March 5, 2025
Lori’s Journey of Recovery and Resilience
A life-changing health scare reshaped Lori Alford’s perspective on health, work, and well-being.
In this Senior Living Minute, Lori Alford shares her deeply personal journey after discovering a brain aneurysm in 2019. During recovery, she experienced memory struggles, cognitive fatigue, and fear—especially after spending 25 years working in senior living.
Learn how prioritizing sleep and wellness helped Lori regain control of her health and why she now advocates for self-care over hustle culture.
Transcript: Lori’s Journey of Recovery and Resilience
In October 2019, I found out that I had an aneurysm at the base of my brain.
Through that journey, I remember knowing the words but being unable to say them. My short-term memory was unreliable, and my brain hurt in ways that are impossible to describe—unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
What scared me most, though, was the thought of becoming like one of my memory care residents. After working in senior housing for 25 years, that realization hit hard. That’s when I decided to take control of my health and well-being.
I used to pride myself on overworking—first in the office, last to leave, always saying, ‘I’ll sleep when I die.’ But during recovery, I had to learn to sleep again—because sleep is when your body heals. It resets your brain, and I felt the difference.
Now, I am an advocate for getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night. And I can say with certainty—it works far better than my old habits ever did.