When Two Moments Arrive At Once

Business Insider Essay

Today, Gut Punch: A Caregiver’s Life After Normal officially launches.

And today, Business Insider published an adapted essay tied to the book.

It is a strange thing to hold two moments like this at once.

One feels public. The other feels deeply personal.

The public moment is obvious enough: a book release, an article, a chance for the message to travel a little farther.

The personal moment is harder to explain.

Because Gut Punch was never a book I intended to write. It came from trying to make sense of an experience that did not neatly end when treatment ended. It came from trying to understand why one person could reach remission while another remained stuck in the emotional aftermath of everything it took to get there.

So much of the attention during illness is focused, rightly, on survival. On scans. On treatment. On getting through. On the next appointment, the next result, the next hurdle ahead.

But for so many caregivers, the reckoning begins when the emergency finally eases.

That is the part I felt compelled to write about.

The quieter part.

The disorienting part.

The part where everyone around you wants to celebrate phenomenal news, and you celebrate, while some part of you still feels scrambled. Dissociated. Altered. Unable to simply step back into the life you had before.

That space can be hard to describe. It can also be lonely.

I think that is one reason so many caregivers struggle in silence. The world tends to understand the visible crisis. It does not always understand the private aftermath.

And that aftermath can carry confusion, numbness, fear, relief, gratitude, guilt, exhaustion, and a strange sense that while life has resumed, something inside you has not fully caught up.

That is what Gut Punch tries to name.

Not just caregiving during the storm.

But caregiving after the winds have calmed and the crisis subsides.

What it costs.

What it changes.

What lingers.

And what it takes to begin finding your footing again.

Who you were.

And who you are now.

If this book does anything meaningful, I hope it helps caregivers feel seen.

I hope it helps the people who love them understand them better.

And I hope it opens the door to more honest conversations about the emotional aftermath of crisis, especially for those who are often expected to stay composed, keep moving, and say very little about what the experience did to them.

So today, I am marking both moments with gratitude.

Gratitude for the article.

Gratitude for the book.

Gratitude for the people who encouraged me to keep me writing when I was not sure where it was leading.

Mostly, though, I feel hopeful.

Hopeful this message finds a few people that need it. Hopeful it helps put language to an experience many caregivers have carried without words. Hopeful that something born out of a very hard season might do some good.

Maybe that is what a launch day really is.

Not a finish line. Not a victory lap.

Just a moment when something deeply personal leaves your hands and begins to find its way into someone else’s.

And sometimes, that someone is your wife, who sat down and read the book for the first time last night.

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