How to Help Boston Seniors Plan for the New Year

The holidays are a time to take stock, remember what matters and make a plan for the next year. It’s a helpful exercise for people of any age, but it’s especially important for seniors because it gives them something to look forward to.

However, it’s not always an easy discussion to approach with your loved one, since it often involves frankly discussing their health, mobility and other difficult topics. Fortunately, there are many resources in the Boston area that can help turn a fraught discussion into an opportunity to find connection and joy.

Here’s how to help Boston seniors plan for the new year.

Resources to Help Seniors Plan for the New Year in Boston

While the idea of planning for the future can be stressful for many seniors, the resources available in Boston can make it seem less intimidating and more hopeful. Here are a few of our favorites:

Ask the right questions.

Planning for the year ahead with your loved one can be harder than it looks. Given the difficult and highly personal topics that arise, many people go blank when it’s time to discuss it. That’s why it’s helpful to take some time to prepare a few questions ahead of time. Ask them about their worries and goals; what they want to achieve and what they want to avoid.

If you’re not sure where to start, never fear: Wellesley Books has plenty of resources to help. On top of their generous fiction and nonfiction stock, they also carry prompted journaling and self-help books to help you find the right questions to ask.

Build a plan for success.

There’s a good reason why people make New Year’s resolutions. Visualizing goals and forming a plan to reach them creates clarity and purpose and can increase the chance of success.

Heavier topics can be hard to approach, so try making it easier by making a visual plan with cheerful stationery and other supplies.

The high-quality stationery available at The Paper Mouse can add a sense of optimism that makes future planning a lot more approachable. In addition to notebooks, pens and ink from top-notch Japanese, German and American brands, they also carry a huge range of elegantly-designed organization tools and beautiful stickers you can use to make your planning session fun.

The Paper Mouse also hosts regular events to help people in the community get the most out of their planning sessions. Just this month, they’ve held classes on how to personalize your notebook or design your own yearly calendar.

Find a good place to chat.

The home isn’t always the right place for a difficult conversation, especially if you’re a family caregiver. It can be hard to shift your mind away from your regular routine and toward your future plans when you’re at home, so it’s often helpful to head to a cozy spot like a cafe or a library.

It turns out that the perfect spot is right over in Needham: the French Press Bakery. With a relaxing ambience, good coffee and spectacular French pastries and croissants, French Press is the perfect venue to make a difficult conversation more approachable.

Preserve the things that matter most.

While you and your loved one are looking to the future, it’s also important to remember the past. Old photos in albums can degrade in quality over time, and they can also be a little too small for seniors with vision difficulties. That’s why it’s helpful to save the images that matter most through a digitization solution like EverPresent.

EverPresent is the most reliable digitization service in Boston—so much so that the Boston Globe, the DAR and Harvard University all trust them to store and protect their most valuable records. In addition to storing and saving your analog print, images and videos, EverPresent can create high-quality large copies, or even combine them into a beautiful photo collage that you can cherish and reflect on.

Find Support for the Future in West Suburban Boston

Setting goals and making a plan to achieve them is a great first step for the new year. The next step is to figure out the resources you’ll need to achieve them. Will your loved one need support with their everyday needs, transportation or anything else? And would it be helpful to have a professional caregiver offering support with those needs?

No matter what you and your loved one need to accomplish their goals, the skilled and compassionate caregivers at FirstLight Home Care of West Suburban Boston are here to help. In addition to offering practical help with everyday tasks, they can also be a reliable companion to help with whatever goals or hobbies make your loved one’s life meaningful. They can offer transportation to art classes, move heavy soil bags to use in the garden or act as a gym buddy.

Want to learn more about how we can help? Contact us today.