CHAPEL HILL — Being a caregiver, particularly for a loved one with dementia, can amount to a job lasting 24 hours a day. Breaks are fleeting, and the ability to enjoy personal time is few and far between.
The demands can seem never-ending. In this case, who is providing care to the caregivers?
That’s where Peaceful Pathways for Caregivers contributes to a solution.
A joint venture of the Chatham County Council on Aging, Chatham County Parks and Recreation and the Chatham County Center of N.C. Cooperative Extension, the Peaceful Pathways area at Northeast District Park was formally dedicated last Wednesday under an existing shelter.
In addition to a picnic table, the area includes three rocking chairs and a rocking swing. Six separate flower beds were planted, each representing a color on Teepa Snow’s GEMS model. Snow, the owner of Positive Approach to Care and a dementia education specialist with over 40 years’ experience, served as the event’s featured speaker. She has spent a large portion of her career expanding the scope of dementia care beyond the cookie cutter “mild, moderate and advanced” stages.
The idea for the project started with Susan Hardy, the Council’s Human Services Team Leader & Caregiver Specialist. Attendees were encouraged to take river rocks and paint the name of a caregiver or loved one, placing it along the dry riverbed that runs through the GEMS gardens.
“My idea for the park was all about giving a caregiver a place to go and feel good, and not look at negative statistics about how many people have died with dementia, or how many people developed dementia over their lifetime,” Hardy said. “I didn’t want anything that was depressing. I only wanted things that would be uplifting.”
That’s the cornerstone of Snow’s GEMS model, which serves to account for both the “good” and “bad” days a dementia patient may experience. Even in the throes of later-stage dementia — or in Snow’s model, the “Ruby” or “Pearl” gardens — there can be moments where the patient returns to “Sapphire” or “Diamond” status. Sapphire represents a normal, aging brain, while Diamond is a clear mind that has encountered rigidity. Declining levels of cognition are marked by Emerald, Amber, Ruby and Pearl, respectively.
“One day, the mind might be a Sapphire with no problem,” Hardy said. “It’s like they’re back to their normal selves one day.”
The initial idea for Peaceful Pathways came about roughly a year ago when Hardy shared an article with COA Executive Director Dennis Streets about a park in upstate New York that provided space for caregivers and their loved ones.
The COA pressed forward during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to explore the feasibility of bringing a respite area to Chatham County. Hardy consulted with family caregivers, and nearly all expressed interest in an outdoor area tailored to them and their loved ones.
“Given the existing paths that mark this park, we all loved the serenity of this area,” Streets shared. “Nestled among pine trees, overlooking the pond, with a shelter already built years before through the support of Carolina Meadows — this was a perfect spot for our first Peaceful Pathways area.”
Preliminary plans are under way for additional Peaceful Pathways locations in other geographic areas of Chatham County. Those ideas recently received a boost via a grant from the NextFifty Initiative, a Colorado-based foundation that supports efforts to improve lives of older adults and their caregivers.
“Even in my caregiver support group, I had one caregiver talking about how she was dreading taking her husband to the beach because she thought it would be really difficult for her,” Hardy recalled. “She said once he got there on the beach, surrounded by nature, she said he was wonderful. It was like that the whole time we were outside, they can remember that from their childhood.”
For more information about the work of the Council on Aging, visit www.chathamcoa.org. For information about Teepa Snow, visit teepasnow.com/.
Lewis is the Director of Grants and Communications at the Chatham County Council on Aging.