Larry explains why the Diarists ZOOM Group works so well for him.

This is another Dementia Diary from Larry Gardener, I’m on a roll!
I`ve got some good news, the good news is my partner who is very much younger than me, she has just finished the last assignment to send in for her Batchelors degree from the Open University. So we live in the Netherlands, she commenced her studies in England and she transferred from Oxford Brooks University to the Open University when we moved away so she could continue by distance learning, and it`s been a hard slog for her.

While she has been busy doing that I been busy thinking because I had much more thinking time, so she`s sat upstairs hammering away on the keyboard and coming down for an occasional cuddle and cups of coffee and a bit of encouragement and with my thinking time I’ve been thinking about something that Dementia Diarist group do wonderfully well. So we meet on Zoom and usually when we are admitted to the Zoom room we  mute ourselves, we wait our turn to be called upon to have a chance to have our say, and I think it’s really wonderful how we manage that, so that almost everybody does get a chance to have their say. After a minute or two realises it`s time to allow somebody else to have a chance and they bring their contribution voluntarily to and end mute themselves so that the facilitator can call somebody else to speak.
It`s this regulation, self regulation, of how listening time is shared which sort of makes it wonderful. Because we all know we are going to get our turn we tend not to interrupt when somebody else is speaking so that each speaker is heard respectfully and given full room to say what it is that they need to get off their chest.
It`s that Dementia Diarists meeting, I think, has an additional value to us, simply exchanging little snippets of news or having the chance to often having to grief over our difficulties, obstacles and set backs in our lives, but the thing that`s wonderful about it is that it also seems to help us let go of the kind of emotions that are self sabotaging, damaging, limiting and it seems to be a very empowering process and so Dementia Diarists and Dementia Diaries isn’t just valuable to all of us because we get a chance to record things and pass them on but when we meet together it`s also an empowering thing.
It`s a thing that kind of sets us free from the miseries that seem to afflict the human condition and we get a chance to tell our chums all about it. I think Dementia Diaries should be available on prescription(chuckle) on the NHS because I think it does so much good. So there`s my bit of good news and there`s another little contribution and I just want to say I really hope that the Dementia diaries platform that`s going live will be even more successful than the one we had before. Good by