28 Years and Counting…
Twenty-eight years ago, next week (or, if you'd rather, 245,472 hours, 14,728,320 minutes or 883,699,200 seconds ago) on a rainy Fourth of July, I drove a rental truck to a local magazine printer's warehouse to pick up copies of the first issue of Today's Caregiver magazine. I loaded the issues onto the truck and then spent the entire next week delivering the magazines to hospitals and care facilities across my community.
Four months later, we created caregiver.com and were able to instantly interact with and support family caregivers around the nation and even the world. Yet, it is the first few days that will always be indelibly etched in my mind. As I shared the magazines with caregivers in waiting rooms across Southeast Florida and watched them flip through the pages, it was tremendously gratifying to see the recognition pass across their faces that maybe they weren't so alone after all.
Back then, we could never have expected what we had all gone through while caregiving through a pandemic, including the increase in visibility for family caregivers and enhancement of technology to help serve caregivers or the interest in self-care by family caregivers.
This year also marks the 23rd anniversary of Today’s Caregiver magazine’s Caregiver Friendly Awards. Please see our amazing award recipients and thank them for their service.
Countless other such moments have occurred across the country over the past 28 years at over 303 in-person and 12 virtual Fearless Caregiver Conferences. I am pleased that the first in-person event in 2 and a half years occurred at the location of our upcoming event with many more that came thereafter. We had very much missed interacting with family caregivers and are pleased to have been able to get on the road again and spend time with our fellow caregivers in your own communities.
Whether virtual or in-person, I have been blessed by all these conversations and by the opportunity to share them here with you in this newsletter, on caregiver.com, in person and in the pages of Today's Caregiver magazine.
I look forward to spending the rest of my days doing what I love most: talking to, sharing with, supporting, and learning from the real healthcare experts in the world—family caregivers.
See you on the road!
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