Is It Time?: 3 Steps to a Successful Journey With Aging Loved Ones

Every stage of life brings its own joys and challenges.

Yet, in a world filled with books for expectant parents and child-rearing, there is little guidance on how to navigate the last decades of life happily and successfully.

Is It Time? 3 Steps to a Successful Journey with Aging Loved Ones provides a flexible, three-part plan to help families and individuals make positive choices during the eldercare journey. By focusing on a loved one’s quality of life, the book offers detailed information so families can understand long-term care options and organize plans in advance to avoid having to make reactive and rushed decisions when a critical event occurs.

This book addresses a reality most of us will be required to confront. If you or a loved one is over the age of 65, there is a 70% likelihood you will require some sort of long-term care, whether from professionals or family.

The book is divided into four sections. In Part 1 of the book, we take a good, hard look at the realities, problems, and issues that individuals, families, and society face when making senior care decisions. Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 discuss each of the following core principles:

• Plan
• Communicate
• Accept

When all three principles are addressed, a family can focus on their loved one and appreciate the beauty that exists in the aging process. Armed with this guidance on aging successfully, the experience can be both manageable and joyful.

In Is It Time?, Lezlie interweaves stories from the thousands of families who have trusted her companies to be part of their care journey—including her own family. These stories add humility, compassion, and understanding to the issues families face and demonstrate the difference in experiences when decisions about the final decades of life are made proactively rather than reactively. The narratives are instructive, motivational, and sometimes cautionary. Perhaps most importantly, they are relatable.

Unfortunately, most people ignore or don’t recognize simple warning signs and put things off until a crisis happens. Failing to act in time and plan ahead can limit a family’s options when situations with aging parents and loved ones become critical. Not taking timely action also adds unnecessary stress to families and can make important decisions more difficult.

Lezlie’s goal for readers is that they gain understanding of the issues and choices through the experiences of others, so they can contribute to the highest quality of life for their loved ones and/or themselves.

By investing just a few hours to read this book, you will learn:

• Obstacles and strategies to effective planning
• Common terms that are used in senior care and health care
• The difference between care delivered by a nursing home, assisted living facility, independent living community, in-home care, home health, and hospice
• How to pay for long-term care with financing options such as Medicaid, long-term care insurance, etc. and the difference between Medicare and Medicaid
• Tips for helping your aging parents and loved ones accept support and care so that it meets their goals and desires for the highest quality of life
• Strategies to promote acceptance for aging parents and adult children when it is time to receive support and/or caregiving
• Common fears and objections family members and aging loved ones often have when facing the question, Is It Time?

If you have ever asked yourself the question Is It Time?, then the answer is likely yes. This book will be a great resource for you and your loved ones.