Strong Women, Alzheimer's & Mother's Day

As Mother’s Day weekend approaches, I find myself reflecting on my family history and the women in my life.?I come from a strong line of women.?Both of my grandmothers were teachers; my mother a nurse, and my daughter, also an educator.

My maternal grandmother was an amazing woman. Sailing from England to Canada to homestead with her new husband, how could she anticipate what the future held???Dreaming of new frontiers, she instead found herself the mother of 8 children (my mother the only girl in the family) far from home.?Coming from the life of privilege she knew as a young woman and amidst the reality that WW2 was raging on the European continent, she also found herself the victim of domestic violence, something that impacts one in 3 women in the world today.?

Mary Ellen Thorn, a strong and amazing woman, my maternal grandmother.?She returned to school to earn her teaching credentials, found the courage to leave her abusive husband and raised 8 accomplished children: never remarrying, always wearing a skirt, and never chewing gum.???

My mother lived a good life because of her mother’s courage.?She married my father, a physician, earned her nursing degree and considered being a mother her greatest joy.?And while these women shared the attributes of courage, hope, and a can-do attitude they also share the genetics for Alzheimer’s.

This disease took my grandma’s life and has begun to take deep root in my own mother.?Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease that we still know so very little about.?It is a disease that robs people of everything they know, leaving them lost, confused and often combative. It is also devastating for families that lose the person they love, one day at a time.

On this Mother’s Day weekend, I not only salute the women in my life; those who’ve shaped and influenced the woman I’ve become but I commit to doing more to learn about Alzheimer’s and why women are twice as likely as men to be inflicted by this disease.?In a world of robotics, AI, cloud computing and 5G, we must find a cure for Alzheimer’s.

To all the women in the world, I salute you on Mother’s Day and every day.?But, more than that, I commit to the fight of making sure women’s health is researched and understood. We are women, strong, confident, and amazing and we deserve to be healthy, physically and mentally.??Happy Mother’s Day to each of you but most of all to my amazing mother.