Caregivers to Partners with Dementia Need to Practice Curiosity

What if even while someone’s mind is diminishing, their heart can be expanding into the spaciousness of a felt sense of connection? What if dementia is not the worst thing that can happen to us?

In a LitHub article “On Teaching and Learning the Language of Care,” Amanda Parrish Morgan writes, “To be curious is to be careful—to be attuned and attentive to the world around us.”

Now that I understand why my spouse’s mind and personality are changing, I can trace the beginnings of the alteration of his perceptions to 2007.

Dementia Caregivers Don’t Need Answers—We Need Curiosity!

Seventeen years ago, he and I lived surrounded by trees in New Hampshire, in a cabin with a south-facing view of the Mink Hills. We grew beets and bee balm, carrots, marigolds, and radishes. At the height of our last summer there, morning glories adorned the black wrought iron fence. Scarlet runner beans with heart-shaped leaves spiraled the lamppost.

And now I’m curious. Why did I secretly believe our effortless bliss would last forever?

They call dementia the long goodbye. I don’t like this simplification. It leaves out too much of our reality. It leaves out curiosity.

It is true that sometimes when I hug him, hold him, or caress his forehead to soothe away the worry lines, I am comforted by his presence while simultaneously I grieve the diminishment of his understanding. But I no longer feel as if he is actively leaving me. It’s more complicated than that.

When we practice curiosity, we are more likely to be happier and have stronger relationships.

Many of us identify mostly with who we are in the outer realms. I, for example, for decades, had been thinking of myself primarily in relationship to him, as his dependent wife. In reality, I am so much more than one man’s wife. I am, as are you, a heart-mind-body-soul with a complex, one-of-a-kind inner-and-outer life. I am a wonderment, and so are you, and so are our dear ones. Being a dementia caregiver gives us a unique opportunity to explore all the HUGE feelings that are coming up in our relationships.

It is ridiculously easy to forget to be curious—to care, with wonderment—about what’s really going on behind the outburst, the accusation, the anxiety, and the dread. The busy-ness of life’s business can cause us to function as disembodied beings, secretly or overtly cynical and certain, numb to our deeper feelings. Yet without curiosity, we become fossilized. Stiff-necked. Petrified. And that’s when we’re going to feel as if we’re slogging our way through a death march that will only end when one of us dies.

Dacher Keltner, on the podcast The Science of Happiness, tells us that “Curiosity is a tool that science has shown can strengthen our relationships and make us more likable, it can help us hold onto a sense of meaning in our lives, and it can even lift our moods.”

Practicing curiosity in my caregiving has helped me change how I approach seemingly unsolvable dilemmas. Curiosity has helped me slow down, be intentional, check my assumptions, be open to being wrong (which makes me open to trying something new), lean into the hard stuff, and stay committed.

But so far, all I’ve been offering you is information. Meanwhile, I have discovered that what caregivers to partners with dementia need are practices. Science, the arts, and religion/spirituality all agree on one thing—a practice is a trellis to support our growth.

So here’s a link to a 17-minute podcast offering science-backed practices in curiosity from author Scott Shigeoka (Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World).

And check out my next article, about Dementia Care-partners’ need for practices.