Carlen Maddux is an author, journalist, editor whose wife Martha was diagnosed at age 50 with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. They both traveled this road until her death 17 years later, and then he shared his story in his book, A Path Revealed: How Hope, Love and Joy Found Us Deep in a Maze Called Alzheimer’s. 

In his words: We felt as though we were shoved out of a plane 10,000 feet up, without parachutes. Until then Martha had been a spirited mother and a civic activist. I published a regional business magazine. Our lives would never be the same. 

Our story is one of shock, grief, and pain over what doctors say is a degenerative, irreversible disease. And of our anguish over an uncertain future – for Martha as victim, for me as caregiver, and for our three young children. 

But I came to realize our story is not about a grim disease and its insidious movement. Nor in its darkest moments is our story about hopelessness.  

Our story is about a path that emerged in the darkest of hours, a path that for us was neither planned nor foreseen. It’s the story about the inner struggles and insights that emerged when I was compelled to lead Martha and our children through this life-altering quandary.