By email · Free · Seven days

Seven small letters, then quiet.

A patient companion for the long present tense of caring for a parent, in your inbox.

I'm Margaret. I wrote a journal for the adult children doing this alone — the ones answering the phone calls from the doctor and the insurance company and the sibling who lives a thousand miles away, and then trying to go back to their own kitchen at the end of the day. I also wrote a smaller thing — seven short letters, one a day for a week — for the people who aren't ready to journal yet, or who would rather be written to than write back.

These letters are free. There are exactly seven of them. After that they stop. No newsletter, no upsells, no firehose. No script about remembering to breathe.

If you'd like them, leave your email below. The first one arrives within a few minutes.

I'd like to know who I'm writing to.

Reply to any letter and it reaches a real person — me. I read every one. I won't always have something useful to say.

Unsubscribe anytime; the link is in every email.

Thank you for writing in.

Day 0 should land in your inbox within a few minutes. If it doesn't, check your spam folder and mark it "not spam" so the rest find their way to you. The next six arrive once a day for the following week, then they stop.

— Margaret

What the seven are

  1. A patient companion, for whenever this is. Who I am and what this isn't.
  2. The first time you were the parent. The role reversal nobody warned you about.
  3. The long present tense. Why caregiving has no shape like grief does.
  4. The witnesses who can't be witnesses. Why the people in the room can't see what's in the room.
  5. The room with the fluorescent lights. The hospital, the rehab, the nursing home — and you.
  6. The parts you can't say out loud. Resentment, exhaustion, wishing this would end, and what to do with those.
  7. What you have become. Who's still here when this stops.

Seven letters, then quiet. The book is a longer companion if these land.