Jane Dwinell – Alzheimer's Canyon

In-person author event
* Saturday, March 18, 11:00 am 

“In the middle of the night I wake up and don’t know where I am…. Am I in my house? Am I in my neighbor’s house? Do I turn on the light? Do I get dressed? I turn to Jane, hold her hand, and let her bring me back to reality.” 

What do you do when your reality slips away? If you’re Sky Yardley and Jane Dwinell, you accept each new challenge, reshape your life, and write.

When Sky was diagnosed with “probable early stage Alzheimer’s” at age 66, he was determined to live as fully with his new reality as possible. He researched dementia, talked about dementia, connected with other people with the disease, and, finally, he wrote about it. With humor and honesty, love and compassion, Sky and his wife Jane describe what it’s like to live with a constantly evolving and mysterious new life. “The brain is a mysterious thing,” writes Jane, as Sky muses about traveling unmapped roads with no GPS.

Welcome to Alzheimer’s Canyon: there is one way in, and no way out. Follow Sky and Jane as they navigate this journey they did not ask to take, a journey that balances pain, loss and confusion with gratitude, wonder, and transformation.

Sky Yardley was a family mediator before being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016.

His spouse, Jane Dwinell, author of Birth Stories: Mystery, Power and Creation, is a retired RN, freelance writer and Unitarian Universalist minister.

Together they chronicled Sky’s five-year decline from his fatal disease, the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S.