Mental Illness Advocate Maurice J. Jordan to be Featured on Close Up Radio

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, March 28, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- “I have always dealt with my fears with humor,” asserts our guest Maurice J. Jordan. For the past seven years, Maurice has endured the challenges of being a caregiver to his wife Teresita “Tessie” Adriano-Jordan who has dementia and seeks to inspire others. This is his story.

Maurice J. Jordan is an aspiring speaker who seeks to share with others about mental illness, especially dementia. “I want to use my skills and abilities to bring to the forefront, by being a speaker, to talk about mental illness and to bring more awareness,” corroborates Maurice.

Tessie has been suffering from dementia for seven years. As a full-time caregiver, he is most proud that he can take care of his wife.

For this show, Maurice will offer further details about Tessie, and her life up until her beginnings with dementia.

Teresita “Tessie” Adriano-Jordan was born in Manilla, Philippines and raised nearby in Makati, outside of Manilla. In her young adult years, she worked for Occidental Petroleum. She had her first marriage at a young age while still living in the Philippines. After a separation, Tessie came to the United States with her 5 year old son Jonathan. As most of her family was already in the United States, the decision was an easy one to make that move to America.

When she arrived in the United States, she first lived in Virginia where she met her second husband. Later, she moved to Hanover, Pennsylvania, where she established a successful travel agency. Tessie was married to her second husband for twelve years until they separated. Eventually, she sold the travel agency, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1997, where she found employment at the Hilcrest Country Club. A few years later, Maurice also found employment at the Hillcrest Country Club as an Executive Sous Chef, in response to a request from a friend who was the Executive Chef at that Country Club. The Hillcrest Country Club is where Tessie and Maurice met.

Throughout the duration of their relationship. Maurice and Tessie both loved to travel. Tessie would plan all the trips as a result of her experience as a travel agent. In March 2003, Maurice proposed to Tessie at Machu Picchu. They were officially married on August 15th, 2004. Married life was a unique dynamic as she was the one who managed the bills, and handled all finances, while Maurice was the one who cooked the meals at home and worked over fifty hours a week because of his experience as a chef.

Maurice started noticing early signs of dementia in his wife back in 2017, about three months before her retirement. She began acting strangely in their kitchen, a place where she doesn’t normally spend time. Also, she started speaking her first language of Tagalog, as she was originally from the Philippines. She was officially diagnosed a year later. Eventually, she stopped speaking all together. However, Maurice was determined to mitigate the effects of her dementia by keeping her mind and body active.

“You need to have consistency with your spouse or loved one when taking care of them,” asserts Maurice. “Consistency is the key because when she comes home from her daycare a. k. a. “Country Club”, I keep her in that same mode. For instance, I smile, sing, and dance with her as we did before she attended the daycare. It also doesn’t make sense to argue with them. You need to figure out what they are intending to say or do, especially when they act feisty. In the case of my wife, I just smile at her and within seconds, she smiles back. Even after seven years, I can still bathe her, color, trim her hair, and do her make up with almost very little pushback at all.”

Besides adult day care, Maurice takes his wife on many additional outings. He once took her to an adult prom in Boston, where they were pronounced King and Queen. He also re-proposed to her at Yosemite. Their song My Girl, written by Smokey Robinson, became their anthem for when Tessie heard the beginning she would say, “We know him!”, although she couldn’t think of his name, Maurice knew who she meant. “I try to keep life the way it was,” declares Maurice.

With his current experience, amazing backstory, along with a seventeen-year membership, and having made hundreds of speeches as a Toastmaster, he is the ideal candidate to discuss mental illness and dementia – in an informative, yet entertaining way.

“Let them be in the driver’s seat, but steer the course,” concludes Maurice.

Close Up Radio will feature Maurice J. Jordan in an interview with Doug Llewelyn on Monday April 1st at 1pm Eastern

Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio

If you have any questions for our guest, please call (347) 996-3389

For more information, please visit his pages on Facebook and LinkedIn

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
+1 631-850-3314
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