Vicki Tapia of AlzAuthors
All Home Care Matters is honored to welcome Author and Co-Founder of AlzAuthors, Vicki Tapia.
Trained as an educator, Vicki Tapia has a proclivity for caring, spending over 30 years working as a Lactation Consultant teaching mothers and babies the art of breastfeeding.
When both her parents were diagnosed with dementia (Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s-related) within a few months of each other, she took on the role of caregiver. As a coping mechanism, Vicki kept a journal detailing the many challenges her family faced along the way. Over time, her diary became a roadmap of sorts, morphing into the award-winning memoir Somebody Stole My Iron: A Family Memoir of Dementia.
Whether fretting over her mother’s false accusations that she was stealing their money to travel or coping with her father’s missing eyebrows, Vicki writes with honesty and humor, offering both encouragement and insight. She shares the many lessons learned on the journey, bringing hope to those whose lives have been intimately affected by dementia, letting them know that they are not alone.
She is also the author of two other award-winning works, both historical fiction: Maggie: A Journey of Love, Loss and Survival based on the life of her intrepid great-grandmother, and her latest release, Harry and Grace: A Dakota Love Story written about her grandparents, who lived on the North Dakota prairie in the early 1900’s.
Vicki is a founder and a director of the all-volunteer nonprofit, AlzAuthors.com. An ever-growing global community of over 350 authors, they share their personal stories, united in an effort to reduce the stigma and silence surrounding dementia. AlzAuthors also produces an award-winning podcast Untangling Alzheimer’s and Dementia: An AlzAuthors Podcast and most recently unveiled its newest initiative, the Custom Caregiver Collection. This collection brings table-top lending libraries, custom-filled with quality books, to places where people impacted by dementia gather.