Get in the Boat: Darlene Fuchs on Caregiving, Love, and the Strength to Stay

There are stories that inform us… and then there are stories that stay with us.

This is one of those stories.

At some point in life, many of us will find ourselves in a season we didn’t choose—one that asks more of us than we feel prepared to give. A season where love looks different, where control slips away, and where showing up becomes both the hardest and most meaningful thing we can do.

In Get in the Boat, Darlene Fuchs shares a deeply personal and powerful story of caregiving, love, loss, and what it truly means to stay when life becomes unrecognizable. What began as a promise to her father—to ensure his story and her mother’s would not be forgotten—became something much larger: a raw and honest reflection of what happens behind closed doors when illness reshapes everything.

At the heart of this story is a simple yet profound idea: we cannot always control the storm, but we can choose whether we stay in the boat.

In this conversation, Darlene invites us into that experience—sharing not only the challenges of caregiving, but the quiet, enduring love that lives within it. Her words are a reminder that even in life’s most difficult moments, there is meaning, connection, and a kind of strength we may not recognize until we are asked to live it.

Available on Kindle Unlimited

What inspired you to write Get in the Boat, and what made you feel this story needed to be shared?

This book began as a promise I made to my father near the end of his life: that his story, and my mother’s, would not be buried with them. What stayed with me wasn't the progression of the illness, but the way my father chose to meet it. He learned to "get in the boat." He stopped fighting what he couldn't control and instead stayed present with my mom, whatever the day demanded. That kind of love was too important to keep private. I wrote this because there is a gap between what caregiving looks like from the porch and what it demands behind closed doors. This story was lived and recorded in real time: raw, honest, and deeply human.

What was it like for you to revisit your father's private journals while writing the memoir?

These weren’t journals written for an audience; they were my father’s private, real-time thoughts as he walked through something incredibly heavy. Reading them, I realized he’d protected me from the worst moments while he was living them. Some entries were so intimate, particularly the moments between him and my mom, that I’d have to stop. It felt like I was trespassing. What surprised me most was his honesty about depression. In those pages, he allowed himself to be a man, a human being. He wrote about exhaustion, loneliness, and fear: things he never expressed out loud. That was heartbreaking and also a gift.

What did your father’s experience teach you about love and commitment?

Before this, I understood love through connection and conversation. But watching dementia strip those away showed me that love isn't a transaction; it is revealed most clearly when there is nothing left to receive. My father stayed when recognition was gone and love became physical labor: feeding, bathing, and lifting. He didn’t try to hold onto the version of my mother he had lost. Instead, he met her in a world that no longer made sense, choosing to be present in her reality rather than mourning his own. He showed me that real love doesn't leave; it just learns how to stay.

What does the phrase "Get in the Boat" represent to your family?

Early on, my dad tried to fix the unfixable. But dementia doesn’t care about effort. He eventually realized he couldn’t steer the boat, stop the storm, or change the current. His only choice was whether he would stay in it with her.

For our family, it became a lens for everything we were experiencing. There were moments we wanted to fix it, to rescue him, to make it easier, but we couldn’t. We had to get in the boat, too: to support, witness, and love them both through a journey with no solution. It is choosing presence over control and love over escape.

What insight or encouragement would you most want caregivers to take from your book?

If there is one thing I hope you take from Get In The Boat, it is this: You aren’t failing because it’s hard. You don’t have to do this perfectly to do it well. My father loved my mom with everything he had, but that didn’t make the days easy. He felt the crushing exhaustion and the loneliness that he rarely let anyone see. But he kept showing up.

Please, give yourself grace. If I could go back, I would tell him, and I am telling you: You don’t have to carry this alone. Let people in. Your life matters, too.

How did faith and resilience sustain your family during the most difficult moments?

Faith wasn’t an abstract idea for our family: it was the only thing that carried us when nothing else could. But that faith wasn't pretty; it was messy. My father wrote about prayers that felt like speaking into an empty, quiet room. It proved that faith isn't the absence of doubt; it’s the decision to keep showing up. Then COVID hit, and the world shrank to the size of a windowpane. We were stripped of the only comforts we had left: touch and presence. I remember looking up at his window, knowing he was carrying the weight of the world inside those four walls. That kind of isolation deepens the grief and the love at the exact same time.

Was there a particular passage that was especially emotional for you to write?

Writing about Noah was a reckoning: I was his Nana. I stood on a collapsing bridge, trying to be the floor for my father and the strength for my daughter as she lost her child. For a long time, I didn't have the luxury of my own tears because I was busy holding everyone else’s world together. Even now, years later, I still cry every time I read those chapters. My father had to learn that dementia has its own mercy. He chose to protect her simple peace, even when it felt like a sharp contrast to our breaking hearts. It taught me the ultimate cost of devotion: sometimes the greatest act of love is grieving alone so the person you love doesn’t have to.

Of all the difficult chapters, the end stands apart. My father didn’t need a medical observation to know my mother was gone; he felt it. He was sitting in the living room with the TV on, not watching, just waiting, when he reached over and turned it off. And then, the silence. Writing that scene felt like I was sitting in that chair with him, feeling the staggering loneliness of a man who had structured a decade of heartbeats around her care, only to walk into that final silence alone. After sixty-four years of marriage, it ended in a sacred, terrible stillness. I don't think I truly knew my father until I wrote that page.

What do you hope readers feel or reflect on after finishing the book?

I hope it helps people feel less alone. I want readers to see the exhaustion and the bone-deep loneliness, yet also recognize the beauty that lives in those quiet gaps. My father proved that love is not a speech; it is a presence. It is the decision to choose someone again and again, even when they no longer know your name. I hope this story encourages us to look at the people around us who are quietly carrying

something heavy. Caregivers live unseen lives. They need more than our pity; they need our witness.

How has writing this story changed your own perspective on life?

It changed how I understand loss. I used to think of loss as something that happens at the end of a life; now I see it's a slow, layering process. My father lost my mother in pieces, long before he lost her physically. I also learned that strength isn’t just endurance; it’s the choice to shield the ones you love from the weight you're carrying. I am painfully aware of how fragile time is. Even when life moves in a direction we did not choose, there is meaning. There is a love that is often quieter than we expect, but no less powerful.

What would you say to someone currently caring for a loved one with dementia?

What you are doing matters more than you can see right now. Remember that there is no trophy for doing this by yourself, and you do not have to be a martyr to be a hero. The most powerful shift happens when you stop trying to fix what cannot be fixed. When you meet them where they are, rather than trying to bring back who they were, a different kind of peace enters the room. Forget the next month. Just look at the next ten minutes. Your willingness to stay is more powerful than perfect words. You are doing enough.

As you sit with Darlene’s story, one truth rises gently to the surface: love is not always loud, and it is not always easy—but it is always a choice.

It is the choice to stay. To show up. To be present, even when there are no answers.

For anyone walking through caregiving, grief, or a season that feels impossibly heavy, this is your reminder—you are not alone. What you are doing matters, even in the quiet moments no one else sees.

You don’t have to do it perfectly. You just have to keep showing up.

And sometimes, when the waters feel uncertain and the path ahead is unclear, the most powerful thing we can do is simply this:

Get in the boat.

More about Darlene Fuchs

Darlene's life took an unexpected turn when she was catapulted out of corporate America into the world of caregiving. It began with standing by her father-in-law through his battle against liver cancer, followed by the heart-wrenching journey with her grandson Noah, who bravely fought and succumbed to aggressive brain cancer. As Darlene confronted the unfathomable loss, she found herself broken, the maternal wounds of her daughter's agony too profound to mend. Both were engulfed by their own immense grief, their worlds shattered in parallel. As fate would have it, she was once again thrust into a heartbreaking scenario, this time alongside her father, confronting the relentless and cruel erosion of dementia in her mom.

Discovering that faith doesn't erase life's difficulties but equips one with the resilience to navigate its storms, Darlene candidly shares insights on marriage, personal family challenges, and the persistent struggles of caregiving within the pages of this memoir.

In 'Get In The Boat,' Darlene fulfills a heartfelt promise to her father, Richard, inviting readers into the raw and unfiltered emotional journey of her beloved parents through the relentless grip of dementia.

Amidst a world often shrouded in darkness and uncertainty, Darlene emerges as a beacon of hope, extending a compassionate hand to those facing life's most daunting challenges.