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Unlocking Us

Grief, Laughter, and Sisterhood: Losing Our Mom and Holding On to Each Other

50 min episode · 2 min read
·
Ashley Brown,Barrett Brown

Episode

50 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Personal Finance, Relationships

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Palliative care access: Few dementia families utilize Medicare-covered palliative care and hospice services, which provide weekly social workers, in-room oxygen to prevent traumatic ER visits, adjustable beds, and trained dementia nurses for continuity of care.
  • Caregiver tap-outs: Each sibling took month-long breaks from caregiving when emotionally depleted, normalizing the oscillation between feeling privileged to help and desperately wanting the situation to end without shame or judgment from each other.
  • Music as memory anchor: Playing songs from the 1940s-1960s, including Que Sera Sera and Chantilly Lace, allowed their mother to access intact memories and emotional connections when recent memory and recognition had deteriorated significantly through dementia progression.
  • Financial planning gap: Despite being an excellent mother who introduced her family to therapy and recovery concepts, their mother failed to prepare financially for long-term care, creating significant stress when assisted living required monthly payments without insurance coverage.

What It Covers

Brené Brown and her sisters Ashley and Barrett discuss their mother's four-year dementia journey, her death on Christmas 2025, navigating caregiving responsibilities, processing grief differently, and accessing hospice resources.

Key Questions Answered

  • Palliative care access: Few dementia families utilize Medicare-covered palliative care and hospice services, which provide weekly social workers, in-room oxygen to prevent traumatic ER visits, adjustable beds, and trained dementia nurses for continuity of care.
  • Caregiver tap-outs: Each sibling took month-long breaks from caregiving when emotionally depleted, normalizing the oscillation between feeling privileged to help and desperately wanting the situation to end without shame or judgment from each other.
  • Music as memory anchor: Playing songs from the 1940s-1960s, including Que Sera Sera and Chantilly Lace, allowed their mother to access intact memories and emotional connections when recent memory and recognition had deteriorated significantly through dementia progression.
  • Financial planning gap: Despite being an excellent mother who introduced her family to therapy and recovery concepts, their mother failed to prepare financially for long-term care, creating significant stress when assisted living required monthly payments without insurance coverage.

Notable Moment

The sisters discovered their mother maintained detailed memories from 1975 and could sing complete lyrics from 1950s songs while unable to remember her daughters' names, demonstrating how dementia selectively erases recent memories while preserving distant past.

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Episode Transcript

Hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown, and this is unlocking us. Welcome back to our eight part series that I'm calling On My Heart and Mind. We We started the series with my conversation with Valerie Kaur on the power of revolutionary love and being a sage warrior. I've talked to doctor Sarah Lewis on her stunning new book, The Unseen Truth, Roxanne Gay, on her amazing essay on black gun ownership, to my friend, doctor Mary Claire Haver on menopause. And I just did a two part special with one of I I I talked to a lot of historians in this series, but I love history, so probably always on my heart and mind. My last two parter, I guess, was doctor Heather Cox Richardson on American democracy. And today, my sisters. Hi. Hello. We're back. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of a 130,000,000 of them in fact. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Ashley and Barrett and I are going to talk about it's funny because we teed this up. We're like, we should do a podcast on, like, mom and grief and love and joy. And then today, we were like, shit. I don't wanna talk about that to y'all. We were like, so I think it's gonna be about, grief and joy and love, but we'll see where it goes. Welcome to unlocking us. Thanks for having us. We're excited. Little liars. Where should we jump in? Like, so for those of you who don't know, my mom died on Christmas morning this past year, 2023, Christmas morning, and hard dementia journey. Ashley and Barrett and I were her primary caregivers along with Steve. Mhmm. I would give a shout out to my husband, Steve, who was really when we all had to be like, I can't do it. I can't do it this week. I can't do it this week. And if you're like, I can't do it this week either, Barrett's like, screw y'all. Not it. Then Steve would be like, I'm in. And a lot of other times too. So I think, we were gonna …

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