The beginning of a new year and time to freshen our official welcome! Thus, this updated WELCOME can be found on the blog page to shine some additional light on the version typically found only on the Home Page.

WELCOME to…

ABeautifulVoice.org

A quest for soul in an age of American dementia

Honoring care, confronting cruelty, and restoring dignity where it has been stripped away.

A Beautiful Voice is an independent e-magazine rooted in lived caregiving experience, creative life, and a conviction that dignity is never optional — even, and especially, in the presence of dementia.

The title honors my mother, who had a beautiful voice and loved to sing. After her Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1997 and my father’s vascular dementia diagnosis in 2001, our greatest moments of joy were found making music together at the piano. Music was not therapy. It was relationship. It was recognition. It was soul.

Following Mother’s diagnosis, we returned to an intergenerational bungalow beside our old family farm and became “the three ranchers.”

Original painting of farmhouse by Andrew Osta, Ukrainian painter in Mexico. He has depicted our old farm home as it might have appeared to my parents following their respective diagnoses of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Original painting by Andrew Osta, Ukrainian painter in Mexico

What unfolded there — long before today’s language of person-directed care — was a life shaped by intention. Our “real life pleasures” included non-stop music, nature and green space, delicious food prepared by skilled care partners, unhurried drives over gentle hills, bird-watching, reading and poetry, humor and laughter, journaling, family history and reminiscence, front-porch conversations, and frequent guests. My guiding mantra then, as now, was simple: It’s about dignity.

The tagline phrase, “an age of American dementia,” draws on the work of Danny George and Peter Whitehouse whose 2021 publication asks us to consider the nation itself as a patient — exhibiting memory loss, impaired judgment, and a troubling absence of empathy. The word quest reflects an unfinished moral search. The word soul names what is too often missing.

Here you will find reflections on brain health and soul care, creative practices that preserve personhood, and cultural commentary that refuses to normalize cruelty — toward elders, caregivers, or the vulnerable.

This magazine is offered as witness, invitation, and hope — not the optimism of denial, but the hope that comes from meaning, imagination, and courage.

Susan Troyer
Website Author & Curator

PS – Our themes are centuries old and known to be beneficial health and lifestyle practices. Our process will be to curate from many sources and reflect many voices – as science-based information continues to emerge. Our vision is for common knowledge – now centuries old – to become common practice.