Daphne Davis’s Wellness Formula: Body, Mind, Spirit

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. And Welcome back everyone to answers for elders radio on this Valentine’s Day weekend and I hope each and every one of you are having a lovely time and make sure that you say tell the people that you love. This is the time to voice it, to tell people that you love them and that you care about them. And we are here again with our wonderful Daphne Davis and she’s giving us our her wonderful recipe on health and wellness and wellbeing and we’ve gone through the body, the mind, in the spirit and this segment we’re going to talk about how do we integrate everything and how do we put everything together? And, Daphne, I am so glad that I’m so honored to have you share your thoughts because I love everything that you’ve been sharing. Well, this is my passion and I do love helping people. It is what keeps me going every single day. But the most important thing for me is to make sure that people, and you brought it up a little bit in our last segments, is and of being authentic and being true to yourself, and that takes courage, huge courage. It takes a lot of courage and it takes courage to kind of break out of how your normal communication style maybe. or it takes courage to be able to have some hard conversations with absout family. Absolutely, and so sometimes we all need somebody to walk alongside us to have the courage. And again, this week has been full of those conversations for me and that I have been able to have the privilege of being involved in families hard discussions. Sometimes we can have physical ailments that are are driving our thought processes, and so we need an added piece of skills to work through dementia, work through depression. Those things are really big in our elder population sometimes and the family around that senior that has dementia or Parkinson’s or whatever. There’s a lot of fear there. Yeah, and fear can come forward in, you know, in what’s the word discord? Yeah, you know, and and or people in the family checking out because they don’t want to deal with it. There’s all the denial or denial, you yeah, big denial, or or sometimes with the the senior themselves. It’s it’s the whole thing of wilful stubbornness. I’m sure none of us know about that, which is rooted in fear. It is. It’s totally rooted in fear, and so it’s that fight or flight kind of thing that we all have. It’s a gift from God to for survival. But we started out talking about either surviving or living, and so kind of put the bow on everything is having the courage to have conversations. Yeah, now that you’ve done a little bit of dreaming, you know for yourself. Have have the courage to talk to someone, and everyone has a different person. That might be a child, it might be a sister, brother, it might be a best friend, might be a priest, rabbi or pastor. I mean I don’t know who that is for you, but have the conversation with somebody that says, how can I have a life of living and not surviving? Very good, and that brings us kind of full circle. And that’s where pinnacle senior placements can be a resource. We are not decisionmakers and and I appreciate your confidence in me, but we don’t always have all the answers, but we can help go through the process and figuring out what is a family’s highest values? What are the things that really drive decisionmaking? And once we discover that, then the rest of the minutia falls into place. Very true, and I think the earlier you start having those conversations, the better it is. And and how often do we you know? I know that it’s a family member. There’s a lot of family members out there that say, I don’t want to intrude on my parents. Yeah, I so, I’m not going to say anything, or you know, or I’m in denial, I’m not noticing the subtle changes that are happening and so in and granted, all of us are so busy in our lives, but there’s a time, and this is a weekend that we can really connect on that. You know, this is a weekend about relationships. It’s about a relationship with your spouse, your significant other, your children, and also with those your love and your parents. Take a moment and just check in with yourself and your parent. Yeah, it’s like, what are things that we can do better as a family to communicate? And I think that’s a real big piece of it, isn’t it? It absolutely is, and this is where the fear comes in, of making a change we can, if you think back to living or surviving the automatic things that we have to do, the making the deal, dinner, the making sure bed, all those things, or can we live? And that takes courage to not get caught in the idea that if I not making my own bed, then I’m failing right. No, you’re being wise to use your energy in a way that’s going to best fit your life so that you’re living a full, dignified, quality life as much as possible. That that courage comes from having other like minded people around you to support you. And sometimes that is not from your dearest and closest a family, because I have a situation where it’s a sister in laws working together and they don’t want to step on each other’s toes and so in doing that they’ve have clear boundaries, but in doing that they’re not speaking authentically and they’re dancing around each other and wanting to say the same thing. So when I have conversations individually with them, they’re saying the same things, and so now I get to help facilitate them having the courage of saying the things they thought they couldn’t say, and that’s huge and it and to have that clear sense of communication and a family and and to be willing to be vulnerable. But enough. And you know, I had an experience at Costco. There perfect example. This is off the side, but it’s talking about courage. I’m so independent by nature. This is a you know, I see you are. It’s who I am. I’ve I didn’t get married to I was fifty five. I’m used to doing things for myself and I went to costco picked up a bag of dog food. Course it was on a high stack and so I was able to scoot it off and it fell into my cart, which was good because they’re heavy. Right I have arthritis in both my hands. I go out to my car to load it in my car. I could not get a grip on this bag to get it into my car. I was humiliated. I tried so many times. I was like embarrassed. I’m standing there, I see people walking past me. I didn’t ask anybody for help because again, and I’m too proud, I finally had to just sit back and I, after day, took good breath. I thought, you know what, Susanne, you need to go ask for help. And it was humiliating for me. It was humbling, but you know what, I shared it on facebook afterwards. It’s like, you know, this is a thing that I don’t think about me getting older. I think about helping other people. Right, but definitely. It was amazing how much support came from facebook and people, people that I know, Susanna, have to do the same thing. Now. Did you know that this happened to me the other day and people was sharing these stories and I went that is so awesome. I went, okay, I didn’t feel so ridiculous anymore. It was okay to ask for help, and I even told my husband. I said, I can’t believe I had to. He goes, honey, they’re there to help you, and I’m going like of what, I’m too. He goes, you gotta get over this pride thing, you know, this pride and denial. Yes, there’s things that you can’t do anymore and it’s okay to ask for how that is a perfect example of how you can choose to use the energy you have. Oh so hard defne, I’m sure it was, but think of all the things that could happen just because you’re in your sixth decade and not your second decade. Sure of you know, my body doesn’t work the same. My hands are our throw us. It’s no shame in ask. Yeah, I will be bold to say there is shame in being prideful and not asking for help and taking risk, because that’s when we have acts change. Yeah, true. Yes, that’s a perfect example of the simple little things, and good for you to recognize it when you’re not ninety. So now you have thirty years to learn. It’s like, oh my gosh, but you know, you think about the little things that happen just like that, that all of a sudden, it’s taking that step back and it’s having the courage to be authentic. Yeah, and I think that is where this body, mind spirit, if all of those things are happening in your world. And then the humility. It’s like it and again, an old Buddhist teaching. It’s humility is teachability. Very good. So understand that for us to learn and to grow, that does take a real element of humbleness. It does. It does, and I encourage you to think of it in terms of being wise. HMM, you know, it’s wisdom. It’s wisdom that for the person who asks for support and allows support. Very true, very wise to San yes, yes, I think, and and to everyone. You know I’m I’m in the process right now. There’s a lot of things that I’m learning to now that I’m going to have to accept about where I’m at in my life and it’s crazy. It’s crazy and I see it all around me. I see my high school friends saying I’m going in for a knee replacement. I hit replacement. I have to have you know. I’m now a high cholesterol and I have to be on medication. Now I have to change my diet. I just became diabetic. All you know all of the little things of aging that is creeping into our world. It’s very interesting, it is and it’s a natural, normal way. I mean some of those things that you listed are certainly preventable. Some of those things we can make other choices. But I know what we make, the choices we make throughout our life, and we get the good and the bad consequences. But you also have in this next chapter of life. You have options and and that is where pinnacle can help you discover what those options are without being afraid of the unknown. Sometimes that’s all it is, is the fear of the unknown. Well, let’s let’s go explore, let’s go and look at some places together and I’ll tell you these are the pluses. And then is based on your values. And here’s the thing too, that I’m going to emphasize. By Calling Pinnacle, you may think you have obstacles, that, oh, I can’t live and assist a living because I can’t afford it. Yeah, or I really would love to go to a retirement community, but I know that my house isn’t worth worth enough money or anything like that. You know what, I have never known a senior that goes on the street ever in the history of my life. There is a way to help you and Daphne knows those ways. So if if you have a loved one or if you are looking at those options, now is the time to call. Just call, gather information. deaphitely. How do we reach you? Best way on the phone is eight hundred and fifty five, seven, thirty four one fifteen hundred. So it’s eight hundred and fifty five, seven, thirty four one fifteen hundred, and then you can also reach me at my website, which is kind of playful, at Pinnacle Senior Placementscom and listen to Daphne’s podcast to there on her website. So again, everyone have a wonderful weekend and, Daphne, you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day. We can and in. I’m glad you’ve got a chance to go up to my hometown on Valentine’s Day and and very excited to hear about all the good things that our listeners are going to get from your segment today. Sounds Great. Thank you. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. To contact pinnacles senior placements, go to Pinnacle Senior Placementscom.