Léonie Rosenstiel

Léonie Rosenstiel’s passion for helping people navigate the maze of the elder care system began when she watched several of her relatives become incapacitated. She has spent over 19 years researching the problems within the system in order to help herself and her clients create positive outcomes.

Léonie regularly coaches and consults with individuals and families. She has interviewed scores of attorneys, judges, “professional” guardians and caregivers to discover both the problems and the possible solutions to the difficulties you face.

She is the author of Protecting Mama: Surviving the Legal Guardianship Swamp. She also created the Dayspring Empowerment Summit and the Dayspring Empowerment Course.

The reason Léonie is so passionate about empowering others is that she sometimes felt powerless when trying to help her own relatives.

Her beloved grand-aunt, whose family could no longer care for her, was placed in an institution.

Her dearly-loved grandmother died several days after a hip fracture, never seeming to have regained full mental function after her anesthesia.

Another grand-aunt to whom Léonie had been close spent seven years as a quadriplegic. She had been diagnosed as being in a light coma after a run-in with an unqualified anesthetist. Léonie’s father served as her guardian and conservator.

While working as a writer, Léonie witnessed the increasing incapacity of a world-renowned musical figure. She chronicled the horrifying picture of former assistants controlling and manipulating their employer in the final section of her book, Nadia Boulanger: A Life in Music (W. W. Norton).

More recently, Léonie participated directly in the “mental incapacity” journeys of the two people closest to her. Her husband passed away in 2007 of Atypical Parkinson’s Disease. One of its most upsetting symptoms is dementia.

At the same time, Léonie’s mother was on a similar journey. Her mother’s diagnoses varied, but always included the dreaded word, “dementia.” The official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was only made after her mother passed away. Her mother’s struggle (after the legal judgement of incapacity) lasted almost nine years.

As part of a vow to her mother to try to remedy the situation, Léonie embarked on the work that produced both the book, Protecting Mama: Surviving the Legal Guardianship Swamp, and its prequel (not yet titled), scheduled for release in late 2022, (both published by Calumet Editions). She also created the programs and services that Dayspring offers, to help others in similar situations.