“My husband jokes that if individuals didn’t like [male anatomy] jokes, we wouldn’t have been capable of do it,” Lauren Miller Rogen, spouse of actor/author/producer/director Seth Rogen, informed an overflowing crowd on the Ladies’s Networking Meetup final week on the Nationwide Funding Heart for Seniors Housing & Care’s 2024 Fall Convention in Washington, DC.
The remark elicited a lot laughter, as meant, however Lauren’s matter was no laughing matter.
The “it” to which she was referring was the in-home care her mom, Adele, required as a result of dementia. Adele had acquired a prognosis of dementia in 2012, when she was 55, though by that point she had been displaying signs for a number of years, Lauren mentioned.
“Sadly, earlier than my mother was recognized, I noticed Alzheimer’s and dementia with my grandparents,” mentioned Lauren, a screenwriter, director and producer. However that familiarity didn’t make her mom’s prognosis any much less “terrifying” when it occurred, she added.
“We spent these first few years … feeling very unhappy and scared and never understanding what to do, however then in the end realized that due to my husband’s platform, we had a chance to say one thing and to share our story, as a result of it was clear that so many individuals that I spoke to about it, didn’t know,” she mentioned.
Saying one thing began with a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s, though “we didn’t know precisely for what,” Lauren mentioned. By way of that occasion, nevertheless, “I spotted that … I used to be not alone and that I used to be in, sadly, fairly a giant neighborhood of younger individuals and folks generally who have been coping with this,” she added.
She and Seth — recognized for films corresponding to “The 40-12 months Outdated Virgin,” “Pineapple Specific” and “Knocked Up,” amongst quite a few different roles — based Hilarity for Charity in 2012 to lift consciousness — particularly, not less than at first, amongst youthful individuals, who might have much less data of the illness than others. In its dozen years, the group has grown to supply schooling, digital and in-person assist teams, a mind well being program, grants to assist individuals afford in-home care, analysis funding and extra. The group estimates that it has raised $23 million to assist these efforts. It even has a Senior Dwelling & Care Government Council now.
Lauren and Seth now are a few of the govt producers behind “Taking Care,” a not-yet-released 38-minute documentary directed by James Keach, who additionally directed the 2014 documentary “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me,” in regards to the nation music legend’s Alzheimer’s prognosis and subsequent farewell tour along with his household.
“Taking Care,” Lauren mentioned, supplies a take a look at “what my mother’s on a regular basis struggles have been like, what my household was coping with as my mother sunk deeper and deeper into this illness.” The film begins and ends with Seth’s 2014 testimony at a Senate listening to.
Lauren made the movie, she mentioned, “to convey consciousness to what hundreds of thousands of individuals are going by way of and what we have to do as caregivers, as residents, as individuals, to raise this example in order that the extent of care can attain what it’s wanted to be to maintain the hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves coping with this illness and the caregivers who’re coping with this illness.”
These attending the NIC Ladies’s Networking Meetup caught a glimpse of the documentary, with the complete movie being proven for less than the second time the following day throughout a session on the convention that was adopted by a dialogue on reminiscence care.
“I’ve by no means seen something like this,” Seth says of Adele’s signs within the documentary. “That is to date past what I ever would’ve thought this illness was able to, and hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of individuals are coping with this. Nobody’s speaking about it.”
The Rogens are hoping that by way of their work with Hilarity for Charity and screenings of “Taking Care,” extra individuals shall be speaking about Alzheimer’s and the caregiving struggles going through households of these with the illness. (These curious about internet hosting a screening of the documentary can go to this web site.)
Susan Barlow, co-founder and managing accomplice of Blue Moon Capital Companions and chair of the NIC Board of Administrators, is relying on senior residing executives to do their half.
“It’s as much as us, this group on this room,” she informed these attending the Ladies’s Networking Meetup as she concluded an interview with Lauren. “We’ve received to do one thing for our business. If we don’t do it, who in our business will?”
Lois A. Bowers is the editor of McKnight’s Senior Dwelling. Learn her different columns right here. Comply with her on X (previously Twitter) at Lois_Bowers.