It’s been a number of years now since my wife Bernie developed breast cancer, had a mastectomy, and underwent chemotherapy. What an experience! It all happened so suddenly—we hardly had time to prepare ourselves. It all affected us so completely—Bernie’s discomfort and pain, our anxieties and fears, our changed daily routines, our reversed roles, on and on.
We had support from friends, which meant a lot. Our family rallied to help us. Bernie and I grew closer and learned some life—changing lessons. Still, it was a harrowing experience.
Once we were through the hardest part, I decided to share some of what we had learned with others as a way of adding meaning to what had happened. It became a video entitled The Grit and Grace of Being a Caregiver: Maintaining Your Balance as You Care for Others. A couple of years later a publishing house turned this audiovisual into print form as The Caregiver’s Book: Caring for Another, Caring for Yourself.
The book did pretty well and many people wrote or called me after reading it. But I was never entirely happy with what this publisher did with my ideas, my words, and my photographs. They insisted on adding an emphasis that didn’t entirely ring true to me. They chose certain of my photographs that I would not have chosen and placed them in sections that did not always make sense to me. And I never liked the graphic design they gave this book—it was quite ordinary.
Two years ago the publisher took the book out of print and I gained all rights to it. While I wanted to re-do it as a Willowgreen Publishing offering right away, I could not. It’s a rather expensive book to print, with full-color photography throughout. But last summer I said to myself, “It’s now or never.” So I went back over the text, making it truer to my own voice. I kept some of the old photos, added new ones, and doubled the total number of photographs. I hired a graphic artist and gave her this mandate: “Create a fresh, inviting, contemporary look.”
So we’ve now released the second edition—the Willowgreen edition—of The Caregiver’s Book: Caring for Another, Caring for Yourself. I’m pleased that it finally looks and feels just right. I thought you might like to have a look inside it. Click here and you can see and read two of the chapters.
Click here if you’d like to learn more about ordering The Caregiver’s Book. Remember that quantity discounts begin with as few as six copies.
