Fay Martin, PhD, Author

I write to make sense of life.

Dementia Widow

Coming March 2026

Dementia Widow is a raw, unflinching memoir of love, loss, and survival. A story of Fay Martin’s journey through fifteen years of dementia caregiving for her husband and life after. An intimate companion for caregivers who feel invisible, exhausted, and alone.

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Latest

Blog
Coercive Control, MAID and Dementia
Coercive Control, MAID and Dementia

The issue of whether mental health, including dementia, is eligible for advance request for MAiD is coming back to parliament for decision in spring '27, but discussion should be included in considering Bill C-16 about coercive control, the abuse of power in intimate relationships. I raise many questions; no answers. 

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Senior abuse
Senior abuse

Bill C-16, now before the federal government, intends to protect people 'in relationships of trust and dependence', with an eye to Intimate Partner Violence. Here I suggest it should also include seniors who are nowhere else specifically protected, even though, i argue, they are potentially more vulnerable than children.

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The Fear of Death
The Fear of Death

Dr. Sally Chivers says what we fear determines how we see the world. Because we fear death, we walk blindly, trepidatiously, into an inevitable 'passing' (to use the word that has replaced 'died', even as we don't talk about the journey).

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Another conversation on the SPA-LTC podcast
Another conversation on the SPA-LTC podcast

I visited with the hosts of the Strengthening a Palliative Approach to Long-Term Care project podcast to discuss my visit to Green Care Farms in the Netherlands.

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About Fay

Fay Martin, MSW, PhD, spent fifteen years as wife-turned-caregiver for her husband as dementia reshaped their lives. Dementia Widow invites readers into the hidden world of spousal caregiving - its love, loss, exhaustion, invisibility, and on-going quest to remain a person with identity and agency. Both deeply personal and broadly relevant, her story offers comfort to caregivers and insight for those who serve them.

Fay has written about people all her life. Mostly about people in difficult circumstances, because she spent decades as a social worker toiling in the underbelly of our world. She brings the energy of a git- ‘er-done organizer and activist. And a sprightly, slightly irreverent and oddly humorous attitude to an in-depth examination of what makes people do what they do in the circumstances in which they find themselves.

Martin’s writing spans her life as a farm kid in the West, community organizing in outport Newfoundland in the 1960s, working with those organizing other marginalized groups in the early 1970s, professional social work in various settings through the 1980s, a mid-life PhD on transitions to adulthood from child welfare, a decade of birthing and nurturing a children’s service agency in Haliburton County, and a post-retirement life impacting homelessness, particularly the rural and remote variation.

Martin undertook a two-year MFA (University of King’s College spring 2023) to give her the support and guidance she needed to persevere through writing this memoir.

She lives in Haliburton County with two slightly bent cats and a circle of friends who keep her honest, occasionally troublesome, and frequently useful.

You can email Fay at fay@faymartin.ca and follow her on LinkedIn.