@johndoer sent me. :-)
Thanks for sharing such an emotional time with us. I think it does us good to share - and it also gives other insight into what you're experiencing.

Strangely, one of my romantic novellas that I shared recently on Steemit - Friendship on Fire (hosted by dbooks) - features a 50-something woman whose going through a trauma-induced dementia of sorts. Thankfully, in this novella, she manages to find some healing and regain some of what she had lost - but age-related dementia often has no relief in this manner.

Anyway, I really stopped by to encourage you to keep up the good work. I was told when I first got on here that it really takes 4-6 months (reinvesting everything earned) to get established. I celebrate month #5 today and I can really confirm this is true!

Things you can do to help yourself:

1. post every day without fail (2-3 posts daily, if you can).
2. find contests to enter - for many weeks, that was my most reliable source of income here on Steemit.
3. look for SBI - steem basic income - shares to win - that's a longer-term reward. If you can, sponsor a couple of shares for someone else as that gives you shares as well.
4. join a discord group - yeah, another client, another chat box to monitor, but I've had more support off joining one of those than I ever had finding Facebook groups for Steemit (though there are some good groups.)
5. Engage with others - find plenty of posts to comment on. Eventually people will start looking at what you've got to offer.

Good luck!
(I've done a Steemit for Newbs series in the past - once I've finished my Stonehenge serialization, I will redo that one for dbooks...)