About Liz Brown
Hi, I’m Liz.
I support spouses and partners with the emotional side of loving someone with dementia.
I’m a clinically trained social worker with more than 20 years of experience supporting people through grief, loss, and major life changes.
Over the years, I’ve sat with people facing difficult decisions, changing relationships, and times when the way they used to manage things no longer worked. My work gives people room to understand what is happening inside them and consider what they need.
My family’s experience
When dementia became personal.
Dementia became a much more personal part of my work when Alzheimer’s entered my husband’s family. My husband became the person people called. There were appointments, decisions, family conversations, worry, frustration, and a lot that simply had to be handled.
Alongside all of that, his relationship with his dad was changing. His role in the family was changing. Our lives were changing too. There was no single moment when someone said, “This is happening to you too.” But it was.
My father-in-law’s Alzheimer’s lasted for years. Our family lived through uncertainty, tension, moments of connection, exhaustion, and grief. Since his death, there has also been the looking back: things we handled well, things we wish had been different, and things we didn’t understand until later.
I don’t think families need a cleaned-up version of what dementia is like. There can be love and anger, relief and guilt, connection and distance. Sometimes all of those things exist at the same time.
That reality shapes the way I work today.
Why this work
Why I focus on the emotional side of dementia.
There are many important resources that help families understand dementia itself, including memory changes, communication, safety, care options, and planning.
But both professionally and inside my own family, I kept noticing another part of the experience that people didn’t always have a place to talk about: what it is like to love someone who is still here but changing, to become the decision-maker in a relationship that used to be shared, or to be doing everything that needs to be done while no longer feeling much like yourself.
That is the part of dementia I focus on.
How I approach this work
Room to be honest about what this is like.
I believe people need room to be honest about what dementia is doing to them, without feeling pressure to handle it perfectly or judge themselves for being angry, exhausted, guilty, confused, or unsure.
When I work with someone, I try to slow things down enough to look at what is actually happening. What has changed? What are you feeling? What matters to you? What do you realistically have the time and energy for right now?
Sometimes we’re talking about grief. Sometimes it’s guilt after losing your patience, a decision you keep second-guessing, or the realization that you miss who you used to be in this relationship.
I want to help you understand what is happening inside you, so you can move through hard moments with more clarity, steadiness, and trust in yourself.
You’re welcome to get in touch.
If you’d like to ask about my approach or talk about whether the support fits your needs, send me a message. I’ll follow up by phone or email.
Contact Liz