I know you’ve got questions, like:
Why am I getting this today?
Five years ago today, my mother Nina died, after a ten-year bout with Alzheimer’s Disease. A year later, I published this piece in the New York Times about her passing, and an unexpected surprise that it brought. Based on that piece’s reception it seemed a logical leap to write a book about my family’s Alzheimer’s journey, from my perspective as the long-distance sibling. I figured writing it would be the hard part. Surely, selling the book would be doable, now that I knew how many people connected with that article and desperately wanted more conversation on the topic.
It turns out, the publishing world wasn’t circling for my book. I pitched, repitched, recast, and rethought it, looking to make it fit an audience or appeal to agents or have the right hook for publishers or social media. Meanwhile all the tweaking was changing the story I wanted to tell, and as time went by I wasn’t so sure I was ready to have it out there anyway. So, I put the book on a shelf.
But it didn’t stay there. As I got more distance from the experience, I found myself talking about it more, not less. Everything I had written about was resurfacing in conversations with friends and strangers, in different ways than I had imagined. I’d send people a chapter here and there when it seemed like it might help them get through the moment with some insight or advice or humor.
I also connected with the Alzheimer’s community, joining the committee for our community’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s, interviewing people for articles here and there to share a glimpse of their lives and raise awareness. I learned about advances in research, resources I wish I’d known about, things I wish we’d done differently and things we’d done pretty darned well. I started leaning back into this part of my life that had been so sucky and lonely.
And your point is?
This is about everything that went in to that book on the shelf—Nina and Alzheimer’s and how families navigate the disease. It’s about the latest research and resources. But it’s also about mothers, kids, siblings, families, loss, growth, friendships, etc… The things that could fit in this box are infinite; and unlike Pandora’s box, all the scary things that leap out get less scary and kind of funny when exposed to light.
There will be some overlap with Bring It! and Racerex—a recipe here and there; lessons and meaningful experiences that came through skiing and sport; parenting stories, kid stories, stories about growing up and getting old with any shred of humor, grace and wisdom. The goal is to keep each post short enough to get through during coffee, light enough to keep you smiling, but substantial enough to give you something useful for the effort.
What the @%&* is a Substack anyway?
Good question. Despite reading about it and listening to podcasts on it, I still don’t really know much about Substack. Basically, it is a newsletter that gets delivered, in its entirety, to your inbox. There is no “read more…” link to click, unless you want to go clicking through any of the tangents—and there will be plenty of those. It is a blogless way to share my writing to a broader community about a topic that I care a lot about and a disease that affects wayyyy too many people—like, more than six million people in this country, millions more friends, family and caregivers. Pretty much everyone in the trenches feels isolated and alone. That’s messed up. If this platform helps reach them and change that, I’m all in.
Did I mention it’s free? Honestly, they had me at free. We can learn about it together, for free. For now. Eventually, there will be a pay option, but it will always be just that—an option.
So now what?
You’re going to get one post per week, on Wednesdays because everyone starts to feel a little lighter on Hump Day.
You can unsubscribe from Losing the Mothership now or at anytime. If you do, you will still get Racer eX and/or Bring It! like always. But I hope you stay with me, to join the conversation, or to help grow the community by sharing this newsletter with someone who could use it. Every post will have an easy button like this one…
…and a subscribe button like the one at the bottom. But before that, there’s this:
A Shout Out to my Aunt Diane (on right with Nina), who turns 90 tomorrow and just welcomed her seventh great grandchild. She and Nina taught me a lot about the art of aprés ski, about gathering family and about celebrating life. Pop some champagne for Diane!