kitty norton

Kitty Norton, creator and producer of ''Wine, Women, and Dementia,'' joins Suzanne to talk more about her caregivers documentary. She describes where you can watch the movie, shares feedback she's gotten from various screenings, and updates us on the status of the film.

Kitty says, "We're finishing up the last of our film festivals this weekend. But because this is National Family Caregiver Month and this is our public roll out, we've got a lot of in-person screenings coming up. There's three in New Jersey later in the month. We have a one in Dallas at the very end of the month. We have one in Seattle at the very end of the month. Everybody should go to www.winewomenanddementia.com, see if it's playing in your area.

"This is not yet on the website, but it will be soon. I'm gonna have to pull the film back in December and really figure out 2024, but I wanted to make one big #thankful4caregivers weekend. So the film will be free Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the weekend after Thanksgiving. And you can just log on to the link when I get it made, when I get it on the website, and view the film."

Regarding comments she's gotten, Kitty says, "One of the magical things for me about the film that I didn't expect is meeting the caregivers afterwards and being a part of their experience of seeing their journeys belong to the overall narrative of dementia, because we're not talked to very much. We're not asked very much what is happening. I didn't want people to thank me on this journey. What I wanted people to say was, how's your mom, and really mean it, and really want to hear. Like, 'oh, she's in memory care right now.' 'How's that going?' 'Ah, terrible.' You know, or, 'oh, she did this or this? What did you do?' And I was like, 'well, first I laughed hysterically, and then I cleaned the poop up.' Asking these questions and, and be interested, because there's a lot of interesting things that happen in dementia."

Learn more:
* Wine, Women, and Dementia: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/
* Kitty Norton: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/the-filmmakers

Hear more:
* Podcasts celebrating caregivers: https://answersforelders.com/category/saluting-caregivers/

Answers for Elders is part of the SeniorResource Network: https://www.seniorresource.com/
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks: https://alzheimersspeaks.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kitty Norton, creator and producer of ''Wine, Women, and Dementia,'' joins Suzanne to share three tips for caring for a loved one.

Kitty says, "Number one is community. And if people are disappearing on you in this dementia journey, on you and your dementia person, then go elsewhere, find them elsewhere. Get on the forums. Alzheimer's Association has a great forum, Alz Connect, our society in England has a great forum. A lot of support groups have gone permanently online now because of the pandemic. The daughterhood, they have support virtual support groups you can sign up for, see if you like the people in them, see if you see if it clicks with, just find people. Do not do this alone... My solution to not being able to join them for wine was to have a Zoom wine night. They might be together. We all might be on our laptops in our separate houses, and we just pour a glass of wine, and we'd still have our girls night out.

"Number two is creativity. This is a journey that you cannot sit in one solution for very long. So just be creative, don't say to yourself, 'I can't do this. My person won't go to day centers. That's never gonna be an option for us.' It may be an option later. They may be more progressed and it may be fine. In the meantime, figure out what you can do to get some of that time to yourself in a different way. You just have to be creative every day. Some of the most frustrating parts for me as a caregiver were real: We just solved that problem a month ago — a month ago we figured out a new way to get the meds in, and now that's not working. And I just wanna bash my head against a wall. Don't go there. Just open your mind up and think about how else to get it done. Everything, everything is an option in dementia.

"Number three is you're the expert. I think all of us start this journey thinking the people that we expect to have the answers, the medical community, are going to somehow be helpful. And while I think they're trying to catch up, they are not the expert. Do not put up with doctors who will not work with you, do not put up with doctors who are dismissive of you or your dementia person. Move on, go to someone else. When you have an issue, tell the doctors your solution is not going to work. Do you have another solution, or do I need to talk to someone else? And it takes a while to get there. We're pretty used to them being the authority. But eventually you're going to understand that you're the one who knows the most about your dementia person."

Learn more:
* Wine, Women, and Dementia: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/
* Kitty Norton: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/the-filmmakers

Hear more:
* Podcasts celebrating caregivers: https://answersforelders.com/category/saluting-caregivers/

Answers for Elders is part of the SeniorResource Network: https://www.seniorresource.com/
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks: https://alzheimersspeaks.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kitty Norton, creator and producer of ''Wine, Women, and Dementia,'' joins Suzanne to talk more about the origins of her caregivers documentary.

Kitty says, "I started a blog in 2018 and mom died in 2021. And during that time, we had kind of built this community around people who also were using humor to try and get through that, and acknowledging all the feels, not allowing the stigma and the guilt to be a part of the journey too much. You can't block it all together... Five people in particular in this journey became very, very important to me as virtual support. Everybody who followed the blog commented, all of that stuff, was important, but these five people, I had really connected with them.

"After mom died, I decided I wanted to go meet them and I just wanted to tell them in person how much they meant to me, and open a bottle of wine and just talk, because we had been so good at just emails and Zooms. So then I thought, well, if I'm gonna do that, maybe those conversations might be really helpful for other caregivers. Why not hire a film crew and see what we can do here. And we did a month-long trip around the country. But the very first person we did was Allison Schrier up in Seattle, because I'm based in Portland. I wanted to make sure, before we roamed around the country, that I had a film, and I came back, looked at the footage of Alison's formal interview without me. And then the wine chats that we did at night once I showed up, and I was like, for sure, this is a film. This is a film I wish I could have seen in 2016. I want to make this. So that's how the whole trip got started. I bought a beat up old RV, and I plastered mom's face all over it, and I grabbed my friend Bethy from L.A., and she's a screenwriter, so she doesn't have normal jobs like everybody else. And I was like, hey, you wanna go on a three-week trip with me around the country?"

Kitty shared what surprised her most about meeting most of them. "I was so nervous: What if we don't like each other in person? I've got an RV, I'm going to be parked in your driveway. I'm gonna be taking your electricity. What if we meet and at the end of the night you're like, "Ugh!" But that didn't happen, we all loved each other, and we just started talking... The crew would sometimes scold us like, "Don't, stop! You're talking about stuff we should have on camera, and we're not set up yet!" We just couldn't wait to start sharing in person the experiences that we had touched on virtually, it's so fantastic."

Learn more:
* Wine, Women, and Dementia: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/
* Kitty Norton: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/the-filmmakers

Hear more:
* Podcasts celebrating caregivers: https://answersforelders.com/category/saluting-caregivers/

Answers for Elders is part of the SeniorResource Network: https://www.seniorresource.com/
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks: https://alzheimersspeaks.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kitty Norton, creator and producer of the caregivers documentary feature ''Wine, Women, and Dementia,'' joins Suzanne.

Kitty shared, "I am the eldest daughter of Gloria and Gary Norton. I have a younger sister. My family always had a very wry, self-deprecating sense of humor. It's always been my saving grace in really difficult situations. When my mother was first diagnosed with vascular dementia, that was back in 2010. And my dad had decided that he would be her primary caregiver and he was very adamant about that. And my father was also kind of very insular. So even though mom had a big family, he was concerned about sisters butting in, and sisters were starting to feel like they weren't allowed access to my mom. And it was an adjustment for everybody. 

"I was working as an assistant editor in network TV. And in 2016, my father died rather suddenly from pancreatic cancer, and it was diagnosis to death with three weeks. And my sister who lives on the Oregon Coast, both of us knew that mom couldn't live on her own. I had just been hired for the first season of "This is Us," the NBC show, but I had to call and tell them I have to move back home. I have to move back to Oregon and live with my mom. So we did. And it was incredibly tough, like you've said before. It's, you know, this is the hardest thing you'll ever do.

"But I was also struck with the amount of life there is to live in dementia. And it's a really, really different life than what you're used to. But there's still life, and my mom still needed to live her life. She wasn't dying anytime soon, and we still needed to leave live ours. So that's a lot of where our humor ended up saving my sister and I. We could get together afterwards after a really tough day. I'd just feel like I did this wrong, I did this wrong, I did this wrong, and then we could laugh about it. She could tease me about it."

Kitty adds, "You had to use dementia against itself. We gave her one of those cards that you open and sings once for Mother's Day, and I noticed that at meal time, we'd have it sitting up, and she'd look at it, and she'd open it, and it'd start singing. She'd just giggle, giggle, giggle and then se put it down. Five minutes later I'd pick it up, I'd put it in front of her. I'd give her a couple of minutes. She'd pick it up. She'd open it up it, sing. She'd giggle, giggle, giggle. It was like all new all the time."

Learn more:
* Wine, Women, and Dementia: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/
* Kitty Norton: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/the-filmmakers

Hear more:
* Podcasts celebrating caregivers: https://answersforelders.com/category/saluting-caregivers/

Answers for Elders is part of the SeniorResource Network: https://www.seniorresource.com/
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks: https://alzheimersspeaks.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.