Where Two Worlds Touch
A Spiritual Journey through Alzheimer's Disease
Shifting elegantly from academic to personal, this memoir offers spiritual insights into Alzheimer’s caregiving.
Where Two Worlds Touch: A Spiritual Journey Through Alzheimer’s Disease joins a growing number of paradigm-shattering books that are confronting the belief that an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis is a tragic thing. Quite to the contrary, Jade C. Angelica says that if one chooses to lean into Alzheimer’s rather than recoil from it, Alzheimer’s can be a consciousness-shifting experience.
Angelica has a master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School and a doctor of ministry degree from Andover Newton Theological School. She was empowered to write Where Two Worlds Touch while caring for her mother. “Through my unique perspective and experiences,” Angelica shares, “I have noticed that persons with Alzheimer’s have the potential to inspire us, teach us, love us, heal us, amuse us, befriend us, calm us, comfort us, touch us—physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually—energize us, enlighten us, empower us, forgive us, nurture us, open our hearts, bring out the best in us, and bring meaning and purpose to our lives.”
Where Two Worlds Touch is a dense read that effortlessly dances from serious to heart-wrenching stories from the trenches of Alzheimer’s “carepartnering.” Angelica segues in and out of the several years she spent as the primary carepartner with her mother as they journeyed through Alzheimer’s, using their daily struggles and joys as a vehicle to explore the past. For example, Angelica’s conflicted feelings about her mother’s inability to protect her from childhood sexual abuse and other longstanding issues between them dissolved into an unconditional loving forgiveness by the time her mother passed away.
Angelica’s training in improvisational theater became the catalyst for her realization that its axiom to always make ones improv partner look good translated beautifully to Alzheimer’s caregiving: “When we affirm persons with Alzheimer’s by saying yes to their choices and realities, we are stepping into direct relation with them; we are recognizing and acknowledging their divine essence.”
The consciousness-raising and worldview-shifting insights found in Where Two Worlds Touch might have a positive systemic impact on society if it were to become the go-to book for those whose lives are touched by Alzheimer’s.
Reviewed by
Patty Sutherland
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
