Suzy McNamara

AUTHOR | SPEAKER | CAREGIVING & GRIEF ADVOCATE

I lost my husband and my sister in the same year.

This is how I survived.

A memoir of caregiving, love, and finding your way through devastating loss. The Silkworm, The Magician, and The Sister Tree — coming May 2026.

“Grief is a lonely sport, and that loneliness can make us feel unlovable or somehow deserving of what fate has brought upon us. You are lovable and you do not deserve your grief. You do deserve love and hope and joy. Find what reminds you of this truth. ”

— Suzy McNamara, The Silkworm, The Magician and The Sister Tree

The Silkworm, The Magician, and The Sister Tree: A Tale of Love and Loss

This memoir is a story of survival-survival of the loss of a husband and sister and survival of the heartbreak and hardship of caring for a spouse with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

This is also a love story between two kindred spirits who found each other despite vastly different backgrounds and two sisters who forged a bond amongst the chaos of their childhood and relied on that bond throughout lives steeped in tragedy and trauma.

I found ways to survive, and my hope is that my memoir will accompany those on their own journey of grief and trauma towards their own path of survival.

What This Book Explores

The invisible weight of loving someone through loss

Across five long years of caregiving for a husband with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and through the grief that followed, Suzy found herself cocooning, transforming, and ultimately emerging.

The cocooning years — five years inside the fog of caregiving
The magic of connection — a marriage, a sisterhood, a bond that held
Faith as a lifeline — the reminder that you are never alone
Survival through joy — how community and honesty carry us forward

Meet Suzy McNamara

A widow who writes for those who are finding their way through

Suzy McNamara spent five years as a caregiver for her husband, who lived with Early-onset Alzheimer’s. When she lost him and her sister within the same year, she turned to writing as the only language honest enough for what she’d survived.

She writes for those navigating loss and the often invisible weight of caring for someone they love with the steady conviction that grief, however isolating, does not have to be the end of the story.