The Story Behind The Blue Door Letters

If you're reading this, I'm really glad you're here.

I created The Blue Door Letters because I've been where you are. What I want to do here is fill in some of the gaps so you understand the heart behind all of this.

For three years, I was a live-in caregiver for my mom with Alzheimer's. I was doing all of her care while working full time from home and raising a high schooler as a single parent. I was trying to hang onto a relationship with a man I loved deeply, trying to care for my mom, trying to be present for my son, trying to make sure no one was getting the short end of the stick. Spoiler alert: everyone was getting the short end of the stick. And I felt like I was disappearing.

Nothing about it felt heroic. It just felt heavy.

People around me said nice, well-meaning things like "make sure you practice self-care" and "you can't pour from an empty cup." Meanwhile I was running on three hours of sleep, managing meds and appointments, repeating the same answers twenty times a day, and hoping the house didn't burn down if I ran to the grocery store for fifteen minutes.

There were days I honestly thought I might stroke out in the backyard.

I cried a lot. I lost myself in the middle of pill bottles, doctor appointments, insurance calls, and all the small, invisible tasks that keep another person's life moving. I love my mom. I also resented the situation in ways that filled me with guilt. Both things were true at the same time.

During that season, someone gave me a gift card for a pedicure. It was such a kind, thoughtful gift, but I never used it.

Not because I didn't appreciate it — but because there was no version of my life where disappearing to a nail salon for an hour was possible. Leaving the house meant planning coverage, worrying about what could happen, and hoping I wouldn't walk back into a dumpster fire. So the gift card went into a drawer.

That unused gift card sat there for years.

It became this little symbol in my mind of what caregiving can feel like. The world keeps handing you things you don't actually have the capacity to use. Advice. Expectations. "Shoulds." Even the kindness sometimes misses the mark because it doesn't meet you where you actually are.

Back then, what I really needed wasn't a pedicure or a bubble bath. I needed something that didn't require leaving the house, finding someone to sit with my mom, or organizing six things first. Something that let me exhale inside the life I was living.

That's a big part of how The Blue Door Letters were born.

I can't show up in your living room and let you take a nap. I can't cook dinner or wait on hold with the insurance company for you. I wish I could. What I can do is offer you a short, honest escape.

So I created Mara — and her story, "The Guesthouse."

Mara isn't a shiny, inspirational version of a caregiver. She's tired. She's snappy sometimes. She laughs at the wrong moments. She loves deeply and still has thoughts she'd never say out loud in a church lobby. She's figuring it out in real time, just like you are.

When we meet her, she's just inherited a small coastal guesthouse from her godmother after five hard years of caring for her mom with Alzheimer's. She's standing at this crossroads of "What now" and "Who am I if I'm not caregiving full time anymore" and "Why does everything still feel heavy even when some things have technically gotten easier."

Her story is fiction, but the feelings aren't. The mix of love, anger, grief, numbness, dark humor, and tiny pockets of relief are all pulled from very real places.

My hope is that, for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, you get to step into Mara's world instead of carrying yours alone. That you'll see bits of yourself in her. That you'll laugh in a place you didn't expect to. That you'll feel less crazy for thinking the thoughts you think in the middle of all this.

These letters won't fix your situation. They won't make your person remember, or make your family and friends suddenly get it, or add hours to your day. I wish I could give you those things.

What I hope the letters bring to your life is this: a small pocket of time where you're not the spokesperson, the nurse, the scheduler, the cook, the house manager, the emotional shock absorber, and the responsible one all at the same time. A few minutes where you're just a human being, reading a story, letting your shoulders drop an inch.

That may not sound like much on paper. But I know how rare and valuable that space can be.

Looking back now, I can say I'm grateful for the time I had with my mom. That doesn't mean it was pretty or that I handled it well every day. I didn't. I messed up. I snapped. I prayed angry prayers. I wished it were over more than once and then hated myself for thinking it. It wasn't clean or tidy.

You might feel like that too.

If you do, I want you to know this: you're not the only one. You're not failing because you're tired, or because you miss your old life, or because you don't have anything left for "self-care." You're carrying something enormous, and you're still here.

You deserve a few minutes to just be.

So welcome to The Blue Door Letters. Welcome to Mara's messy, hopeful, unfinished story. My hope is that somewhere between her burnt food and bad coffee and hard conversations, you find a little bit of comfort, a little bit of courage, and a reminder that you are not invisible.

However this landed in your hands, or whatever your today looks like — I'm just really happy you're here.

Sharon xoxo