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Description: Lauren Flake is an author and blogger from Austin, TX, and a member of our Turquoise Table community. Lauren has been using her table in powerful, special ways since she lost her mother Dixie to early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Today Lauren shares her story and walks us through what community looked like for her during and after her mother’s illness. She gives us first-hand advice on how not to fix the problem, but how to show up to simply be present with those who are grieving.
Show Summary:
Lauren Flake is a member of our Turquoise Table community, and she uses her Turquoise Table in a special way that I am eager to share with you. Lauren is an author and blogger, and she is co-founder of the community called Daughters With Dementia. Lauren lives near Austin, Texas, with her husband Travis and their two young daughters Samantha and Charlotte.
Lauren knows loss, and she shares her tender and painful story of losing her mother, Dixie, to early Alzheimer’s Disease. I’m touched by Lauren’s willingness to share her story and walk us through what community looked like for her during that time and during the grieving process. Lauren gives us first-hand advice on how not to fix it—since there’s no fix for Alzheimer’s or, really, for grief in general—but how to simply be present for a friend or a neighbor. How to just show up, and what that looks like.
Lauren also shares about a recent gathering that she hosted at her Turquoise Table around Mother’s Day called “Motherless Daughters.” It was for women who, she says, are in the club no one wants to be in: they’ve all lost their mothers. It’s a beautiful example of how we can use the Turquoise Table for all kinds of reasons and seasons.
This is an important conversation: when we do life with one another and truly live in community, hard times are inevitable. They will come. And our response is important. We don’t always know exactly what to say or what to do, and my conversation with Lauren just scratches the surface on ways that we can show up and be present in our neighbors’ lives.
I hope you’ll settle in, listen with an open heart, and learn how we can offer hospitality during the more difficult seasons of life.
Kitchen Segment: Calico Three Bean Salad
Links/Products/Recipes Discussed:
- Daughters of Dementia Website
- Daughters of Dementia Facebook
- Daughters of Dementia Instagram
- Where Did My Sweet Grandma Go?
- Calico Three Bean Salad
Interview Quotes:
“I think social media . . . makes it easier to connect with other people in [the caregiving] space.” – Lauren Flake“I found God through my writing. Because in writing, I feel like that’s when I am really communing with the Holy Spirit. And the product of my writing is that I’m able to connect with others and their own pain.”
– Lauren Flake“There’s a lot of fear in what we don’t know. And that was part of the beauty of my friendship . . . she was able to sort of walk me through, ‘Well, this is what happened to my mom towards the end,’ so that it wouldn’t be a complete shock to me, and I could start to emotionally prepare for that.”
– Lauren Flake“As far as trying to help somebody, it’s stuff like offer to pay to have their house cleaned or bring them dinner when things are really stressful.”
– Lauren Flake“That ‘fix-it’ mentality, I think, can get us into more trouble than perhaps just showing up and listening, or even just saying, “I don’t know what you’re going through, but I’m here to listen and learn and be by your side,” without offering the advice, perhaps.”
– Lauren Flake“The funny part is all these other motherless daughters sort of came out of the woodwork. When I posted about it, they were like, ‘Well, I want to come. When are you doing it again?’ And so we’re like, ‘Okay, well, we have to do this again.’”
– Lauren Flake“I love that so much, because I get asked a lot, “What do we do in the hard times?” And this wasn’t during the crisis of it, obviously, but, I love that. The celebrating the legacy. That is a beautiful portrait of what community is. And that it’s not all prosecco pops and picnics.”
– Kristin Schell
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