Be With: Letters to a Carer

In this moving, deeply humane and surprisingly uplifting book, poet Mike Barnes shows that a side of dementia that is almost entirely missing from public discussions of their condition: `All people with dementia, and some of them strikingly, show depths of sensitive awareness, resilience rising to heroism, and a capacity for joyful relatedness.'' Be With balances candour about the devastations of dementia with insights into its paradoxical and indeed often uncanny enhancements of life, the ways in which it sometimes calls forth capacities long buried by the defences of full cognition. Fiercely alive, marked by a sharp, unerring eye for detail and a wonderful way with metaphors, Be With encourages us to focus on fellowship and accurate witness: to simply be with who, and what, is actually before us. See more