When The Road Ends, Love Builds A New One
When a devastating phone call changes everything, one woman must find the strength to rebuild her life—and her family—through love, resilience, and unwavering hope. In When the Road Ends: Love Builds a New One, Nansie Chapman Douglas shares a deeply moving true story of caregiving, heartbreak, healing, and personal transformation after her brother suffers a catastrophic brain injury overseas. Honest, inspiring, and emotionally powerful, this memoir offers comfort to caregivers, families, and anyone facing life’s unexpected turns. Complete with heartfelt reflections and “Lessons Learned” at the end of each chapter, this unforgettable book reminds readers that even when the road ends, love can lead the way forward.
Reviews
Marcy Winograd’s Reviews
When The Road Ends, Love Builds A New One
A Memoir of Love, Loss and Enlightenment
I read this 159-page book in just one night because I could not put it down, so captivated by the story, as well as the imagery of “The city lights shimmered below like stars spilled across the earth.” Nansie’s care for her brain-injured brother is a testament to sibling love and tenacity in the face of monumental challenges when her brother “looked like he had been drugged into silence.” This page-turner is for care-givers everywhere, and for those “bringing light to someone’s darkness” or those looking for that glimmer of light.
A memoir of love, loss, and enlightenment, “When The Road Ends-Love Builds A New One” comes sprinkled with life lessons at the end of each chapter, with statements such as “Uncertainty is its own kind of trauma” and “Emotional distance often grows in silence.”
The author provides context for the sister-brother bond, taking us back to her childhood relationship with an older brother John who was her translator before she could talk, as well as her protector and co-conspirator. When it’s Nansie’s turn to be the protector, when John barely survives a car crash in Borneo, the reader marvels at Nansie’s patience and can-do spirit, as she–the working woman with a talent for design, already parenting her husband’s three teenage boys– welcomes her brother John into their home, knowing his frustration with walking, dressing and eating can send him spiraling, cursing the life that curses him.
With raw honesty and self-awareness, Nansie gives us a rare glimpse into what it means to care as a care-taker, first for a dear brother but ultimately for oneself, for the inner child forced to grow up too fast, only to become immersed in a household with Vodka straights and too much debt. “I kept trying to locate the origin of the emptiness; pin it on something, someone. But it kept moving. It was like chasing fog,” she writes as she begins her journey of self-discovery with kittens–tiny tornadoes–to keep her company on the new road that beckons. A beautiful book–a breezy read–a story that finds you nodding in recognition at the feelings, conflicts and struggles that resonate, both large and small, in all our lives.