Tips For Caretakers With brain injury or a brain injured person in the family it may seem pointless, exhausting and nerve-racking to continue events and holidays like before. Yet you need a sense of normalcy for YOU, family and the brain injured person. Whether you choose to or need to create an atmosphere of reflection, solitude, or rip roaring good fun we at New Beginnings hope to add something to your holiday…and another holiday occurs every month of every year. By taking the basic fundamentals of each monthly holiday you may find that to simplify means to clarify …means to dignify each holiday…in other words less is better and more is just more. So the more stuff you have on a holiday, chances are the more overwhelmed a brain injured person could be and the more stressed you could be, in some cases.

So whether the holiday is Labor Day , Thanksgiving, or Christmas, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, by incorporating just one or two ideas you could dramatically improve and enhance your holiday. Take a new approach to family and friends and the way you celebrate with them. Here’s more good news: keep the choices to a minimum, and talk about minimizing the holidays before the day gets there so friends and family are expecting a change. Change is difficult for anyone especially for someone who is brain injured. (For those of us who are differently-abled routine is not only our friend it is in some cases our means of surviving).

One of the 1st things you can do to simplify your holiday is to rediscover the things you truly love (loved) about the holiday. With your ideas and with input from the brain injured person, friends, and family…magic is a step away. Ideas can come from the most unusual places or from the places we tend to overlook. Libraries, nurses, recreation leaders at nursing homes, senior citizen centers, or how about neighbors. The over 70 year olds are great for giving ideas about how to break down a holiday to it’s simplest forms. The fresh scent of something special for a holiday could also be the worse scent for someone with brain injury so it’s always good to know your guests or participants. Cooking a special food could be a big hit or the disaster of the century. A new pet could be a blessing straight from heaven or it could be a curse if the brain injured person suddenly has allergies or other health problems that didn’t exist prior to the brain injury. Going to a special place wasn’t a problem is the past but now because of physical or visual changes of the brain injured, a scenic view with nature sounds could be a nightmare for the brain injured person and for you, the caregiver. The key to success is to start out slowly with each holiday to get an idea of a persons needs and desires.

INTRODUCE ONE IDEA AT A TIME, please!!! And just like the brain injured person must learn to take baby steps, you as a caregiver must do the same--one small step at a time. One small leap for you and one giant leap for mankind. You don’t have to do it all at one time! Learn to make choices to simplify. Don’t try to incorporate all the things you love into one holiday, please…chances are we won’t remember all the details, time and money spent on having an elaborate or ½ elaborate event. Lots of food--great but unnecessary. Lots of people--nice but overwhelming & unnecessary. Lots of decorations--colorful but unnecessary. Lots of music--happy but unnecessary. Lots of alcohol--with medications we take unnecessary.

Simplify & enjoy each of the holidays! (end)