International Day of Friendship
Today, July 30th, is the International Day of Friendship. Throughout July we’ve made a series of blog posts aimed at friends of people living with dementia, to help them navigate the changes they may see in their friend, and in their friendship as the condition progresses. Friends play an important role in our social lives and overall wellbeing. We hope that the resources shared over this past month help to encourage friends of people living with dementia to remain active in these friendships and not turn away from the potential discomfort of watching their friend live with dementia.
In addition to the posts made this month we would also like to highlight a few resources that friends of people living with dementia may benefit from:
Communicating with people living with dementia: This page offers readers a chance to understand how dementia affects communication and learn some useful tips and strategies for conversations with people living with dementia as they progress through the stages of the disease. There are also links to more information on communication at the bottom of the page.
Thank you for your patience – companion cards: These cards can be used by companions of people living with dementia to discreetly communicate with service providers and customer service personnel and ask for extra time and patience in navigating the interaction.
Supporting a Friend with Dementia: This blog post from July of 2025 provides fantastic practical tips for supporting a friend with dementia so you can be there when it matters most.
Video series: Let Us Help You Understand: If a friend is living with dementia you’ll likely have many questions about how it impacts their day to day life. While the experience of living with dementia will be unique to each individual, this video series can help give you a glimpse into the way people experience symptoms and what they do to compensate for their changing abilities.
Staying Connected: This page is aimed at long distance care partners, but the advice is transferable to friends of people living with dementia. Here you’ll find tips for staying in touch with a person living with dementia from a distance and forming a supportive network for them.
Dementia Friendly Canada: Here you’ll find a collection of text and video resources curated by the Dementia Friendly Canada project. You’ll find tip sheets on being a dementia friend, dementia friendly phone calls, dementia friendly interactions, and more.
Ambiguous Loss and Grief in Dementia: People living with dementia, their care partners and friends all experience grief throughout the progression of the condition. Ambiguous loss is the set of feelings commonly experienced while grieving over the person with dementia long before they die. This document helps readers to understand what ambiguous loss is and how they can process these complex emotions.