A 60-Minute Presentation by Michael Verde on To Kill a Mockingbird As It Relates to Ending the Emotional Isolation of People with Dementia
June 24, 2020
3:00 p.m. EST
Recording available now
It is commonplace to describe a person with dementia and those caring for him or her as on “the dementia journey.” Unfortunately, that journey is all too often understood to mean a slow decline through a certain number of stages (typically 3 to 7) into deepening degrees of incapacity and finally death. That’s not a journey. That’s a script. And if taken to heart as inevitable, it is a script that demoralizes the spirit and paralyzes the imagination, both of which are crucial resources for healing.
Join Michael Verde as he illuminates Scout’s life-changing encounter with Boo Radley in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the most popular novels ever written. Together, we will explore what Scout’s meeting with Boo can teach us about healing and the imagination.
Atticus tells Jem that one doesn’t have to lock someone up to make a ghost out of that person—“there are other ways of making people ghosts,” he says. Michael’s presentation will examine how our way of framing the experience of dementia, including “the dementia journey,” can make ghosts of people or, conversely, turn a script into an adventure of infinite blessing.