New, revised and updated edition.

This book is for people who feel comfortable communicating through their hands and for those who wish to feel more ease in transmitting care through touch. It is for people whose responsibility or job or gift is to oversee or to help take care of the elderly and ill members of our society. It is for sons and daughters caring for aging parents with physical impairments that effect a role reversal in a lifetime of relating. It is for the courageous men and women who continue caring for spouses or mothers or fathers with dementia related diseases such as Alzheimer's after such a disease has robbed that loved one of the ability to remember the relationship he or she once shared with the caregiver. It is for companions and family members struggling and sometimes sacrificing to provide care for their loved ones at home.

This book is for doctors who have forgotten or never learned that touch is medicine and for those who are wise enough to know that a five-second hug, offered as a gesture of shared humanity, can often do more to assuage fear and anxiety than a five-minute lecture. It is for nurses and nursing assistants who, once trained in giving back rubs to hospitalized patients to reduce discomfort and induce sleep, in current care systems may be more often in contact with equipment than with people, or spend most of their time dispensing medicines and completing paperwork. It is for anyone who wishes to use touch more consciously and compassionately in relating to the elderly, the ill and the dying.

Dawn Nelson is an internationally recognised speaker, workshop leader and touch educator. Founder of Compassionate Touch for those in Later Life Stages, author of four books and co-producer of several award-winning videos, Dawn is also a meditation teacher and couples communication counsellor.

An ovarian cancer survivor, Dawn has three children and four grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Northern California and continues to be interested in helping to enhance the quality of life for the elderly, the ill and the dying.