While caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s disease, my friend Andrea used to host “happy hour” every Wednesday night for friends and neighbors at her Westlake Village home. Andrea’s mom, Fran, attended happy hour too. Fran shared her artwork with visitors and thrived on the interaction with others. Andrea began happy hour to give her mom the gift of socialization. What happened next was a bit of destiny. Frequently during those weekly gatherings, after Fran had gone to the den to rest, topics of caregiving came up. The group of us had rich conversations about the things we never thought we’d be doing for a loved one, the guilt associated with placing a loved one in a facility and the lessons we learned along the way that could be of help to others. It was a special thing Andrea did on many fronts. In the act of helping her mother, she created her own support group. Unintentionally, this group began educating one another on their own insights about caregiving. But Andrea...