Edward Grinnan's Journey of Faith Through His Mother's Alzheimer's

This is Peter Rosenberger and one of the reasons I wrote my new book A Minute for Caregivers is because I remember the sinking, despairing feeling of struggling as a caregiver. No one knew what to say to me. I didn't understand and others didn't understand me.

For decades I foraged along and tried to find my path through this medical nightmare that Gracie and I have endured for nearly 40 years. And I've learned to speak the language of caregivers. I speak fluent caregiver. No pastor, no counselor, no medical provider, no friend should ever throw their hands up and say I don't know what to say to that caregiver.

Because I do. Give them a copy. This book is called A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday. They're easy to read, one minute chapters that speak directly to the heart of a caregiver and you can get them wherever books are sold. A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday.

Friends don't let friends caregiver alone. Oh I love that voice. That is my wife Gracie and I love her singing that song.

I wrote that song many many years ago and I love hearing her sing it. Thank you for your indulgence on that. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. I am joined today by a very special guest. I've been actually wanting to have him on for quite some time and he has been gracious to work with our crazy schedule this fall. And this is Edward Grennan. He is the editor in chief of Guideposts magazine.

I've had the opportunity to write for Guideposts in various forms. Most recently in their Strength and Grace magazine that they have. And he's got a new book out called A Journey of Faith.

A Mother's Alzheimer's. A Son's Love and His Search for Answers. And it is a deeply moving book and I'm excited to have him talk about this. So Edward welcome to the program. Glad to have you here.

Thank you Peter. I'm very happy to be here and you mentioned crazy schedules and you know something I don't know anyone who doesn't have a crazy schedule particularly in the fall. But so it's a pleasure that we're able to work these things out and we can finally get to talk. I've been anxious to speak with you especially about the subject of caregiving which is so prevalent in our country. I mean we are in a way a nation of caregivers. In one form or another we're giving care and if we're not giving it we're receiving care and sometimes it's both. So you know caregiving is a burden of love and even though the circumstances that may call for caregiving are difficult it so often brings us together. It makes us aware of the power of empathy and giving of ourselves. And it's not easy. As you know caregiving can be tremendously stressful and difficult. That's why I look at the way I look Edward. I think you look pretty good.

Don't let this happen to somebody you love. You know for many years of course Guidepost is a staple in our country and around the world and for many years we received it. Gracie's grandmother was a huge subscriber for many years and I read it and then I started noticing a change over the years most recent years with you guys and I started noticing more conversations about the caregiver world and I was intrigued by that and I actually like I said I wrote a few things with you guys but I didn't know your story and now I know why as the editor in chief. How long have you been there? Well I showed up in 1986 if you can believe that.

I was jobless, penniless, almost homeless and struggling to find recovery from drugs and alcohol. I don't know why Guidepost hired me. I wouldn't have hired me with my background and I didn't know what Guidepost was. When I got the call I thought it was a travel magazine so I thought maybe I'll get some trips out of this job. So I went in for the interview and I liked the people and I read the magazine and it was really intriguing and I said I'll stay for a year and that was in 1986 and I have been there ever since.

I became editor in chief in 1999 and have been so ever since. If you change the term from a travel magazine to change that word travel to journey it has been my spiritual journey to be involved in this magazine and in this audience that supports the magazine. The people who tell their stories of faith and action and everyday living lifted me up and it's really put me on the road of recovery and to spiritual growth and it's a journey that I wake up every morning and thank God for. I think it's marvelous what you've done and like I said I've been following, I've been tracking the changes and now I recognize that that's been your handprint on this and ultimately God's handprint on moving so many of the stories into the caregiving world to recognize that we do. We got over 65 million caregivers in this country. Also you started at Gappos the same year I became a caregiver in 1986.

I was also struck by quite a few things in your journey. I mean this was a part of your life before your mother's Alzheimer's. You had a brother with Down syndrome and so these are not new things to you. No you know and with my brother Bobby who had Down syndrome and who was just a few years older than me I was the youngest and then and you know that so much revolves around that child and necessarily importantly so I remember I'll tell you this one little story about my parents who were just the most devout Catholics and they you know church going you know believing Catholics and they really trusted the church and after Bobby was born and they knew that he had Down syndrome right away and they told my parents and my parents brought Bobby home and some priests came to the house and they sat my parents down and they said you know we have orders of nuns whose ministry is to care for these children and if you like we will take Bobby and we will raise him and care for him and give him all the love he needs and it was the closest I ever saw my mother slap a priest because she said you know she said nobody is going to take care of this child but us and we will do it better than anybody else could ever possibly do it with God's help and God's love and that's what they did. Well from what I could tell about your mother's personality that you so beautifully recounted in this book I can imagine she during there came off her seat and lunched at the priest you know she was not a timid woman. No but it's the only time I ever saw her like argue with a with a clergy member because it was that was not in her character she was a strong willed woman she was very bright she was raised by a school teacher her mother was a school teacher and learned how to read before she even went to school she was way ahead of her class and skipped grades you know eventually she was in the 1950s as a young married woman she was a quiz show champion on television she was really sharp and really fast so when that time came years later when she began to develop symptoms of what would be diagnosed as dementia and eventually she did die of Alzheimer's it was you know we were in denial you know and it wasn't that we we just were in denial that this strong bright vibrant woman was suddenly slipping in a way that not only we didn't understand but we couldn't stop and and that that took us a while to get past that denial because we kept trying to say oh it's just the normal vagaries of an aging brain so she forgets to turn the stove off or she forgets that you know what she wanted to pick up at the store and has to go back three times we tried to rationalize all that but it got to the point when when you know the needs for her her caregiving needs became too obvious to us that we had to do something and we had to start doing things for her that she always had done for herself and she was she didn't like it either in the book you recounted the story at church where she couldn't do some of the library functions the deposits and things such as that and that that must have been incredibly heartbreaking for her it was when I heard I was living in New York and this is we can get to this later but I had to do a lot of caregiving from a distance and felt very very guilty about that because I was in New York working and my brother and sister-in-law and and sister were really the ones on scene to take care of care of mom and really saw her daily yeah you're right that first hint was you know one of the things my mother always did to help out at church every day was to count the collection basket after morning mass and then she would fill out a deposit slip and take it to the bank she'd done it for years and it made her feel very much a part of worship and a way to help the pastor and sister Carolyn who is my mother's confidant at the time called us one day and said look your mother is not counting the collection basket correctly and goes to the bank and everything's wrong so we don't want her to feel as if we don't trust her and depend on her but from now on I'm going to count the basket with her and then I'll fill out the the the deposit slip and I'll go to the bank with her so that everything runs smoothly and she said you know but I don't we don't want her to think that we're not counting on her because she so needs to to feel needed and to feel like she's contributing that we don't ever want to take this away from her but we're going to have to supervise it just in case you hear anything so and and that was heartbreaking and it was not out long after that the sister carolyn also told us that my mother's job is the church librarian was also being undermined by her increasing forgetfulness and confusion and she was missed she wasn't shelved the dewey decimal system kind of defeated her she couldn't shelve the books the way well she's not alone in that by the way in the library if I had to without google but she had to kind of that had to be taken over in such a way that we weren't making her feel that she was inadequate and all that time it had run in alzheimer's runs in my family on my mother's side and both of her sisters had died in memory care along with her her father and one of her three brothers uh also suffered symptoms so she must have seen this coming and wondered what would happen to her it must have been terrifying on some level but she was such a strong and a woman who would never complain about what she was going through let alone admit it to anyone else that it really we had to like have the courage to step in and that was hard to give her care we knew she needed and yet was difficult for her to accept so the the dance that went on where we were just trying to help out rather than you're keeping an eye on you because we're afraid you're going to hurt yourself or get into some trouble it was just when those roles reversed when you as a child become the caregiver to the parent who has always cared for you for decades and decades of your life it's a very difficult transition and i had great trouble with it at first well you recounted this well in the book and i also um saw i was really quite moved at the beginning uh when you open it up and you were questioning your own forgetfulness is this what's laying ahead for me is this what's waiting around the corner for me because it runs in your family and a couple things that you've forgotten and you the self-doubt and the and the fear was gripping you and i love how over the period of this book you were able to bring the reader and and make peace with that shake hands with that the fact that okay whatever's around the corner it's around the corner but i'm gonna live today and i thought that was a beautiful thing we'll talk more about that when we come back from the break we're talking with edward grinnon he is the editor-in-chief of guidepost magazine his new book is called a journey of faith a mother's alzheimer's a son's love and his search for answers and there's much more to come when we return this is peter rosenberger this is hope for the caregiver hopeforthecaregiver.com welcome back to hope for the caregiver this is peter rosenberger this is the program for you as a family caregiver hopeforthecaregiver.com i am continuing my conversation with edward grinnon the author of the new book a journey of faith as he recounts caring for his mother through alzheimer's but it wasn't just alzheimer's this has been a part of his life for his entire life the journey of a caregiver plus his own wrestling with demons of addiction and alcoholism and what led him to be the editor-in-chief now the one of the most beloved magazines in in in the world and i edward i wanted to address something one of the things i've done on this program is connect the dots for people in relationships with alcoholics and addicts and identify them as caregivers because addiction is a chronic disease it's a chronic impairment and if wherever there's a chronic impairment there's a caregiver and so the same principles apply and as you walk through recovery you've been in recovery for a very long time now as you've walked through your own recovery through this did you see the same principles of recovery applying to you as you journey with this through your with your mother through alzheimer's i did and a part of the book covers the fact that i had been had been sober for some time when my mother began exhibiting symptoms of dementia and as i said i was a long-distance caregiver giver so that sense of control almost you know was difficult because i was 650 miles away in new york and she was in michigan i had what they call in 12-step programs i slipped during that period and and and i slipped badly i went back to drinking and it turned my life upside down it certainly didn't do me much good as a caregiver and you know what i had to realize and i didn't at the time at the time i said well i'm an alcoholic and it's a chronic disease and you have it whether you're sober or not sober you still are an alcoholic and you turn your life over to god in order to get through your sobriety a day at a time and um i refused to think about that my mother's condition and her need for care had affected me in a deep emotional way that triggered um this new round of drinking um and i did see a counselor in a detox unit and he kind of forced me to realize that you know i said i don't need an excuse to drink my brother's not drinking my sister's not drinking and they're dealing with my mother's condition so what i don't have that excuse but he took me to join he said yes you do because these changes in your life all of a sudden are triggers this fact that your mother needs care and she's not going to be there to care for you are triggers for emotional responses that that you know and some people can can trigger an addiction and other people can contribute trigger anxiety and um i i finally came to grips with the fact that this this situation with my mother and the and the the need for caregiving to be there for her were what what triggered this this this episode of addiction again and i you know thank god i did go back to the meetings uh that had gotten me sober in the first place and i've been sober ever since and that's been about 27 years so um i'm i'm terribly grateful for that um but for me i look back on it and see you know my mother's sudden need for for this huge amount of care really turned my life upside down in a way that i wasn't even willing to admit and realize at the time um and i think a lot of caregivers go through and they may not be alcoholics or addicts but they go through a period of real stress and anxiety and and fear more than anything when a loved one is suffering like that and well we're going to medicate with something um right that's just that's just the human condition and whether it's this illusion of control or whatever it is that we got to do sex drugs alcohol we're going to medicate with something it it's very painful and we're going to do this until we bend the knee and say you know what i i'm i can't do this i surrender i surrender you know the important that i did find out was you know you and i'm sure you've talked about this on your show self-care for the caregiver taking care of yourself um you know i did realize that there were things i needed to do for myself give myself permission to do as a caregiver or as a family member of someone who needs such care you know it was okay to take a vacation for instance i wasn't turning my back on my mother if i had to go if i got to you know go on a nice trip somewhere you know there were you know there were times when i needed to disconnect when i could not to abandon my mother in any way but you know we had a lot of we had you know my brother and sister and sister-in-law to help out too and there were ways that we eventually were able to make sure that we we could all get a break you know and and you know and we pick up for each other when when someone was on on a break and a vacation or a retreat but so you learn to take care you know what i learned interestingly enough in this caregiving situation with my mother i learned how to take care of myself better than i ever had after i got through that that addiction slip i really learned how to take care of myself because i knew that i had to be there for my mother and the only way i could do that was to keep myself healthy my my late wife used to call it the oxygen mask masks um um syndrome that you know in the air on an airplane when they they read you the safety regulations they tell you you know make sure to put your oxygen mask on first before you try to help anyone else and i call that the delta doctrine i heard that on delta years ago called it the delta doctrine yes it's absolutely true in life you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of somebody else and you have to love yourself in a way that you can then give that love to another person and and reap the rewards of it um even in the end i was so grateful to be there for my mom um and i started this journey not knowing for sure whether i could do that um and of course i didn't do it on my own i did it with with the strength of a higher higher power and friends and families um there's a there's a franciscan church right down the street from my apartment in in manhattan and i used to walk my dogs by that for those franciscans and they'd often be out in the front steps and they'd always come out and bless my dogs which was for me you know just incredible that they would come and say a prayer over my labrador retriever or my cottager spaniel but i began to talk to them too just a few minutes every day and they just say how are you you know and i'd tell them and they said well you're doing everything you can and and that's all you can do and god will give you the strength to carry on and hearing that every day was was wonderful and it helped everything helps well and we've got to hear that every day i that is the whole premise of everything i do here is just that healthy caregivers make better caregivers and yes i i um i want to switch gears to the book for a moment one of the stories in the book that you connected me to it was about patty and her father and i i mean i i it i teared up with this and i because i have a lot of colors to this program that i've dealt with the people that i've talked to who are in this situation where they had an abusive father growing up and then the father declined significantly and then they're put in that role of caregiver and yet they have serious unresolved issues and and yet here they are and so it talk a little bit about patty in that story it was a beautiful story it is a beautiful story and and i've i've told it a lot um patty was in i wasn't in a situation like patty's but i understood that so many people are i have friends are and patty was a a woman who grew up with a very stern and angry father um who's you know a capacity to express love and to give love was severely limited he was a marine officer you know she said she knew how to sing the marine hymn before she knew how to sing happy birthday and you know and you better sing it out loud you better do it the way he wanted you to do it or else you you'd hear from it so she was raised by a drill sergeant and uh she ran away from that house as soon as she turned 18 and as soon as she left her mother divorced this this angry stern man um and it could have stayed like that for for decades and it did and patty went out and she married a man the opposite of her father who was kind and loving and supportive and she had children but she gets a call one day out of the blue from a from a man who who runs his trailer park in southern california sort of out in the desert and he says you know are you patty and i won't give the last name but um and she said yes well she said your father's here and i think you better come see him um and she just froze like she had cut him off and cut her feelings off from that man decades before and you know she finally goes out to the truck park her father is is well into dementia at that point and he can't take care of himself he's living in a rat trap of the trailer just chaos you know he but they had the the trailer manager had found patty's name somewhere in his things going through trying to figure out who to call and patty eventually has to bring him home he's been he's diagnosed at the va hospital is having alzheimer's and they they send him and she she asks she asks god she says how can i love someone who didn't love me and now you're asking me to love this man and the journey she goes on from that point as she tries to get close to him and the alzheimer's began to pull away at all his defenses and she learned about his childhood they never talked about learned how tough he had had learned how frightened he was and how he put on this armor all his life to protect himself from his own feelings and from other people's feelings he was scared of feelings and in the end finally he says that one thing that he never said to her one of the last things he said to me he said patty i love you you're my daughter and i love you and the walls that were broken down by that moment were just staggering and in my life my the last words that my mother spoke to me the last word was love and she hadn't spoken at all for a long time and i was telling her what i was at her bedside and i knew it was the very end and there was not much more we could do for her and the real caregiving had been taken over by the people at the memory care unit where she was and i was sort of confessing to her which i felt bad about but i was saying how i was sorry for all the years that i was not necessarily a good son and that i knew she had loved me for all those years no matter what and that last word she said to me was just the word love well my mother died shortly after that so and you know what i discover in my journey in the book is that there are two things that that even a disease like alzheimer's and i would say other diseases as well two things that can't destroy and they're really two they're one of the same thing and that's love and that's fate they exist outside of us in a way that a disease like alzheimer's cannot destroy and what was left with my mother was her faith and her love beautiful story edward we're talking with edward grinnon his new book is called a journey of faith a mother's alzheimer's a son's love and his search for answers this is peter rosberg and this is hope for the caregiver don't go away we've got more to go we'll be right back you don't have to worry don't you be afraid joy comes in the morning troubles they don't last always for there's a friend named jesus welcome back to hope for the caregiver this is peter rosberg that is gracie again we're glad to have you with us we're continuing our conversation with edward grinnon he's the author of the new book a journey of faith a mother's alzheimer's a son's love and his search for answers i was reading this book and there was a scene edward that was so poignant and i immediately just found myself reliving a scene similar to that i i used to work at a place many many years ago when i first got married and there was a customer that would come in and here i was i was a caregiver i was in my 20s and this guy came in and he was in his late 60s and he drove a blue cadillac i could still see it today and he would get the wheelchair out for his wife and he would take her everywhere she had alzheimer's and this is back in the 80s and i watched him caring for her and she had mobility impairments as well and i immediately thought is is that my life is that where i'm going with this and here i was in my 20s and here i am now in my 60s and yeah that is my life and it's not a bad life it's just a challenging life and when i read your book i was looking at the scene at howard johnson's when you were working there as a young man and you saw that couple and i want you to talk about that because that it hit me and it took me immediately back seeing that couple for me what it did for me but it did something for you when you saw that couple and i'd like for you to talk about that a minute you know i was a teenager and i got a job being a busboy at our our little corner hojos and uh and i knew a lot of the people there and my mother and the ladies from church would always have breakfast there so you know i was sort of almost like family but there was one group of senior citizens who used to come in on a regular basis and there was a man and he was always very well dressed and his he would bring his wife in and she was always impeccably made up and impeccably her everything was perfect she was beautiful i mean maybe way overdressed for howard johnson's um and i'm why i would watch him and i didn't i was a you know i was a teenager i need to say something to my audience here for those you don't know howard johnson's is an upscale waffle house it's for those you don't remember howard johnson's it's an upscale waffle house so you know so it was a great it was a great community place so he'd bring his wife in every day and i i observed them as as a naive self-centered 15 year old i noticed how much he did for her yeah i mean she must have had some impairment in her eyesight because he would always say okay you know the the butter is at six o'clock and um your tea is at um four o'clock and you know and i noticed that she would argue with him occasionally not bitterly in any way but she he would suggest you know would you like your oatmeal and she said i don't like oatmeal and he'd say well you've had oatmeal like every day of your life since i've known you and i suddenly realized you know not only was she somehow impaired and he was trying to make her life as normal and as livable as possible but that when i looked at her with her makeup and her perfect hair and her beautiful clothes and how well put together she was i realized that he did all that i thought how did she is she's so confused and she doesn't know where things are and she forgets everything and it's because he was taking care of her and that left me with such i hadn't known anything like that before and i thought he gets up at dawn every morning and gets her ready to go out and have a nice breakfast at howard johnson's and he doesn't have to do that he could but he it's meaningful to him to give meaning to her life even as that meaning was slipping away from her what i thought about years later when my mother had dementia and i knew that the end was coming you know i suddenly remembered that man and howard johnson's and i thought what happened to him after she died after she went on and that's a great dilemma for caregivers really when you've you know devoted so much to yourself to the care of another human being that you love and you've you've poured all that love and carried that burden of love to you through your loved one's illness or whatever you know or whatever injuries there's a terrible void left when you know and it's not one i mean maybe you feel relief from the daily grind of it but there's something about what you've been giving and giving and giving and now there's no place to put that giving and i i've talked to caregivers and putting together the book who really struggled with that who had to get past them because it's not only the grief that they deal with but it's the the loss of purpose because your purpose has become you know lifting up and caring for this other person so it you know i there's i give some tips in the book about you know what you should do and that's if you are in that situation and certainly reaching out to other people because caregivers will often lose you know they put everything on hold sometimes you know their friendships their social activities a lot of the things that filled their life before caregiving did they have to get back and they have to be intentional about it or they will get sort of trapped in this strange void this emotional and spiritual void that can afflict a caregiver whose caregiving has come to the end one of the things i've tried to do on this program is to help caregivers push back of what i call the three i's we lose our independence we become isolated and we lose our identity and we stop speaking in first person singular often and so i always ask caregivers that call into my program how are you feeling and that's where the stammering and that's when the tears come because they're not used to speaking from their own voice and that's part of it is how do we how do we regain ourselves how do we not get lost in someone else's story and and have those moments and it's been a it's been a lifetime battle for me and as i said we we are becoming a nation of caregivers so this is this is something that's only grow going to grow that the brain diseases like dementia and parkinson's as the population gets older those conditions are more and more prevalent which means the caregiving must be more and more prevalent and yes there's a division between what you can do for your loved one at home and ultimately might have to be done for them in a care unit but still the the amount of caregiving that the country is called upon to provide for the people who need it is becoming larger and larger and we don't want it to overwhelm us on the other hand the act of caring for someone you love and helping them when they can't always help themselves and you grow as a person i think no matter how painful and anxious caregiving can be i think it helps you grow as a person in my life i've never i haven't grown much when i was happy and content you know i found spiritual growth and emotional growth in the difficult times in the challenging times when i was challenging myself or god was challenging me to be more of a person than i thought i could be and caregiving i think brings a lot of that out in us but it does teach us empathy and love and in ways that we could not have been taught those things without it or at least in my case and i i know i i share that with you edward i really do and i'm a better pianist i'm a better writer i have more clarity of thought because of this journey because it's forced me to deal with the hard realities i wrote a piece that's in one of your publications strength and grace i don't know when it'll be out um and i've tried to do some some more of that but i've been busy with some other writing and and caregiving it so uh hopefully i could do some more but there's one that i think that's going to touch you um i think this is the piece that's going to be in the next issue and that is i was playing the piano there's a woman in our church who and i do the music down our little church here in the valley and this man and his wife and she he's caring for his wife she has dementia and it's fairly pronounced at this point but she's been a violinist for a very long time of a wonderful fiddle player that she's traveled all over and she's just very very very talented and she'll just kind of look off into space but i told her to bring the violin to church and i said don't worry i'll handle the heavy lifting on the music part just let her play and she was playing one Sunday and this is the story i put in strength and grace she was playing the old rugged cross and she's looking off into space while she's playing it from memory and she's and her playing was beautiful it was just flawless i stopped playing and let her just play an acapella and the whole church was just you could tell they were all holding their breath listening to it it just reverberated around the church it was one of the most beautiful performances of the hymn i've ever heard and they all knew that she was struggling with dementia she didn't you know and yet her music was still there and i just saw the tears in her husband's eyes just filling his eyes he had such pride and was able to hear his wife play and i thought about just the power of music what it does how it does so much uh in those moments but also how important it was for that church to experience that that we we're not going to shuffle this off like the priest tried to do with your brother no no we're gonna we're gonna embrace where they are and that's so important in our last moment i close this up in the last 30 seconds just closes up with your heart on this i heard what you said about music and i have stories about that because music sometimes for me my mother could sing hymns long after she stopped lost the ability to speak but what i think caregiving taught me more than anything and i want people to hear this and it might be helpful is that it taught me to be present in the moment you know when you're caregiving you have to be there with that person and particularly with alzheimer's because they're often only in the moment and when my mother would go off and say she had conversations with people i knew who were dead instead of trying to fight that i would always say yeah well what did you talk about why did you want to talk to that person how did that help you and i just went with it and sometimes that's the best we can do is just go with it let us be led where we're going to be led and and not try to fight it and not try to control everything but those things that we can control that is a great way to end this conversation edward i'm gonna have to have you back on this was just so powerful and meaningful and i appreciate very much you taking the time edward grinnon the author of a new book a journey of faith the mothers alzheimer's a son's love and his search for answers available wherever books are sold and certainly out at guidepost shop guidepost.org shop guidepost.org please you you i this book will have you uh in tears and you will love this book it it will touch your heart in a very profound way it did mine and uh so i thank you edward for being a part of this this is peter rosberger this is hope for the caregiver we'll see you next time you've heard me talk about standing with hope over the years this is the prosthetic limb ministry that gracie envisioned after losing both of her legs part of that outreach is our prosthetic limb recycling program did you know that prosthetic limbs can be recycled no kidding there is a correctional facility in arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs and this facility is run by a group out of nashville called core civic and we met them over 11 years ago and they stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them you take the knee the foot the pylon the tube clamps the adapters the screws the liners the prosthetic socks all these things we can reuse and inmates help us do it before core civic came along i was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage and when we lived in nashville and i had tools everywhere limbs everywhere and feet boxes of so forth and i was doing all this myself and i'd make the kids help me and it got to be too much for me and so i was very grateful that core civic stepped up said look we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction and we'd love to be a part of this and that's what they're doing and you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com recycle so please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs we do arms as well but the majority of amputations are lower limb and that's where the focus of standing with hope is that's where gracie's life is with her lower limb prostheses and she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled i mean she's been an amputee for over 30 years so you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape all of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking and it goes to this prison in arizona where uh it's such an extraordinary ministry think with that inmates volunteering for this they want to do it and they've had amazing times with it and i've had very moving conversation with the inmates that work in this program and you can see again all of that at standingwithhope.com recycle they're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over we do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises and they need it badly in gana so please uh go out to standingwithhope.com recycle and get the word out and help us do more if you want to offset some of the shipping you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there we're purchasing material in gana that they have to use that can't be recycled we're shipping over stuff that can be and we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to christ and that's the whole purpose of everything that we do and that is why greasy and i continue to be standing with hope standingwithhope.com