Raising Parents

“Raising Parents—A Journey of a Lifetime” is based on Renee’s real-life experiences with her parents after their retirement and their move across country to live with her fulltime. This journey starts with Renee and her parents learning how to be three adults living together, striving to keep the respect of a parent and child relationship intact and enjoying the adventure of life together. 

“Raising Parents—A Journey of a Lifetime” draws you in further as Renee shares some of the circumstances that drove changes in the relationship between her and her parents over the years. There were challenges that came naturally with time and age, but then came the unexpected challenges of Alzheimer’s and cancer, which caused roles to be altered, if not reversed in many situations. Now Renee was becoming the parental figure and protector of their world as they coped with these heartbreaking diseases. Along the way Renee learned that being able to accept her parents’ decision to wash the rocks was a key to keeping her focus on being a loving and respectful daughter; spending energy to ponder logical explanations for that kind of decision was not. Her parents were experiencing horrible diseases that were stealing their capacities one day at a time and some days it was overwhelming, but the one thing Renee could always give her parents was love. 

Renee realized she was the one who needed to change her expectations; her parents were no longer the authority figures who cared for others that she knew and loved her whole life, now they were her parents in need of being cared for and she just needed to be a loving and patient daughter for them…and herself. Sounds simple…but the simplest things can be the hardest to perfect. Thankfully, God doesn’t command us to be perfect, he commands us to love one another and honor our parents.