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Welcome to our community: couples facing challenges and choices. Welcome to a community of active spousal caregivers for chronically ill and/or disabled husbands, wives, and/or partners and those former caregivers struggling to build a new life after caregiving ends. Welcome to Well Spouse. Founded in 1988 by a group of dedicated caregiver husbands and wives, the Well Spouse Association (formerly the Well Spouse Foundation) is the only national organization dedicated to the support of spousal caregivers only. While those caring for an ill or disabled life partner face many of the same concerns and stresses faced by other family caregivers, spousal caregivers must confront many unique issues. WSA brings these caregivers together. so they can support each other.

Many recent studies show us how important emotional support is to caregivers – this is especially true of spousal caregivers who in many instances become the sole financial supporter, acting single parent, and household decision maker in addition to being full time caregivers. Feelings of guilt, isolation, anger, and intimacy issues require discussions not suited to other family caregivers.

Our members have asked for support programs different from those run by disease or other caregiver organizations. They have asked for non-judgmental environments where they can have open and real conversations about their issues. They have found comfort in our support groups, our on-line forums, mentor programs, letter writing groups, respite weekends and conferences. They have therapeutically expressed themselves in our quarterly newsletter, Mainstay, in our new e-newsletter The Member Minute, and in articles published locally and nationally in other media.

Learn more about the work of our organization in the pages to follow. We invite your interest and/or support for WSA as we seek to expand our programs to truly marvelous but mostly unheralded men and women found in communities small and large throughout the United States, Canada and abroad. We welcome the relationship which will benefit your interests while supporting our cause!

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Did You Know . . .

Fact: Members

Note: For 21 years an annual supporting membership, including a subscription to Mainstay and other benefits was $25. Recently, the WSA Board voted to raise that cost by $5 to $30 in the U.S. and $35 elsewhere in North America. Overseas, Mainstay will only be available elecronically, in the members' area. Had we kept up to inflation the cost today would be $43.50.

Two-thirds of the members of the Well Spouse are under 65. About one-third are under age 45. We have members who are in their 20’s and 30’s, especially with ill spouses who have Traumatic Brain Injury, or MS. Let others who have “been there and done that” help you face the challenges of long-term caregiving.

WSA Stories

Playing the Canada Card: an American Caregiver's Experience

Playing the Canada Card:

an American Caregiver's Experience

My husband John’s disease erupted like fireworks in the afternoon of my New Year’s Eve birthday seven years ago. I went out for the afternoon and returned home to find a stranger who only looked like John, talking gibberish and tearing our house apart at the seams. The siege lasted 16 hours.I thought of survival, not of Canada. As it turned out, survival and Canada would become one and the same.

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