I had to find a chair. Not because my legs gave way. But because what I thought was finally settled had just come undone.
My brother and I had made the decision together. We had found a good nursing home — good people, a clean facility, staff who seemed to genuinely care. We had done everything right. And now, two months later, the solution was failing.
My mother had developed dementia. She was shouting constantly — through the afternoons, through the nights — until the neighbours complained. Until the operator, a kind woman running a small business, told us she had no choice. My mother's condition was threatening everything she had built.
What I Felt in That Chair
People talk about hopelessness like it's a dramatic thing. Like it arrives with darkness and noise and the feeling of collapse. That's not what it felt like to me.
Four walls closing in slowly. And then — nothing. No answers. No hands reaching out. No light at the end of anything. Just silence. Cruel and complete.
What I felt most was not grief — though grief was there. It was disappointment. Deep, exhausting disappointment. I had believed the problem was solved. I had allowed myself to exhale. And now reality was telling me, quietly and without apology, that I had to start again.
There was reluctance too. Not wanting to go through it again — the searching, the visits to new facilities, the paperwork, the physical reality of moving an elderly woman with dementia from one place to another. I was tired in a way that sleep couldn't fix.
Not how do I solve this — but how do I carry on? How does a person keep functioning when the weight keeps redistributing itself and never quite lifts?
The First Book in Ten Years
I've always loved reading. But somewhere in the years of corporate life — the meetings, the travel, the constant demand of being needed — I had quietly stopped. It happened the way most slow losses happen: gradually, and then completely, without a clear moment you could point to.
In the weeks after the nursing home call, I picked up a physical book for the first time in nearly ten years. Love for Imperfect Things by Haemin Sunim — a Korean Buddhist monk whose writing moves slowly and without force, like water finding its level.
I wanted to understand my mother. Not fix her — dementia cannot be fixed. But understand her. The woman shouting through the night was not the woman who raised me. She was still in there somewhere, behind a condition that had rearranged the furniture of her mind.
I thought that if I could first seek more clarity about myself — about how I was holding all of this internally — I might be able to find her more easily.
That book led to another. And another. Psychology. Medicine. Spirituality. Philosophy. A loop of input and reflection that slowly, quietly began to change something in how I was thinking.
My book collection has skyrocketed since then. I read every day now. It is one of the unexpected gifts that came wrapped inside one of the hardest periods of my life.
The Reframe That Changed Everything
Somewhere in the reading and the reflecting, something shifted. I had been asking the wrong question.
I had been askinghow do I carry on —
which placed me at the centre.
My burden. My exhaustion. My need to find a way through. But the target was never me.
The person who needed help was my mother. An elderly woman with dementia who was shouting through the night not because she wanted to cause chaos — but because she was frightened and confused and in a body and a mind that no longer behaved the way she expected. She needed care. Specifically, she needed people who understood dementia. Who had the training, the patience, the environment, and the genuine vocation to care for someone in her condition.
Once I saw that clearly, the reluctance dissolved. Not completely — the tiredness was still real. But the direction became clear.
I wasn't looking for an easier situation. I was looking for the right one. For her.
The Right Place
We found another nursing home. Further from us than the first — which added its own layer of difficulty. But it was equipped for exactly this. Staff trained in dementia care. Regular doctor visits. Psychiatric medication managed properly. A routine that gave her mind something to hold onto.
My brother and I visit consistently. Friends and family come. She is not alone.
Her face is calmer. She speaks about the past now — accurately, with the detail that only genuine memory carries. Her mood has stabilised. The shouting has stopped.
And recently, when we brought her food she used to love — she tasted it, looked up, and said the food was good.
What This Taught Me About Being Human Under Pressure
I am not sharing this story to be admired for getting through it. Many people carry heavier things with less support and more grace than I managed.
I'm sharing it because I learned something in that chair — and in the books, and in the slow reframe — that I think is worth saying out loud.
When we are pushed into a corner, the instinct is to make ourselves the centre of the problem. How do I survive this? How do I carry on? And that instinct is human and understandable.
But it is also, sometimes, the thing that keeps us stuck.
The moment the question shifts — from what do I need to what does this situation actually require — something opens up. Not because the problem gets smaller. But because the direction gets clearer.
Clarity is not the same as calm. I was not calm in that chair. I was not calm searching for a new home, making calls, visiting facilities, managing the logistics of moving someone who didn't fully understand what was happening.
But I was clear.And clarity, it turns out,
is enough to move forward.
I don't know what your four walls look like. Maybe it's a parent. Maybe it's a job. Maybe it's a relationship or a health diagnosis or a situation at work that has been quietly accumulating weight for longer than you want to admit.
Who or what actually needs help here — and am I asking the right question?
The target might not be who you think it is.
And once you see the real target clearly — even through exhaustion, even through the reluctance, even through the silence of four closing walls — you will know what to do next.
R
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