Back in 2011 when I first started writing for this blog, I wrote a short piece about making sense of dementia. I’d just spent time with Christine Bryden, and a group of care providers, who all appeared commiitted to making change. Over time, I have edited and updated it to reflect the many changes that have happened in both my thinking, and the direction I am taking in terms of my campaigning for human rights for all people, and dementia to be managed as a disability.

Going back on my own writings is no different than doing research, as research is always disproving old theories, or creating new ones. I believe our thinking should be no different, and that we must always be open to changing our mind on any given topic or issue. What I discover repeatedly, is many have fixed mindsets, and are unwilling to change their position on topics.

On re-reading it today, I realise have changed my opinion quite dramatically on many of the things I wrote back then. But how to move forward, when so many strtegies have been tried, and tried again, and tried again, and by many more advocates than when I first started to speak up. As I wrote in my blog called Insanity, it reallly is time to change tack.

Change your thinking… it could change the world.

It is important for me to spend the great times now, and I strive every moment of every day to develop a more welcoming approach to illness, disability, dementia and death, and to see them as the gifts that they have become.