, walk around the block, make everyone a drink, whatever it is. Just keep doing that at every interval. The ideal would be sort of moving all day, but the ideal is it's achievable for you.”

“There's no point in me being like, right, you need to go to the gym three hours a day, stretches, then go for a run. No one's going to be able to do that, right? If you've got 9-to-5 jobs, maybe you've got an hour commute, then you've got to have dinner. Maybe you've got kids to look after, maybe you've got an older person you've got to look after, whatever. Life gets busy and not everyone can fit that in. And that's why I always go on about it; it's so important just to move throughout the day.”

“I just love people getting involved, seeing progression, seeing people get happier in life. It does genuinely improve wellbeing, just moving and enjoying movement and enjoying how your body likes to be. That's the best thing about it. It's what your body wants to do. You're not trying hard to force anything, you're giving yourself what you naturally want.”

“This is what I'm thinking when I have this no Achilles and I cannot walk… I'm thinking about these things that have been the highlights of my life, going to Iwa Zoo, going hiking on that icy vertical path in Montana, and thinking, I can't even walk. I'm not even going to be able to do that anymore. And no, I was not going to settle for that.”

“I have a real can-do attitude. If somebody tells me I can't do something, I will figure out a way to do it. Just watch me… I talk to the guy I am working with, and I said, okay, what else can we add to this? He said, ‘Well, you can add medical acupuncture, not just your neighborhood acupuncturist, but a real MD acupuncturist.’ So, we added that, and we added several other modalities. I mean, it became my full-time job, recovery.”

“The real takeaway is that if you get a grim diagnosis, or even like that physical therapist who said to me, ‘You just have to understand you're going to be compromised for the rest of your life.’ Don't take it. Apply all the energy you have to healing and getting through that grim diagnosis because you can probably do it. Use me as an example. I did it.”

“An Alzheimer's diagnosis does not mean the end of your life the next day. There are a lot of ways to provide high quality life to people who suffer from it, but it's up to us as the loved ones and the caregivers to know how to provide a high-quality life. They can have a very meaningful and fulfilling life living with this disease for years and years and years to come.”

“These are brain diseases that we're talking about, and there's no cure. So, we want to create the best life in the best world possible. And, in order to do that, we need to learn how to recognize the behaviors, the signs, and, very importantly, know to how to effectively respond to them. That's key to it.”

“I would advise that if you do suspect your loved one or the person that you've been asked to care for are showing signs of the disease, but maybe they're subtle, learn all you can about it because then you'll be prepared. And being prepared will make your life so much easier than figuring it out when you're in the middle of a crisis.”