Held in the Vanishing is an intimate memoir about caring for your parents who have different forms of dementia while balancing marriage, parenting, work, and grief. What inspired you to share your family’s experiences with readers?

Held in the Vanishing is truly an intimate sharing of my family’s story. I really didn’t hold anything back. Each chapter—or, rather, each vignette—began as a journal entry or vivid memory from the past six years. So when pen first hit paper, I wasn’t writing for anyone other than myself.

Journaling is an outlet for me. It’s a safe place to release whatever my mind, body, and soul are carrying. I don’t have to worry about whether any of it makes sense because it’s just for me. But the power of journaling comes when I see the words take shape on the page. Suddenly I can encounter an experience or emotion almost as if I’ve stepped onto a balcony and am looking down upon it. I can see more of it—objectively, but still in its raw form. Writing has a way of unconcealing meaning I couldn’t see before, or disclosing a perspective that wasn’t available to me while I was in the thick of the experience.

And I don’t just write in my journal. I go back and reread what I’ve written. I reflect on it. I learn from it. I grow from it.

Over time, as I reread these entries, I began to see a story taking shape—my story. And I began to wonder whether other people living through similar grief, hardship, and loss might see something of themselves in it.

So one weekend, I sat down and started stitching the entries together.

After I finished my first draft, I gave it to my neighbor, who works for a Denver-based nonprofit providing senior living and care, and asked her whether she thought it was worth sharing. Her response was a resounding yes: other people needed to read this story.

That’s when I decided to publish it.

My hope is that Held in the Vanishing helps caregivers feel less alone in this God-awful journey. I also hope people who love or know caregivers come away with a better understanding of what caregiving can ask of a person. It’s a chapter of life that isn’t understood well enough. It isn’t honored or respected enough. And it is terribly under-resourced, which only adds to the hardship of living it.

Maybe telling my story this openly and vulnerably can bring a little more light to that.

But more than anything, I want people experiencing this kind of loss and grief to recognize themselves somewhere in these pages and know they aren’t alone—not in what they think, not in what they feel, and not in the impossible decisions they sometimes have to make.

You begin by showing your parents as vibrant people within a multigenerational household. Why was it important to establish who they were before dementia?

Knowing who my parents are is integral to knowing who I am.

I never wanted this story to be about dementia. It’s more about what dementia steals from us—what it’s stealing from my parents and how the life we shared is being stolen. It’s also about how it shapes and changes us.

The opening chapter paints a picture of the life we built together because readers need to understand what we had to understand what is being lost—and what continues to change. We had a beautifully shared life—my parents, my husband, my son, and me. It was everything I had ever wanted. That life deserves to be remembered, and my parents deserve to be known not just as two people living with dementia, but as the vibrant, funny, loving people they are.

That’s one of the hardest things about this kind of loss: remembering who my parents have always been while continuing to discover who they are becoming—and who I am becoming.

You write honestly about anger, resentment, exhaustion, and guilt. Why was it important not to soften those emotions?

These are real emotions that come with caregiving. We’re not given the option to soften them.

My story is real. There’s nothing made up or embellished. If I had softened the anger, resentment, exhaustion, or guilt, I wouldn’t have been authentic with myself or with my readers—especially other caregivers who know these emotions all too well.

How could they see themselves in my story if I wasn’t willing to let them see all of me?

I think there’s something important in acknowledging that we can feel anger and resentment and still love deeply. We can be exhausted and still show up. We can question our decisions and still be doing the best we know how to do. Those emotions aren’t evidence that we’re failing at caregiving. They’re part of being human while doing something extraordinarily hard.

What do you hope caregivers recognize about themselves when they read your story?

I hope caregivers recognize that they are living an impossibly hard life and that it’s ok to break down. It’s ok to realize that our love for the people we’re caring for can change colors. Sometimes it’s gray and dull. Sometimes it’s black and blue. Sometimes it’s red and fiery. And that’s ok.

As caregivers, we get to feel whatever we feel. And that can include every emotion imaginable—guilt, shame, resentment, anger, and even hate. None of those feelings means we don’t love deeply.

My story isn’t intended to offer guidance or advice, and I certainly don’t want it to be preachy. But through journaling and the hard inner work I did along the way, I learned how to hold my parents while also learning to hold myself.

If my story can offer another caregiver even a glimmer of hope or reassurance that whatever they’re feeling, it’s ok—that they’re ok—then I’ll feel good about having shared it.

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