Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway offers her insights on love, relationship and how to feel like a hot tomato with wisdom and humor. As our Love and Relationships columnist, this author, interfaith minister, wedding officiant and love coach covers the gamut between marriage and menopause, romance and dating, and sex and spirituality.

She is author of 12 books, including: The Goddess Pages: A Divine Guide to Finding Love and Happiness (Llewellyn, November 2008); Pet Prayers and Blessings: Ceremonies and Celebrations to Share with the Animals You Love (Sterling Books, September 2008); Wedding Goddess: A Guide to Turning Wedding Stress Into Wedding Bliss (Penguin, 2005); and Release the Seductress Within: How to Seduce A Man and Thrill You Both (Random House, 2004). She is also author of  the e-course Find Your Spiritual Soulmate.

Laurie Sue has a very active wedding ministry in New York, marrying couples of all faiths and backgrounds. And she is coach and creator of The Soulmate Project on Beliefnet.com. She is editor of Wedlok.com.

Prior to being ordained, she enjoyed a colorful career as a journalist writing for women. She was editor-in-chief of Playgirl and Single Living, and managing editor of Women’s News. She's written for NY Daily News, Denver Post, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Ladies' Homes Journal and Woman's World.

She returned to school - seminary school - at 40 to become an interfaith minister. It was there that she met her husband, Rev. Victor Fuhrman. She married her true love at 48.



Wisdom and Humorous Insights on
Love and Relationships
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Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway
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Editor's Note:  Rev. Laurie Sue's son, Alex, had a very special relationship with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.  His story was highlighted in Newsday this week. Don't miss it.   And here's an article the NY Post wrote about Alex and Mr. "S" when Alex was 12.
Barry Petersen Tells 'Jan's Story' and
His Story of Loving Two Women

I attended the most extraordinary book party in June, for the award-winning CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen, held in New York. 

It was to honor his inspiring and heartbreaking book about his wife Jan's sudden, early onset Alzheimer's and his battle in caring for her and coping as her condition declined.

The room at the Regency Hotel  was filled with a mix of 'Alzheimer widows' and CBS luminaries, including Steve Croft of 60 Minutes and Charles Osgood of Sunday Morning. I attended with my friend, Dr. Judy Kuriansky, who I first met almost three decades ago when she was on the local CBS evening news.

Barry opened the event with a video of his beloved wife (see below) and gave an inspiring, tear-filled talk about losing his wife Jan to this disease--and their experience today. Here are some of the things he shared and information provided in a press release for the book:

Barry and Jan Petersen had a fascinating life as foreign correspondents, and the kind of relationship that everyone dreams about.  They were best friends, confidants, and even after 20 years,  passionate lovers.  Jan's vivacious personality could fill a room with warmth and charm.

With no warning, Jan had her first episode - a terrifying three days during which she heard voices in the local market, couldn't make coherent sentences, and would turn the stove to high and walk away.

A frightened Barry called a California neurologist at 4 a.m. from their Tokyo home. Without even needing to see her, the doctor made the diagnosis - it was Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease.

"Perhaps it is good to have a name for a disease that will rob and cheat and steal and slowly suck the person you love away from you," Barry recalls in Jan's Story: Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer's. Jan was only 55, and they had no idea that the life they had worked so hard to create...was over.

"On a Monday we are ordinary people doing our jobs, raising our families, and fretting over mortgages or kids.  Then on Tuesday, with no more warning than a doctor's diagnosis, we are recruited without asking, into a job for which we have no preparation and facing sudden downward changes in our lives that we cannot predict," writes Petersen of the millions of caregivers faced with a loved one's diagnosis.

In the world of Alzheimer's caregivers, it is called...as one social worker puts it..."the dirty secret of the disease."  A secret about love lost and then facing the question of moving on. 

This secret is explored openly and frankly in Jan's Story.  Petersen, an Emmy award-winning CBS News correspondent, tells not only of losing the woman he loved intensely for 25 years, but also of the guilt and doubt over finding a new relationship as Jan slipped ever deeper into the mist of Alzheimer's. Still married and caring for Jan, what woman would want a relationship with him?  In the end, Barry found Mary Nell, who reached into the depths of her own compassion to become a friend and co-caregiver helping to oversee Jan in an assisted living facility.

Barry, Mary Nell and Jan are part of a rapidly escalating trend that he calls: the New American Family where one person is alive, but mentally gone.  The Alzheimer's Association warns that as America's Baby Boomers age, this type of family will number into the millions.   And each and every one will have to answer one question as Barry did:  Is finding a new person in my life right...or wrong?

Barry said at his book party that he was guided during this process by what Jan had taught him. "You must do your best to love what you have, in that moment, at that time. You must choose love. You must choose life."
With a grieving and guilty heart, Barry tentatively opened himself up to love once again. Jan's care would always be his first priority, but he needed to move on. He needed to choose life.

I have to admit, when you first hear about the great love story between Jan and Barry, AND THEN hear that he is now living with Mary Nell, it is a little odd.

We met Mary Nell at the book party and she was lovely and sincere. There were many "Alzheimer's widows" there who shared their stories about losing the loves of their lives to this disease. It was very touching and, even though the room was filled with CBS news stars, it was a down to earth event focused on love, loss and renewal.