Belinda Hogg, Maternal Memory (PEOPLE 2025)

My Mum lives in a memory care home, so do many other Mums. They've become family to me. Sitting there I look over with my camera towards Margaret, who I describe as the matriarch of the community. Her face is so bright and joyful when children are around, even when they aren't real. The baby doll didn't have 'shoes' on and she had been nursing it in her lap and holding its tiny feet making sure it was warm. Aren't memories and the brain a strange concept? Is this implicit memory, the type of memory that operates without conscious awareness, using those maternal skills and feelings from all those years ago? Whatever it is and however it happens, it gives her a lot of joy.

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