What People Are Saying
This book is a deeply moving exploration of love and loss that captures the weight of grief and the transformation that results. Ms. Connolly writes with a vulnerability and emotional honesty that truly makes the reader feel like they know her and her beloved Harry. While this book doesn’t shy away from pain and heartbreak, there is a gentle and quiet undercurrent of hope that carries the reader forward.
Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.
Center for Loss and Life Transition and author of Grief One Day at a Time
This beautifully written and deeply moving love story captures the extraordinary tenderness, resilience, and courage that emerge when two people journey through illness together. With honesty and grace, the author reveals what it means to be a care partner—an act of devotion shaped by everyday moments of connection, struggle, and profound love. This book brings to light the complexity of loving someone through Parkinson’s disease, and the quiet, transformative strength found in standing beside another person until the very end. This is a remarkably insightful and deeply human book that invites the reader to reflect on life and see the compassionate tribute to love in its most enduring form.
Carina Hellqvist
Parkinson’s Nurse specialist, Linköping University Hospital, Sweden
PhD, Senior lecturer, Linköping University, Sweden
A gift to those with shared experiences of caregiving, love and loss and the search for grace amidst the most difficult of circumstances. This memoir is a compassionate and honest reflection of Kerry Rae and Harry’s story together, and apart. It is heartfelt and intimate, allowing a glimpse into the beauty and strife of living with neurological disease, and the transition from care partnering to caregiving. Kerry Rae’s reflections are told with warmth, and as she shares her story, you’ll feel as though you're sitting alongside her on the couch, at times laughing, at others crying (or both!) and sharing a cup of tea.
Allison Marie Allen, MSW, LCSW
Parkinson's Foundation Center of Excellence Coordinator
An honest, forthright, and engaging story, this book takes us through the journey of a real-life partnership before, during, and after a debilitating and progressive illness. With Kerry Rae’s story of courage and resilience, we learn the value of community and how one can find grace even in hard places.
JOE HROMCO, Ph.D.
Kerry Rae writes with poignant honesty about her journey as a care partner. Health care workers and therapists would do well to enter her story, and be softened and wisened by it. While much of what unfolds is shaped by Parkinson's and a stroke, this is far from a story of disease. This is a love story. A travel adventure. A transformative journey through loss and grief. Kerry Rae does not shy away from the complexity of it all and, through her story, invites us to do the same. To show up for care partners with greater understanding, nuance, and grace.
Christie Bernklau Halvor
Hospice supervisor and massage therapist
A Messy Kind of Grace is a deeply moving memoir that speaks directly to the hearts of care partners, families, and all those touched by Parkinson's disease. As a therapist, I have seen the particular weight that caregivers carry — the exhaustion, the love, the impossible decisions, and the grief that lingers long after loss. Kerry Rae's story holds all of that with rare honesty and tenderness. It is, at its heart, a love story — a testament to Harry, and to all the ways Kerry Rae refused to let him face it alone. Grace, it turns out, doesn't always look the way we imagine. Sometimes it looks like this.
Marie C. Dershem, LCSW
In A Messy Kind of Grace, Kerry Rae uses voice and language to reveal her very intimate experience with love, loss, and a disease that dismantles the trajectory of a hoped-for life. As a care partner, she reveals unwavering tenacity and courage, while also admitting each raw emotion without apology. Kerry Rae’s memoir traces the tension between her love for her husband and the life of adventure they shared, and the hard realities of being his primary caregiver after diagnosis. A must-read for any couple facing terminal disease, if only to validate they are not alone.
Christine Tenpas
Hospice and Death Doula Professional
Kerry Rae's memoir is a story of love, grief, and resilience. Her honest account of how she and Harry navigated unthinkable heartbreaks with unwavering love for each other is a gift to anyone who reads it.
Peggy Rost, LCSW
Former Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon social worker
A story enmeshed in the complexities of grief and identity, exploring how life can take so much from us yet give back in unexpected ways. In A Messy Kind of Grace, Kerry Rae guides the reader through the unimaginable challenges of being a care partner to her beloved with Parkinson’s, revealing the impact of life-altering complications with raw vulnerability and tenacious heart. This is a story wrapped in the power of community, the love of adventure, and the commitment to self and partnership.
Jess Long, LAc
Former Parkinson's Resources of Oregon program coordinator
A Messy Kind of Grace is a profoundly moving memoir that beautifully captures the journey of a couple at the peak of their lives, full of promise and dreams, only to be confronted with the ultimate test of love. Kerry Rae weaves masterfully crafted analogies to tell the heart-wrenching story of her husband’s early onset Parkinson’s disease and the tragic event that upended their world. As her marriage hangs by a fragile thread, Kerry Rae becomes her husband’s devoted care partner—grieving the life they once envisioned while fiercely loving and advocating for him until the very end. With raw honesty, she reveals the complex, heartbreaking beauty of grief and the painful, transformative process of enduring loss. A Messy Kind of Grace is an unforgettable read for anyone navigating the profound heartbreak of losing a partner, offering both solace and strength in the face of life's most difficult trials.
Laurie Barr
Former healthcare executive and author of The Long Fade to Morning
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