The Glenna Difference
Lived, Not Learned
For most of my life, I knew how to communicate.
I built a career on it. High expectations. Real consequences. Say it clearly. Get it right. Move things forward.
And then my mother got dementia.
And none of that worked.
Logic didn’t work.
Correction didn’t work.
“Reality” didn’t work.
What did work surprised me.
One day, I asked her, “How old are you?”
She didn’t know.
So I guessed.
“Are you 70?”
No.
“75?”
No.
“72?”
Yes.
And just like that, we were somewhere.
Not in my reality. In hers.
That moment changed everything.
Because I wasn’t trying to fix her anymore.
I wasn’t pulling her back to where I needed her to be.
I was going to where she already was.
What started as a question became a ritual.
Then a game.
Then a way to stay connected when everything else was slipping.
This isn’t about memory.
It’s about relationship.
And here’s the part most people don’t want to admit:
We’re trained to correct.
To orient.
To bring people back.
But sometimes, that’s the very thing that breaks the connection.
So the question becomes:
What if being “right” isn’t the goal?
What if connection is?
This work lives in that tension.
Not fixing.
Not forcing.
Not correcting.
Finding a way in.