"A Map Already Torn" by Allie Varga

Summer Season of "Letters From A Caregiver"

Hello! If you’re new to Carer Mentor, welcome! Thank you for being here!

I’m Victoria. You can read why I’m publishing Carer Mentor here: Who Started Carer Mentor and Why? I created Carer Mentor to offer heartfelt empathy for Caregivers. It’s a hub of practical tools, resources, and insights. A community support network for all of us human-ing hard. ❤️ Start exploring here.

---

Letters from a Caregiver.

“Letters from a Caregiver” is a weekly article where a caregiver offers their wisdom, compassion, and hope to their younger self. No one knows us as well as we know ourselves, and even then, we may second-guess ourselves. The choices, challenges and tragedies we’ve faced have forged us in more ways than anyone can understand; in ways we’re still trying to decipher!

Since September 2025, thirty-two letters have been posted over three seasons.

This Summer Season so far

1. “Caregiving is a continuous evolution of my love, trust and courage.” by Victoria

2. “The Word I Didn’t Know I Was” by Marina Ortiz Caiuby

3. “The Suitcase by the Door” By Vicki Tull

4. “You Thought You Had to Choose” by Maria Messer

5. “I Can’t Do This Any More” by Cooky Howitt

6. “You Have to Receive in Order for the Circle of Love to be Complete” by Kaeli Hansen Caregivers Count with Kaeli

7. “The Little Things You Do Are a Big Deal” by Liza Wyles

8. “When Wishes Come True” by Cindy Roman, who writes Alzheimer’s Witness

9. “Accept Caregiving Help When You Can” by Sue Montgomery, RN, BSN, MA

Today’s ‘Letter from a Caregiver’ is by Allie Varga

I met Allie at the start of 2026. I could see the depth and breadth of care she’s doing for Glenn. I recommend reading her articles:

• The Doer of “Must” Beyond burnout, there is a quiet, cold place where the work just gets done.

• Pushing Through On caregiving, the NH 48, and the lessons learned above the treeline.

• How It Began An excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Relentless Tide.

I knew, based on our interactions, that I could curiously challenge a note that she’d shared. We decided to open up our messages to a broader exchange in the monthly discussion about caregiving as a Spouse/Partner: “The Lonely Marriage. Exploring the Specific Isolation of the Spousal Caregiver. “

"I recently had a wonderful, deeply honest exchange with Victoria from Carer Mentor about the unique "geometry" of different caregiving relationships. While the emotional toll of 24/7 care is universal, spousal caregiving introduces a specific kind of isolation—when the partner who used to hold you up is the one you are holding together, you find yourself carrying the weight of the "we" completely alone. Victoria and I are opening up this space for a dedicated conversation. If you are a spousal caregiver (or supporting one), please join us, share your story, and read the reflections from our community." Read our messages and the comments from readers; a deeply resonant discussion for caregivers of spouse/partners

—

My hand was over my heart reading Allie’s letter. There’s so much emotion, stress and pain within these lines, and then one powerful word, a sentence that grounds us into what it was all about.

Thank you for sharing your letter with us, Allie. These are always much harder to write than we, or readers, may think.

Author’s Bio: Allie Varga is a writer, former restaurant owner, and family caregiver based in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Drawing from her background in sociology and her own lived experiences, her work candidly explores the complex intersections of trauma, identity, and the quiet realities of long-term caregiving. As part of her own journey toward healing and self-preservation, she completed hiking all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot peaks in three years following her husband’s stroke. That arduous path taught her about grit and revealed the strength of granite inside her, themes she explores in her first memoir, The Relentless Tide. Through her personal essays and long-form memoirs, Allie gives voice to the unspoken moral, emotional, and systemic burdens carried by family caregivers, offering readers a raw, unflinching look at love, duty, and resilience.

A Map Already Torn

Burlington Hospital, Burlington MA February 23, 2022

To my younger self,

You are standing outside those ICU doors, holding that cup of coffee, terrified to your core. You think your job right now is to be the saviour. You think that because Glenn said he wanted everything done, that he wanted all life-saving measures taken, you have to sign the papers to keep him here.

I need you to put the pen down. I need you to let him go.

But more than that, Allie, I need to tell you something about you.

You are standing there trying to make a heroic, life-or-death decision for a marriage you weren’t ready for. I know you feel like you have to prove your devotion, but the truth is, you entered this love story with a map that was already torn. What your father did to you stole your blueprint for how to love, how to be loved, and how to feel safe in your own skin. You didn’t know how to set boundaries because you were never allowed to have them.

Because of that, you are going to spend decades wondering if the screaming, the fighting, and the misery were your fault. You will torture yourself trying to figure out if you caused the wreckage, or if he was a narcissist, or if the two of you were just breaking against each other.

My mom asked me last night if I had the chance, would I do it all over again. I have been asked this question many times in my life, but this was the first time I ever said no, I would not. Life has been a struggle. I am sickly exhausted and see now that I will never know true happiness. My entire adult life will be spent living for other people.

I am writing to tell you: you do not have to solve that puzzle.

Glenn’s survival will turn into a prison of daily, relentless physical pain for him that no medicine can quiet. His aphasia will trap his mind and turn all his fear into a screaming rage directed entirely at you. If you sign those papers, you are signing up to be his 24/7 prisoner and his target.

In a way he was being selfish when he asked for this, Allie--he didn’t know any better. You listened—you didn’t know any better. I am here to tell you the truth. He wanted to float, but he had no idea he was asking you to drown to keep him up. And you, carrying the quiet trauma of your childhood, will think you have to drown to be worthy of love.

You don’t.

Letting him go in that hospital is not a betrayal. It is the only act of mercy that can save him from a life of torment, and save you from a slow, grinding erasure. You have carried enough pain for one lifetime. You are allowed to choose your own survival.

I still ask myself why the doctors try to save these lives—why they even offer. They know what the outcome will look like, yet they still hand you the choice. Why do they do this when they know there are no support systems waiting on the other side?

They will stand over you in white coats, speaking in sterile clinical terms like “decompressive hemicraniectomy” and “midline shift.” They will present it to you as a question, as if you are being given a choice. But Allie, it is a false choice. The medical system is built to preserve biological life at all costs, yet they outsource the catastrophic moral weight of that preservation onto a terrified, exhausted spouse sitting in a vinyl chair.

They offer to save his life, but they never define what “life” actually means after the machines stop humming. They ask if you want him to live, knowing full well that saying “no” feels like murder, and saying “yes” binds you both to a lifelong sentence of caregiving and silent grief. The neurosurgeon will offer a warning in clinical shorthand using words like “difficult” and “severely disabled.” Looking back, you will realize he might have been trying to steer you away, quietly signaling an exit ramp you couldn’t bring yourself to see. But in the noise of that crisis, you weren’t tuned to subtle cues or unsaid warnings. They give you the authority to sign the paper as if you are capable of making a sage decision under the duress of acute trauma.

For a long time, you will blame yourself, calling yourself a fool for not reading between the lines and signing those papers anyway. But it was never about foolishness, and it wasn’t even about a desperate wish to hold onto him. It was about respect.

Glenn had been unequivocal: he wanted every life-saving measure taken, no matter what. You had asked him the hard questions long before that day, and his answer had always been an emphatic “yes.” So when you pick up that pen, you aren’t ignoring the surgeon; you are honoring your husband. You are trapped between two choices with no happy ending: saying yes to the sacred obligation to respect his wishes or saying no and being responsible for the decision to end his life.

Put the pen down, Allie. Take a deep breath, walk back into his room, hold his hand one last time, and whisper goodbye. Let him rest while he is still whole, and let yourself live while you still have a life to live. It isn’t abandonment; it is the ultimate act of love—for him, and finally, for yourself.

Love

Allie (2026)

One last question to close the letter from Victoria.

Please share one quote/movie/book that’s inspired you.

It is hard to choose just one, as the things that sustained me before the stroke are so different from what sustained me after. But if I have to choose the one line that anchored me in the wreckage, it is this: “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.” (Winston S. Churchill). I read this in the aftermath of Glenn’s stroke, and it cut through all the noise. It stripped away the naive idea that good intentions are enough, forcing me to confront the stark, terrifying truth of what duty actually demands when everything has fallen apart.

Prompt for Discussion

If you were forced to stand outside those ICU doors today, do you know what your line in the sand would be? Have you ever thought about what “doing what is required” truly means in your own life?

Please click the ‘❤️’ like button so that other caregivers can find Carer Mentor: Empathy and Inspiration