Book: What Happens When Someone I Love Doesn't Feel Good

The perfect book to help kids understand and cope with a parent who has a chronic or terminal illness.

Explaining a chronic or terminal illness to a kid is hard. Medical terms are difficult to understand as adults, but figuring out how to translate them into kidspeak can be next to impossible. Join Mia and Stuart as they learn how bodies work, why some bodies don't always feel good, and what to do when someone they love has an illness that won't go away. Help kids learn to manage their expectations and cope with disappointment and big feelings. This groundbreaking book approaches a difficult topic with humor and honesty.

"Fills a gap in the market for people living with metastatic cancer of any kind. Talks a bit about side effects of treatment and helps kids manage their expectations."

"This book found a kind and surprisingly funny way to normalize and talk about disability in a way that isn't scary."

"A great way to introduce children to chronic or terminal illnesses."

"Loved that this included ways to help my kids cope with all of their big feelings."

From the author of 5-star books What Happens When Someone I Love Has Cancer and What Happens When a Kid Has Cancer comes a book written specifically for kids who have a parent coping with terminal cancer or ongoing chronic illness.

Open, Honest, and Accessible: Kids can handle learning the truth about most any situation — as long as it’s presented in a way that makes sense to them. This engaging book puts kids at ease.

Applies to All Types of Illnesses: What Happens When Someone I Love Doesn't Feel Good provides a foundation for how bodies work, making it easy to explain all types of illnesses, such as ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia, Arthritis, Metastatic and Stage IV Cancer (including Blood Cancers like Leukemia or Lymphoma), Cystic Fibrosis, Depression, Fibromyalgia, Kidney Disease, Liver Failure, Long COVID, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease, and Stroke. The free guide in the back of the book helps parents explain each illness from a scientific point of view in a way kids can actually understand.

How Chronic Illness Will Affect a Child: From a developmental perspective, kids experience life as if the whole world revolves around them. They need to understand that chronic illness isn’t their fault, that it’s not contagious, and that it’s not their job to fix it. But beyond that, kids want to know how it will affect their day-to-day. Who will pick them up from school? How will playtime happen? What emotions will it cause?

Explanation of Symptoms: This book provides a foundation for discussions about specific treatments and side effects, like needing oxygen, feeling tired, dialysis, chemotherapy, or surgery.

Validation of Feelings: Illnesses that don't go away bring up a whole host of emotions. By shining a light on them, this book validates kids’ experiences and feelings, reassuring them that their emotions are normal and encouraging them to share with a trusted grown-up, in addition to providing suggestions for coping.

Resource for Caregivers: When there’s no resource to make hard conversations easier, grown-ups are far less likely to have the conversation. This book serves as a method to make conversations about ilness easier, so adults feel comfortable using medical words and knowing that their kids will feel empowered, rather than terrified.

Therapeutic and Educational Tool: Co-authored by a Child Life Specialist at the Mayo Clinic, What Happens When Someone I Love Doesn't Feel Good is a go-to book in schools, counseling settings, and support groups. There are no references to God or the afterlife, leaving room for families to have discussions based on their own belief system.