Meet Lori
Family Caregiver, Diabetes Advocate, Writer, Speaker, Podcaster
With a glass perpetually half full, Lori Schlosser is a wife, a mom of two adult sons, an encourager, a prayer warrior and a recovering planner. By the grace of God and with intentional focus on staying healthy, she has learned to embrace the "bloom where you're planted" approach to living positively and purposefully, especially in seasons when life doesn't go as planned.
Like countless other parents, she abruptly entered the world of round-the-clock health care when her 8-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2006. She soon discovered the learning curve was steep and few people understood her family's new normal. She devoted herself to keeping her family whole and healthy and to diabetes education, advocacy and fundraising.
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The lessons she learned about caregiving in the diabetes world were tested anew when her focus shifted in 2014 to caring for her mom, who had been her role model, confidant and biggest cheerleader. Over the next seven years, her mom experienced several strokes, vascular dementia and eventual loss of most muscle movement, including the ability to swallow. As her mom required skilled nursing support in a long-term care facility, Lori's pandemic caregiving experience was particularly trying. (That's a nice way of saying it almost broke her.) After teaching Lori important lessons about hospice care, Jesus took her mom's hand in the early morning hours of July 19, 2021.
These challenging chapters in Lori's life grew her heart for caregivers, who often find themselves in exhausting, isolating places few can truly appreciate. Along the way, her faith has grown, as has her resolve to practice self-care and look daily for God in the messy places. On this side of heaven, there will always be messy places.
If you are a caregiver...or simply in a difficult place with no end in sight...Lori's goal is to share a little of her half-full glass and help you through your own messy caregiving journey, one day at a time.
