Carly Hammond

Croatia, two months after John died. To anyone looking at this photograph, I might appear to be simply enjoying the warmth and the view. What I see is a fixed jaw, anguish and a body working extraordinarily hard to hold itself together. Grief is not always visible from the outside. Why grief became impossible to summarise When I first decided to write about grief, I thought I knew where I would begin. I know sudden loss intimately. I also recognise grief in other forms: in aspects of a deeply...

“We're all just walking each other home.”— Ram Dass Last month, I wrote about dementia from the perspective of understanding it: what it is, what may be happening within the brain, and how greater understanding can help us meet someone living with dementia with compassion rather than correction. But there is another person in this story. The person walking beside them. The partner who quietly becomes a carer. The son or daughter making decisions they never imagined having to make. The family...

Understanding Dementia: What It Is, What It Isn't, and Why There's More Hope Than Ever The first of two articles exploring dementia from both a scientific and a human perspective. Long before I became a nervous system educator and coach, I spent many years working in care, supporting people living with Alzheimer's disease and those approaching the end of life. Every person taught me something different. Some no longer recognised their own families. Some sang every word of songs from their...