Dementia and Music Anthology
Articles By The Dementia Kinship (Carer Mentor's Community Network)
Hello, Dear Reader! Welcome to our new Carer Mentor community members!
I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why?
My Father had a litany of health issues that were destabilised by a major hospitalisation in 2015: congestive heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis were compounded with a diagnosis of vascular dementia and then bladder cancer.
It was heartbreaking to see the proud, gregarious, highly intelligent man who knew numerous languages lose his ability to reason from A to B to C, lose his sense of time and space, and shrink inward. We were able to care for him at home until he passed in 2020. It was a rollercoaster with accelerated declines, yet we still had small, precious moments together—bittersweet joy.
The Dementia and Music Collaboration By the Dementia Kinship
This is the SECOND Dementia Anthology to leverage our community’s diverse experience to support each other and new readers with empathy and Inspiration.
The Dementia Kinship is part of the Carer Mentor community.
This is a new initiative with our Carer Mentor community members. It gives us the collaboration space to leverage our individual experiences/knowledge to develop meaningful insights— share our observations, and build reflections/learnings together.
This is how we can support each other and build more examples of lived experiences to help others on their Dementia journey: Build2Care.
This Anthology will grow alongside the Dementia Kinship.
Thank you for spending some of your precious energy and time here and being part of this community network.
Please Remember to ‘❤️’ LIKE the article to guide others to these resources
Members of the Dementia Kinship. The Directory:
Judi Bailey at Falling Leaves
Kirbie Earley at
Anna Du Pen at Betwixt and Between Proxy
Sammie Marsalli at
Janice Walton at Ageing Well
(Other Kinship members will be added pending their response to my invitation.)
Anthology of Dementia Articles | Resources | Organisations.
The Premise: Why Dementia and Music for a collaboration topic?
In 2024, several writers and I demonstrated the power of music and its importance in our relationships. Naomi Feil's Dementia Care and her ‘Validation Theory’ to connect with Dementia Sufferers is inspiring:
These lived experiences make me more curious about the connection between music and Dementia care:
How can we …
be more mindful about using music to motivate ourselves each day,
preempt the future fears we have for ourselves,
or enrich our loved one’s dementia care today?
I’ve invited friends to help me ‘noodle’ more about this via the Dementia Kinship.
Articles by the Dementia Kinship
Placeholder. April 2 2025. This article is published on the website. It will be emailed to the Carer Mentor community after the Dementia Kinship has published articles.
Thank you for spending some of your precious energy and time here and being part of this community network.
Please Remember to ‘❤️’ LIKE the article to guide others to these resources
Your support is greatly appreciated and helps validate my time and effort.
Thank you!
Dear Carer Mentor Friends, I'm evolving the publication's mission to build a sustainable community support network together. Over the next few months, you'll see articles about Build2Care and Carer Mentor Kinship. We're leveraging the diversity, knowledge and skills of our community members (those with and without publications on the Substack platform) to Build insights about Care, 2gether.
Stay tuned for articles about Dementia and Music, more about Build2Care and the Carer Mentor Kinship.