Kitty Norton, creator and producer of ”Wine, Women, and Dementia,” joins Suzanne to talk more about the origins of her caregivers documentary.
Kitty says, “I started a blog in 2018 and mom died in 2021. And during that time, we had kind of built this community around people who also were using humor to try and get through that, and acknowledging all the feels, not allowing the stigma and the guilt to be a part of the journey too much. You can’t block it all together… Five people in particular in this journey became very, very important to me as virtual support. Everybody who followed the blog commented, all of that stuff, was important, but these five people, I had really connected with them.
“After mom died, I decided I wanted to go meet them and I just wanted to tell them in person how much they meant to me, and open a bottle of wine and just talk, because we had been so good at just emails and Zooms. So then I thought, well, if I’m gonna do that, maybe those conversations might be really helpful for other caregivers. Why not hire a film crew and see what we can do here. And we did a month-long trip around the country. But the very first person we did was Allison Schrier up in Seattle, because I’m based in Portland. I wanted to make sure, before we roamed around the country, that I had a film, and I came back, looked at the footage of Alison’s formal interview without me. And then the wine chats that we did at night once I showed up, and I was like, for sure, this is a film. This is a film I wish I could have seen in 2016. I want to make this. So that’s how the whole trip got started. I bought a beat up old RV, and I plastered mom’s face all over it, and I grabbed my friend Bethy from L.A., and she’s a screenwriter, so she doesn’t have normal jobs like everybody else. And I was like, hey, you wanna go on a three-week trip with me around the country?”
Kitty shared what surprised her most about meeting most of them. “I was so nervous: What if we don’t like each other in person? I’ve got an RV, I’m going to be parked in your driveway. I’m gonna be taking your electricity. What if we meet and at the end of the night you’re like, “Ugh!” But that didn’t happen, we all loved each other, and we just started talking… The crew would sometimes scold us like, “Don’t, stop! You’re talking about stuff we should have on camera, and we’re not set up yet!” We just couldn’t wait to start sharing in person the experiences that we had touched on virtually, it’s so fantastic.”
Learn more:
* Wine, Women, and Dementia: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/
* Kitty Norton: https://www.winewomenanddementia.com/the-filmmakers
Hear more:
* Podcasts celebrating caregivers: https://answersforelders.com/category/saluting-caregivers/
Answers for Elders is part of the SeniorResource Network: https://www.seniorresource.com/
Check out our affiliate podcast Alzheimer’s Speaks: https://alzheimersspeaks.com/
