No platitudes.
No “pie-in-the-sky” easy answers here.
Just friendship.
I know from my own experience over many years that caring full-time for a loved one in your own home, though not without its joys and rewards, can be emotionally and mentally and physically challenging.
We all need the encouragement and comfort of being understood. What you find here may not feel like a perfect fit to you – I don’t pretend to know exactly how you feel! But in the book HE DANCES WITH WHEELS and through this website I hope to offer my friendship and some measure of understanding although we are not together in the same room and may never meet.
As carers we can easily feel alone, discouraged and exhausted. The daily stress may threaten our own health too. And if we are people of faith then it may also seem to undermine our previously trusted bedrock of belief.
This website is not an exclusive resource for those who are called “carers”. In one sense, everyone who loves is a carer! And it is not just for those who share my faith.
HE DANCES WITH WHEELS, available on this website, is the book I wished I could have read during the challenging and bewildering years of caring for my husband at home. I had wonderful friends but I longed to speak with someone “in the same boat” as myself: another carer who was struggling with similar issues and could understand.
My husband had M.S. (multiple sclerosis) and we travelled through this illness together for 28 years. David was a caring, selfless and courageous man of faith and writing the book was first intended as a tribute to him. I wanted to celebrate his life.
But this book has emerged as a celebration of a shared life: an acknowledgment that the friendship giving us both the inner strength, the unique understanding that we needed through the years of increasing disability, was in fact the friendship of Christ.
This is the Christ who calls His Holy Spirit “the Comforter”, given to be with us to help us. Through sharing life with Him we can then be His comfort to one another.
Please listen for free to the songs from our CD FRONT LINE SOLDIER. This album reflects on that shared life I referred to. The lyrics and accompanying written notes to the songs are here too. Also you can turn to a selection of readings, each one spoken by someone who has cared at home for someone they love.
Yours in friendship, Glynda
Listen to the songs from the CD “Front-Line Soldier”
After Emily and Michael Gould first met us, Emily said: “David really shines, doesn’t he!” I agreed, adding “I’ve even written a song about that.” They listened to Shining and other songs and told me “We should record these!”
Read the song lyrics and CD sleeve notes
So, Michael transformed their garage into a temporary recording studio and produced the C.D. “Front-Line Soldier”. Andy Hague arranged the songs and directed singers and musicians. I took some photos at the recording sessions!
Listen to Readings and Reflections
Taken from the Psalms and New Testament, each reading is by someone who is, or has been in the past, caring for a loved one at home. There is the option here to listen with or without the short reflection that follows each reading.
“Making Light”
“Glynda Winterson is not afraid to take on the darkness.’ Making Light’ is the title of the core series of 9 poems for her late husband David, and of the eponymous poem which affirms his capacity for loving against the odds.” (From a 2013 review by Paul Hyland of the 29 poem collection.)
Reprints
Read reprints from a newsletter and from the BRF “Bible Reflections for older people”, designed to “bring hope and to remind the reader of the presence and love of God”.