By Erin Wood
Caregivers of those facing serious illnesses and entering hospice during the pandemic are especially vulnerable and threadbare, and need messages of courage and peace. Little Rock author Jennifer A. O’Brien has been spending her time in isolation doing all she can to ensure encouraging messages are available and received, providing workshops, creating resources, and connecting caregivers throughout this time of social distancing.
In her advocacy work as well as in her book—The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal—O’Brien supports those facing death as well as normalizing and encouraging dialogue about end of life for all of us. The dispatches she shares come from a place of knowing.
A love story and practical guide in one, O’Brien’s book began as a digital art journal. It chronicles the time in her marriage when her husband—a hospice doctor who spent a 40-year career of caregiving for others—was diagnosed with advanced, metastatic cancer.
What began as O’Brien’s visceral, self-care compulsion within days of diagnosis became handwritten notes, colorful collages, and layered images revealing the raw, luminescent reflections of a caregiver-turned-widow coming to understand survivorship. Beyond the practical guidance and solace offered by an insider, this book reminds us how to live presently during our darkest hours, honor grief, and discover—even after devastating loss—ways to forge forward.
The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal by Jennifer A. O’Brien is an 8 x 10 premium color hardback book. It is available for order at etaliapress.com and through local and national booksellers.
A Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs Et Alia Press (etaliapress.com). Wood is author of Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives (April, 2019) and editor of and a contributor to Scars: An Anthology (2015).
