"Who will name the bees?" with Sarah Vosburgh

Send us Fan MailA mom with Alzheimer’s looks at her daughter and asks a question that’s tender, impossible, and weirdly practical: “How will you name them all?” That one line becomes the heart of our conversation with psychologist and author Sarah Vosburgh, whose memoir *Who Will Name the Bees?* traces the months from moving her mother into memory care to the day she died, while also reaching back into childhood and earlier adulthood to show what their relationship was before dementia rewrote it. We talk about what Alzheimer’s disease can look like in real life, not just in brochures: slipping judgment, sticky notes everywhere, conversations that reset, and those startling moments when clarity returns for a beat. Sarah also shares the pressures that so many family caregivers and sandwich generation parents know well, juggling a full-time career, teenage daughters, and the daily emotional math of visiting, advocating, and trying not to agitate someone whose brain is “a mess” even when their face looks familiar. Along the way we touch on how trauma and illness can accelerate decline, including cancer treatment, chemo brain, and a house fire that forced others to step in. Sarah explains why her memoir weaves poetry between scenes, and how writing began years later through insomnia, midnight notes, and a memoir class that built the book five pages at a time. The biggest takeaway is permission: you make the best decisions you can with the information you have, and you can’t survive caregiving without learning self-forgiveness. If this conversation helps, share it with someone walking through dementia caregiving, subscribe for more stories like this, and leave a review so more listeners can find the support.Intro for podcast information about subscriptions Support the showSupport for Joe's CureHere is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting