Between Diapers and Dementia

When the "Good Daughter" meets the "Perfect Mother" in the middle of a crisis, something has to break.

It was 5:47 AM when the cracking started. In one room, Nora Smitch's two-year-old was screaming about the wrong pants. In the hallway, her mother-lost in the fog of early-onset Alzheimer's-was trying to leave for a job she retired from fifteen years ago

Nora was standing in the dark between them, holding a diaper bag and a grief she couldn't name, realizing the one thing she wasn't allowed to admit: I cannot do this anymore.

Between Diapers and Dementia is a raw, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny memoir from the trenches of the "sandwich generation." It is the story of a woman squeezed between the relentless demands of raising young children and the slow, agonizing goodbye of caring for a parent in decline.

Unlike other caregiving books written from the safe distance of hindsight, Nora writes from the messy middle. She is still tired. She is still grieving. She is still learning that the "systems" she built to manage her life cannot save her from the unraveling.

This is a book for anyone who is drowning and trying not to show it. Inside, you will find:

Permission to Crumble: Why the "good daughter" script is a trap, and how admitting "I'm not okay" became the first step toward survival.

The Myth of Balance: The honest reality of changing diapers on both ends of life, and the absurdity that makes you laugh when you want to scream.

Anticipatory Grief: How to mourn a parent who is still sitting right next to you.

Presence Over Perfection: The transformative shift from trying to fix the unfixable to simply being present within it.

From the hilarious absurdity of a mother wandering pantless into a nature documentary to the quiet devastation of a 3 AM panic attack, Nora captures the collision of love, duty, and exhaustion.

This isn't a guide on how to have it all handled. It's a companion for the ones who don't. It is an invitation to stop performing, stop drowning, and start finding grace right here in the mess.

"Grace isn't the absence of mess. It's presence within it."