I'm Gail Straub and you're listening to She Explorers.

You know, my parents have been the primary mirrors of me and my own identity back to me since I was little.

You know, my mother was the primary holder of that mirror. Now if she drops it and I am no longer reflected back to me by way of her then there's a lot to confront there and I think the examination of the book was you know will I have the

courage to pick that mirror up and reflect my own identity back to me and or will I have the

courage to seek that reflection back in other forms and that's where nature

came in in such a big way.

This is all there, Steph Jagger. You might remember her from her 2017 Snow memoir Unbound,

but I recently talked with her about her upcoming book, Everything Left to Remember.

It's the true story of Steph and her mom Sheila, who took a road

trip together in 2016 across the Rocky Mountains. So often the purpose of a road trip or spending

time in the outdoors is to get away from it all.

But in this instance, Steph was driving toward something many of us might rather avoid.

Her mom had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, a disease that

more than one in nine people age 65 and older have. And while Alzheimer's is

something that's hard to talk about, alter good that you have a personal experience with this degenerative disease,

or another one that's similar.

I know I do.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I put off reading your book quite a bit and the reason for that is not because I didn't want to read it but this book being

centered around Alzheimer's and relationship with the mother it It just felt so personal and I had an uncle who had

Louis body dementia and he was diagnosed when he was in his mid 60s and he was he passed away a few years

after that it was a pretty quick progression it's a different type of dementia than

Alzheimer's.

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