Bio

I am T.J, a Self-Published Poet and Advocate for Dementia & Caregiving from the United Kingdom. I never thought of myself as a creative or artistic person, just a regular nine to five worker which changed dramatically.

In 2013 I decided along with my father who was in the early stages of dementia that I would become his full time caregiver taking on the day to day responsibilities with household chores, medication, finances etc. which dad was struggling to remember to do. After a year of caring 24/7, we slowly became isolated within our own little two person world and I started to feel trapped and alone, so I made a decision that I needed to find a hobby or creative outlet to aid with my own and my father’s mental wellbeing. In April 2014, I joined a small writing group where I learnt about how to write and perform my own poetry which really helped me at a time when I wasn’t sure of myself.

What I found while writing my poetry was how much stress, pent-up anger and emotional helplessness I was ignoring within myself which went into my poetry, but at the same time how much stress, pent up aggression and emotional helplessness the dementia was having on my father. I channelled all my emotional feelings into my poetry and used what I saw which helped me to better help my father cope with this horrible illness. My poetry developed into a form of therapy for us both where I expressed in my poetry what I felt, saw, did and mostly didn’t speak of openly, even those topics I was too scared of admitting to myself like I have expressed in the poem I called ‘Life Chosen’

Upon the death of my father in June 2019, I once again found solace in my poetry writing a poem for his eulogy called ‘Standing Before’ expressing my loss and the grief I tried to hide. After six months I decided to use the poetry I wrote about caregiving linked to dementia and self-published a poetry anthology as a form of advocacy for caregivers and dementia suffers alike, hoping that anyone who read the poems, especially other caregivers who felt lost and isolated or even people in the early stages of dementia would understand they were not alone and that there is help to be found.

Finding a group, team or society that advocates for any form of expression which can be used to relieve stress and the feeling of isolation, whether it be writing, art, music and singing, dancing or sports is a must for anyone caregivers own mental wellbeing, but also that poetry can be used as an aid to interact with the person they are caring for also. Writing poetry has helped me cope with so much in the past eight years from a divorce, becoming a full time caregiver with all the stresses accompanied with the role and finally the grief of losing a father who was more like my best friend. I really do advocate that both caregivers and those they care for, find their own way of coping with stress. "Go find your own release and take care of you".

My poetry anthology series is called A Dementia Carer Poems and can be found in eBook, paperback and free on Kindle Unlimited at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk