About me
I’m Nicole. I’ve stood where you’re standing.
If you’re here because caring for a parent has become more complicated than anyone prepared you for, I’m glad you found your way here.
My story
I didn't set out to write books for caregivers. I wrote the first one because I needed it and couldn't find it.
I cared for both of my parents. My mother first, through cancer. Then my father, for four years after she was gone — a man who had just lost his wife of a lifetime, and who wanted to go on living the way he always had, in the house they'd shared.
The hardest part was never the practical side. It was the conversations. On the days he told me he was fine — and I'd hear the thing underneath it, the part he wasn't saying. Then I'd have to decide what to do with what I'd noticed.
We never fought about it. I'd raise something carefully, and if the answer was no, that was his answer — it was his life, and he was entitled to run it. Sometimes I'd come back to it another day, still hoping to keep him safe. And when the answer stayed no, I'd lie awake worrying about him anyway. That's the part nobody tells you: that you can do it right, respect every choice, and still carry the worry.
My father died at home, in the house he never wanted to leave. That was his choice, and I had made my peace with it long before — not by talking myself into it, but because his right to decide was never in question for me. What I had to learn was how to live alongside the worry, and how to keep showing up even when I didn't agree.
These are the books I wish someone had handed me at the beginning.
Why these books
There is no shortage of books about aging parents. Most are written by doctors and geriatric specialists, and many are excellent. But at two in the morning, what I needed wasn't another chapter on the stages of decline. I needed someone to tell me what to say on Sunday, when I sat down across from my father and tried, again, to talk about the driving.
That's the book I write. Warm, practical, plain-spoken — the friend who's been through it, not the specialist behind the desk. Words you can actually use, and honesty about the parts nobody warns you about: the worry that doesn't lift, the sibling who doesn't see it, the day you accept a choice you'd never make yourself. And the guilt — which, more often than not, was never yours to carry.
I'm not a doctor, and I'll always tell you when something belongs with your parent's physician, an elder-law attorney, or a professional assessor. But between those appointments there is a great deal of life — and that's where these books live.
Take what helps.
The books are here when you want the whole picture. The free pack is here if it's tonight that's the problem.