A South African Memoir
Loving a child the world Doesn't Understand
An honest, unflinching memoir about raising a child with complex emotional and mental health needs — and finding the strength to survive the system.
The Systemic Battle
Beyond the waiting room whispers
A Mother's Voice
I love him. Even though.
If you have ever cared deeply for someone and Struggling to hold on, yet continued to fight for them, this book is meant for you
Worldwide Release
Whether you prefer the tactile weight of a paperback or the convenience of an e-reader, Unconditional is distributed globally to ensure every parent in need can access this lifeline.
A Note Before We Begin
There is a song that found me at exactly the right moment. A song about a crossroads, about a soul standing between two roads and having to choose. About what it costs when you choose the wrong one.
I don't know how to explain what happened the first time I heard it. Something connected in me. Not gently - sharply, like recognition. Like someone had reached inside my chest and named something I hadn't been able to name myself.
We were still in Cape Town when I found it. Everything was overwhelming. So busy. So rushed. So fast and intense and competitive and loud. Brody's situation was escalating. The system was failing us. Our family was bending under the weight of something nobody around us could fully see or understand. And Troy and I were standing at what felt like a complete split in the world - a place where every road led somewhere different and we had no idea which one to take.
And then I heard the song.
It is about a crossroads. About a figure who stands at a fork in the road and is offered a choice - the dark road, the one that gives you what you want right now, the one that feels powerful and familiar and immediate. Or the other road. The harder one. The one that costs you something.
In the song, the figure signs. He takes the dark road. He gets what he wanted - for a moment. And then comes the weight of what that choice costs.
I heard it and I thought of Brody.
Because that is exactly where he is. At a crossroads. At twelve years old, on the edge of becoming whoever he is going to be for the rest of his life. And the dark road - the one where instant gratification wins, where impulse overrides consequence, where his own desires come before everything and everyone else - that road is the one he already knows. It is familiar to him. Comfortable. He has been walking it for years.
Signing with the devil, in Brody's world, looks like this: choosing the screen over the conversation. Choosing the lie over the truth. Choosing the moment of power over the relationship. Choosing himself - always, reflexively, without considering the cost to anyone else. It gives him something in the instant. And it costs him everything in the long run.
And the question that sits at the centre of this book - the one I have been circling since the first page - is this: Can we get him to the crossroads in time? Can we put the right people, the right structure, and the right understanding around him before he signs? Before the pattern becomes so entrenched that the other road disappears entirely?
I do not know the answer. I have sat with that question in the dark more times than I can count. I have asked it of psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers and God and myself. I have asked it on the days when Brody has been gentle and funny and almost reachable. And I have asked it on the days when I have looked into his eyes and not found him there at all.
What I know is this: the song ends with the signing. But Brody's story has not ended yet. He is twelve years old. He is standing at the crossroads, not past it. And everything - the Germany trip, the assessment, the placement, the therapy, the flat on the farm, the locked doors at night, the twelve years of fighting - all of it is an attempt to stand at that crossroads with him and point to the other road.
This one. Please. Choose this one.
I want this song at the beginning of this book because I want Brody to hear it one day. When he is ready. When he is older and able to sit with what it means. I want him to understand that this was the moment - this period, these years - where the road divided. And I want him to know that his mother stood at that fork and refused to stop pointing.
Even when she was afraid. Even when she couldn't see him. Even when she didn't know if it was enough. She kept pointing.
This song, wherever you find it, is the heartbeat of everything that follows.
Before you decide whether Unconditional is for you, I invite you to read “A Note Before We Begin.”
These opening pages will introduce you to the truth behind this memoir: the love, fear, exhaustion and hope that come with raising a child the world does not understand.
This is not a parenting manual, and it is not a story with easy answers. It is one mother’s honest account of loving her child fiercely while fighting systems that repeatedly failed them both.
Read the opening note. If any part of it feels familiar, this book may have been written for you.