Jyl CJ Barlow’s memoir, Hi, Honey! A Dementia Diary, features letters Barlow wrote to her mother before and after her death.
It’s a tender and bruisingly honest diary about losing a mother twice: first slowly, through the fog and theft of dementia.
“Grief has no handbook, but Jyl's book comes the closest to any I have ever read. It is full of insight and captures the thoughts and emotions we typically cannot put into words. This book validates that there is no ‘correct’ way to grieve,” writes the Rev. Lyn Whitley Harding, a former hospice chaplain.
Barlow, a 2026 winner in the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition, is also the author of What to Expect When You Weren't Expecting: Parenting Tales from the Most Unqualified (Step) Mom Ever and Sparent: From the Which Way’s Up Series.
She lives just outside Richmond, Virginia, where she and her husband are relishing living in an empty nest. She writes books, makes terrible jokes and loves to travel.
