This book is an attempt to reach a wide audience with a look at communication and relationships, which I regard as key areas in supporting people with dementia. In one sense it is a very personal account, with stories from my twenty years of working with people one to one. 

But I realized that this was not enough, so every one of the nineteen chapters bar one is in two parts, with my own experiences coming first, and quotations from people with dementia, their supporters, and professionals in the second part. This, hopefully, widens the perspective, and complements an approach which demonstrates ideas and attitudes through example rather than exhortation.

I believe the spirit of the book is encapsulated in the quotes on the first page:

You did then what you knew how to do and when you knew better you did better.
MAYA ANGELOU

We receive and we lose, and we must try to achieve gratitude; and with that gratitude to embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses.
ANDRE DUBOIS

I dwell in Possibility.                                                                 EMILY DICKINSON