Still Time for Joy
Still Time for Joy features practical advice for weathering life's storms, and inspiring stories of resilience.
Host Sandra Levine interviews experts on caregiving, trauma, grief, and other intense challenges to provide a road map for survival. Heroes and healers, adventurers and innovators encourage you to pursue more self-care, reflection, connection, and fun—and your own unique and joyful purpose.
Sandra is a television producer, filmmaker, and speaker who spent 20 years as a caregiver, first for her husband Michael, who had a brain injury, and then for her mother Dorothy, who had Alzheimer's Disease. She created this show to share lessons learned from those experiences to help you get through difficult times, too.
Still Time for Joy is also available as a video podcast on YouTube @SandraLevineProd
Still Time for Joy
Can Painting Help Calm Your Loved One Living with Dementia? A Beautiful Love Story from South Africa
Tina Coetzee was looking for a way to keep her 77-year-old father, Chris Taylor, who lives with Alzheimer's disease, happily occupied. She handed him a paint brush and changed his life. Taylor, who had been struggling with severe emotional outbursts in recent months, now paints every day, and, with the help of new medications, is feeling much better.
Taylor's vibrant paintings are attracting a lot of attention, with some fans even expressing interest in purchasing them. Selling the artwork was never the point; the idea is to help Taylor find peace and purpose. Coetzee creates outlines on canvases with permanent marker as the basis for her father's paintings. She encourages other caregivers to give artwork a try, as a calming activity for people living with dementia.
Coetzee took early retirement to become a full-time caregiver for her parents, living in the Free State province in South Africa. In this interview, she talks openly about the intense challenges of caregiving.
Still, she considers helping her parents to be a privilege; they immediately came to her aid a few years ago when her fiancee was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and helped her until he passed away eight moths later.
Sandra Levine Productions https://sandralevine.com/
Watch "Still Time for Joy" as a video podcast on YouTube @SandraLevineProd
