Companioning Mum, Love and Grief

Disclaimer: This post is going to be raw and real.

I’m currently navigating the significant decline of my Mum’s health due to dementia - alzheimers. It’s stretching me wider and deeper than I ever knew possible, and I want to write this post to help me process and share the love, grief and coping tools I’m turning to, to care my way through it all.

Foreman, C. (2024-26). Sculpture: Angel of Grief, Atop My Body (ongoing inquiry).

Over the last few years I’ve witnessed my Mum’s health and capacity shift from someone who was always been the strong, independent carer matriarch of our family, to the one being cared for in every way possible.

My Mum has always been the rock in my life and the glue of our family - and the grief of slowly losing her day by day to dementia-alzheimers, is utterly awful to cope with.

I already have a sensitive system as an autistic ADHD woman, but this depth of feeling goes deep, bone deep, soul deep, ancestrally-deep. Eons of grief. Millions of micro-moments. Coursing through and spilling over when I can no longer contain it all.

Foreman, C. (2026) Sculpture: Surrounded, Uncorked Grief (ongoing inquiry).

It has been a brutiful time (a truly fitting word a friend and I shared in conversation). I’ve never felt closer to the cutting-edge-moment, unfiltered rawness visiting me via my felt-sensing. Emotions and textures and pain and glimmers, taking me to the depths, then pendulating back to the shallows for brief, intentional reprieve.

Here, I’ve learned that Grief can swallow me whole if I don’t take and make moments to turn to the sun, engage with awe, and remember at times to play.

To help bolster my self-care creatively, I buy myself literal rose-coloured glasses to remind me to notice what’s here now, so as not to be completely overtaken with what I’m losing at the very same time.

I find making the regular trips up to see Mum both touching and precious, moments I know too well that won’t be here much longer, and also feeling bone-deep fatigue in working up the emotional capacity to do so.

I often need to do something bolstering first: Getting outside in nature, sitting on the grass, taking walks with my dog Banjo, hugging the trees, noticing the ripples in the water, looking up at the moon, moving my body: these experiences bookend the grief with visceral moments connecting me to something larger than anguish, reminding me we are all moving parts of the grandiose ecosystem of life.

It’s brought me a deep sense of spiritual un-loneliness to feel so held in nature’s rhythms, and a growing trust in my awareness to meet myself in my needs.

On my morning walk: Capturing moments, with clarity.

I’ve started painting big again. It has to be big to fit it all in, or try to.

I’m actively choosing novel and instinctual ways to process my feelings, via creativity. While Mum sleeps in her bed, I paint in my studio, helping us both energetically as we navigate the edges of this impending huge portal together.

I try to be strong for her, and ephemeral for me; dancing between preparing for the next place she’s going, while tending to what’s needed right here.

Foreman, C. (2026). Mum’s Portal (work in progress).

Everything I do, has a thread of Mum through it. I’ve started embroidering, working on some of her unfinished sewing as I sit on the chair next to Mum in bed, with my 10 month old puppy Banjo resting at my feet. I’m so thankful for his loyal companionship, I don’t know how else I could do this.

Tender moments of connection, many more moments of being with Mum unnoticed …but knowing my presence is right.

Working on Mum’s embroidery projects, slow stitching, cat hair, and love.

Ancestral stories keep coming to me. As a kid, my spiritual Aunty told me a story of a house on a hilltop, where a God-loving person lay dying inside. At the moment they passed, the house light up with light so warm and bright, it shone out through the windows.

I always thought that story was magical … I use art to retell the story, Mum’s way.

Foreman, C. (2026) As The Golden Goose Goes.

Now I’m witnessing Mum as she inches closer to her own moment of bright transformation, I viscerally feel that warm golden glow, weaving through this whole experience, even through all the grief.

I want this transition to feel loving for her, and me. And that means choosing kindness, realness, and alchemy.

Through love and nature and art and ritual and prayer, and ancestrally connecting to those who have passed before her, I imagine us gathered around her, each of us doing our part to help her walk the path she can only do herself … but never alone.

Mum today, still here but also somewhere else

I love you Mum. You’ve always been the strong one, and I’m grateful to be able to emit strength and love back to you at this time, when I can.

I’m not losing all of you, you’re in the process of changing form, and our love can survive metamorphosis. You’ve always been here, for mine 🐛🦋👐

Maybe that’s what dementia-alzheimers has allowed us - for you to transmute between worlds as you sleep, and for me to learn how, while I’m awake.

Thank you Mum. For all of it.

With all my love,

Chrissy

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I’d like to take this moment to share, I’ll be taking some time off from my facilitated workshops and offerings, while I focus on my family and my process. Bunkering in feels needed. Thank you for your understanding 💐