Connected: Rediscovering the Invisible Threads in Parkinson’s and Beyond

There comes a moment, often after many questions, when we begin to sense that Parkinson’s is not simply a condition of the brain.

It is something more layered. More systemic. More… connected.

This is the space that my new book, Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease, invites us into. It’s available now in print here and here, or through your local bookstore. 

Not with easy answers. But with a deeper way of seeing, one built from  the complexity of the body and the subtle relationships that shape our health over time.

John and I had talked about writing a book for a long time. It was always something we would do “someday.” After losing John, I came to understand that it was about much more than Parkinson's and I needed to tell the story for us both.

I started writing it in December.

What I didn’t expect was how much the process of writing would bring into focus—things I hadn’t fully connected, even after all these years. I think the quote about only connecting the dots when looking back is very true.

First and foremost, this is our love story. It’s a story about John and about the life we built together. About the mission we were on (I’m still on)—to understand Parkinson’s and to make life better, not just for him, but for others walking the same path.  For you.  

But it’s also a scientific inquiry about what’s been missed in our reductionist approach to medicine and science. And frankly, it’s a call out of a system that is very good at naming things and very poor at solving them.  Some parts of the book include uncomfortable truths about where the research stands and why.  

It’s not just a story about Parkinson’s. It’s not just a story about the microbiome. And it’s not just a story about John and me.  It is much bigger.  It’s the story of how all of those paths came together—and the people, many who are scientists,  who came along with us in that process and helped in the search for answers.

Back in my 2016 TEDx talk, I described what I was seeing as a collapse of the body’s ecosystem.

That idea has held up pretty well. Many Ted talks don’t stand the test of time.  

https://youtu.be/Ph4L_JHeB3I?si=C0SoluTLO3Y-56LD

If anything, it explains more today than it did then and I understand why even better.

What I’ve come to understand—through John’s experience, through the science, and through the process of writing this book—is that what we call chronic disease doesn’t start where we’re told it starts.  And I mean all chronic disease, not just Parkinson’s.  

It doesn’t begin with a diagnosis. It builds over time, a diagnosis can give it momentum. And that is somethign that is really important to understand. It builds across multiple layers that we rarely look at together.

Yes, there is biology and of course, the microbiome. The immune system, environmental exposures, food and chemicals like glyphosate. All are part of what is important to understand.,

But that's not the whole story.

What became much clearer to me as I wrote—and this is the part that is almost never discussed in a doctor’s office—is that there are deeper forces at play.

Stress that doesn’t resolve. Trauma and Grief that reshapes the body in ways we don’t measure. And a spiritual dimension that most of modern medicine simply ignores.

No one ever asked us about that or even about John's life story. Our life stories are very important to understanding chronic disease. No one asked about the cumulative load of life, something called allostatic load. No one asked about the moments that shift a person into a prolonged state of pressure or vigilance. And I've learned that those experiences are key.

In the book, I touch on moments in John’s life—and in our life together—that take on new meaning when you look at them through this broader lens. Events that at the time seemed manageable. Just part of life.

But in hindsight, the pieces fit together as inputs into the system.  That doesn’t mean they caused Parkinson’s in a simple, linear way. That’s not how this works. But it can help explain why there are many different potential causes and many different physical symptom profiles in Parkinson's. No two people are exactly the same.

And when you combine that with everything else—the food system, the chemical exposures, the microbial shifts—you begin to see how a system can gradually lose its ability to regulate and recover.

That’s what I mean by a collapse of the ecosystem, a loss of resilience across the whole.

This book is a look back for me with new perspective.

There are things I see now that I didn’t see then. Writing helped me to see with fresh eyes.

I’m not offering a cure in this book.  I do offer some suggestions at the end for how to support your resilience that I think can be beneficial when paired with the list of suggestions in The Parkinson’s Plan by Ray Dorsey.  

What I am offering is a more complete way of seeing the problem.

Because when you can see more clearly what’s actually contributing to the breakdown, you also start to see more places where change is possible.  There are so many places we can have an impact that we were never told about.  

That’s where hope comes from.

I'm not saying this is simple—but there are ACTUALLY things you CAN do that will make a difference.  And that's not generally what you've been told.

What I’ve tried to do in Connected is build the bridge between our life experience and the broader framework that helps explain it.

This is my love story with John and so much more. It is about hope for the community we grew to know and love who share this journey.

And it’s a story about what becomes visible when you’re willing to look at the whole system—even the parts that are uncomfortable, inconvenient, or outside the boundaries of what we’ve been told to consider.

When you can finally see the bigger picture, that’s where everything starts to change.

If you purchase the book and go to this link with your proof of purchase, there is some bonus material. https://biotiquest.myklpages.com/l/TtsxnE