The conversations first published on this website have been put together into a book which I have self-published on Amazon KDP, as a paperback, and as an e-book. They will soon be available on other platforms.
Many people involved in this process have wanted these conversations to be made available to as many readers as possible because they are a good model on how to hold good conversations with people living with brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s and similar disease.
The managers at Redbond Lodge, where most of the conversations took place, believe they would make a good training tool for all involved in social care.
These conversations make people feel good about themselves. Their words are meaningful because they are very personal, devoid of self-conscious linguistic devices that hide feelings and emotions. They are honest. They are mirrors of the soul.
I learnt the art of conversation in the street where I was born, in Gioia del Colle, in Puglia, Southern Italy. Here, in the fifties and sixties, social life and intellectual curiosity were stimulated by conversations among neighbours sitting, in the evening, outside one another’s house.
I learned to listen at the feet of the elderly on our street. I learned to wait in silence for answers to my curious questions. I could almost hear their brains whirring through their life experiences to formulate the words appropriate to the ears of a young teenager.
Later in England, I honed these listening and questioning skills when teaching modern languages and training teachers to teach modern languages. I perfected them when as a school inspector I wanted to do justice to the hard work going on in the schools I visited.
Now I make conversations with people who live with brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s or similar conditions.
Through these conversations, I see clearly the person who has lived these stories. Demonstrating to the world how to do this is my dream.
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