Alzheimer's Awareness Month 2025: Meet Arabella

Arabella Bengson starts each day in her Comox Valley “Eden” by greeting the sunrise through a practice of Chi-Kung (or Chi-Gong) in her indoor garden room.

“Chi Kung focuses on your breathing,” Arabella says. “There is a lot of visualization and easy movements for health and healing. I consider this my first daily gift from the Universe, and I look for presents throughout my day from that first gift of the sunrise.”

However, reaching this outlook took time and patience – a journey that started in 2015, when she was first diagnosed with a Traumatic Brain Injury soon after losing her husband. The following year, after experiencing forgetfulness, difficulties expressing herself in speech and writing and losing much of her brain’s executive functions, Arabella was diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI).

“I had always lived by my wits,” Arabella explains. “So, I started to wonder whether life would be enough without my executive functions.”

It was only after she began meeting people who had been living with dementia for over a decade or two, that she realized dementia has several faces. She saw people living well and productively with dementia, a stark contrast to what her once brilliant and dynamic father presented several years before he passed away from the disease.

Now, Arabella maintains her physical and mental functioning. She finds “presents” in everything she does. A world traveler, researcher, dragon boater, gardener and nature lover, she has continued to live a full and busy life.

Although Arabella’s optimism has been prevalent throughout her life, she greatly attributes her positive outlook to the community she has stayed connected to after her diagnosis. She actively participates in Toastmasters International and has found joy in the excursions and activities – especially dragon boating – planned by the Comox Valley Head Injury Society.

Since turning to the Alzheimer Society of B.C. for guidance, she has become an advocate and valued partner, a journey started by attending in-person Minds in Motion® sessions, a fitness and social program for people living with any form of early-stage dementia.

“The exercises were excellent,” Arabella says of the program, which she continued to participate in online while living in Mexico during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. “The conversations were often fun and brain boosting.”

In 2023, Arabella was invited to speak at an in-person panel discussion for Alzheimer Society of B.C. staff members. There, she met two other lived experience partners who have been living with dementia for years. Amazed by their mental and physical health, she asked what they did, what they ate and how they remained so engaged.

“One said, ‘I take it one day at a time,’” Arabella remembers. “The other, a former nurse, continued to live an engaged life and contribute in many ways.”

Since turning 80 in August of 2024, Arabella has come to realize the privilege of a long, healthy life. She creates each day with intention, which helps her manage her symptoms. She prioritizes her health, records lessons and consultations with specialists on her phone to revisit, makes lists of tasks she would like to accomplish and counts the number of grocery bags she puts in her car, so she can remember to bring them up to her fridge. She builds her life around her personal goal of inspiring people, both young and old, affected by dementia or not, to live a full life. And as she greets the sunrise each day, she continues to look for those presents. 

“What could they be today?” she asks herself. “More joy from connecting with friends and family? More peace from meditation? More brainstorming and learning and research showing dementia may not mean the end of life, but the beginning journey of hope?”

Arabella’s journey of hope continues as she plans her next travel adventure, what summer will look like in her garden and as she continues to research how to live well with dementia.

“Serenity and simple joys are more precious to us now than they were before,” she says. “And such is the blessing I wish upon you all.”