When Someone You Love Has Dementia

Support for care partners and families — Milwaukee, Whitefish Bay & online across Wisconsin

You corrected them again today. You didn't mean to — it just came out, the way it does when someone you've known your whole life insists on something that isn't true. Then came the argument, then the guilt, then the quiet question you keep circling back to at night: am I doing any of this right?

Nobody hands you a manual when someone you love is diagnosed with dementia. You're grieving a person who is still here, learning a disease on the fly, and making medical, legal, and daily-life decisions you never expected to make — usually while everyone asks how they're doing, and no one asks about you.

Why families work with Victoria

Victoria Hagan, MA, LPC-IT isn't a generalist who occasionally sees caregivers. She trained in neuropsychology at a Milwaukee hospital and helped build a hospital brain health clinic — the place families land when testing confirms what they feared. She has sat with hundreds of families on the day the diagnosis became real. And she has been on your side of it too: her own family was touched by dementia, and she remembers exactly what it meant to have someone explain what was happening and what to do next.

That's the work she brings to Shoreside: helping you understand your person's specific dementia — not dementia in general — so the disease stops being a stranger in your house.

What working together looks like

• A free 15-minute consult first. You tell Victoria what's happening, she tells you honestly whether she can help.
• She meets your person, not just the paperwork. When it's possible, Victoria spends about an hour with the family member who has the diagnosis — their history, their story — and has a separate conversation with you. Putting those two pictures together shows what your family actually needs.
• You learn what's coming. Psychoeducation about the specific type of dementia and its likely progression, so changes arrive as things you prepared for instead of ambushes. Surprise is what makes hard days traumatic; knowing what's next is a kind of comfort.
• You learn skills that change the daily reality. Joining your person in their reality instead of arguing them back into yours. Breaking tasks — showering, appointments, meals — into one step at a time, because a whole task is more than a changing memory can hold. Families consistently describe the same result: a calmer home.
• The practical list gets handled. Healthcare and financial power of attorney, planning conversations while your person can still participate in them, what to set up before you need it.
• Your grief gets a place to go. There will be sadness, anger, and guilt — for you and for them. That's not a failure of coping. It's the honest response to a life changing dramatically, and it deserves real support.

Questions families ask

"Isn't it lying, to go along with what they believe?"
It feels that way at first. Think of playing pretend with a child — when the spoon becomes a doll, you don't stop the game to correct the record. Joining your person's reality isn't deception; it's meeting them where their brain actually is. Their whole life, their brain told them what was real. It still does. Arguing with it doesn't restore your reality — it just leaves both of you upset.

"Should the person with dementia be in therapy, or me?"
Usually you. Victoria will involve your family member where it's possible and useful, but as dementia progresses, the person who most needs tools, information, and support is the one doing the caring. Keeping you steady is what keeps the whole system working.

"We're not in crisis yet. Is it too early?"
Early is the best time. Plans made calmly, before the hard stage arrives, are the ones that hold.

Worth knowing: if your concern is protecting your own memory as you age — or you've been told you have mild cognitive impairment — Victoria also runs a structured, evidence-based program for that. Read about brain health work here →

Who you'd work with

Victoria Hagan, MA, LPC-IT

Trained in neuropsychology and helped build a hospital brain health clinic in Milwaukee. Works with adults and older adults, care partners, and families navigating dementia — with the perspective of someone whose own family has walked this road. She'll tell you it's the first time she's understood the saying: do what you love and you never work a day in your life.

Openings now

Meet Victoria →