I will still love you even when you die.
Written by Terra Beilby
I will still Love You, Even When You Die is a raw, unflinching memoir about loving an alcoholic mother who drank herself to death and caregiving a father slowly erased by ALS. It’s grief in real time — messy, dark, and honest — told through snapshots of rage, reflection, and reluctant healing. With a nurse’s grit and a daughter’s heartbreak, I wrote my way through the trauma I couldn’t talk about. This isn’t a polished survival guide — it’s what it looks like to try and break generational trauma while raising three kids of my own, one truth at a time.
About the Author
Who the Hell Am I?
I’m Terra Beilby. I’m a nurse, a mother, a writer (weird to say that), an educator, a florist, a woman who lived through some real shit — and lived to talk about it.
I was raised by two hippies, some would say hillbillies, one of whom drank herself to death at 52. I cared for the other, my father, through the slow deterioration of ALS — bathing the man who once carried me on his shoulders as he disappeared piece by piece into his shit-ass disease.
I’ve known grief — that ugly bitch — in her loudest and quietest forms.
And I’ve come to believe that telling the truth about it is the only way through it.
I’m not writing from a place of resolution — because hell, I do not have it all figured out.
I’m still unpacking my baggage here. I’m still healing.
Still learning what forgiveness feels like in real life, not just on paper.
But I do know this:
I never, ever wanted to be a mom who crushed her child’s spirit.
I never wanted to become a bitter, drunken ghost of a mother who haunted people while still alive.
My deepest, most desperate hope was to be anything but that.
And now, I’m living for something more.
For Piper, Penelope, and Paxton — my three beautiful, wild, deeply loved children.
They’re the reason I show up.
They’re the reason I laugh out loud, seek joy, and hold space for healing even when it hurts like hell.
I don’t get it right all the time.
I lose my temper. I shut down. I grieve things I didn’t even know I was still holding.
But I keep going.
And I’m hoping I teach them love, grace, humility…
to love even when it’s hard,
to show up even when you want to run,
and to find beauty in the mundane — because life, death, and living?
They all happen at the kitchen sink.
Along the way, I found pieces of joy in floral design, in gardening,
in creating beauty when life felt unbearable.
Sometimes joy looked like blooming bouquets — sometimes it looked like chronically avoiding the real hard shit.
Distraction was a survival tool.
And for a while? It worked.
Maybe it even helped me make something meaningful out of the mess.
Oh — and my hunky husband, Kyle.
Thank you for sticking around after you met my family —
half of whom had mullets and were drunk beyond measure on day one.
Thank you for laughing it off when my hippie dad handed you a shotgun shell with your name etched on it —
a real warm welcome from the man you’d later help me care for in his final days.
When he handed you that shell, he said,
“No shotgun weddings.”
And maybe he didn’t realize who we were —
because we challenged that threat and slapped a ring on it courthouse-style,
shotgun-style, before your yearlong deployment.
Challenge accepted, you hillbilly legend.
Kyle, you’ve taken the curveballs of my life and held me with grace and strength.
You’ve been my rock — one I sometimes want to kick — but I love you deeply and madly.
This life we’re building is one of reckoning and rebuilding,
and I’m so glad I get to do it with you.
This book isn’t just about the people I lost.
It’s about the life I’m building from the pieces.
The one where joy and pain sit next to each other at the table.
Where healing doesn’t always look like peace — but it does look like honesty.
This is what love looks like.
What you’re seeing here is life close up in the last few months with my dad—a man who once stood tall, joked loud, and lived simply while I carried the weight of our family. ALS slowly stole his mobility, his independence, and eventually his life.
This quiet, raw clip isn’t just about death—it’s about showing up. About role reversal. About the sacred, messy parts of caregiving and grief.
It’s the heartbeat of this book: "I Will Still Love You Even When You Die.”
Because this is what it looks like to keep loving someone even when their body fails, even when their mind slips, even when it breaks your heart in slow motion.
Content
Content
How This Book Flows
This isn’t some neatly packaged, start-to-finish memoir. It doesn’t follow a perfect timeline, because grief doesn’t either. Forgiveness sure as hell doesn’t. What you’ll find here is a collection of true stories — some tender, some brutal — about loving people who left too soon or emotionally left long before they physically did.
The book is divided into sections:
Her — The memories, grief, and heartbreak that came with loving and losing my mom to addiction.
Him — The stories of caring for my dad through ALS and dementia, watching the man I once called a rock disappear slowly in front of me.
The Rage Files — The unfiltered, sometimes ugly truths I needed to write down in order to forgive. These are the moments people don’t like to talk about — but I think we should.
The Healing Files — The softer edges. The reflections that came later. The places I’ve found glimpses of peace, and the words I needed to hear when I was in it.
Each entry has three parts:
the story — as it happened,
a reflection — from where I stand now,
and an invitation — for you to name your own grief, your own anger, your own healing.
This book is a place for all of it.
The raw. The sacred. The loud, angry middle.
You don’t have to read it in order.
Just pick a page and see where it lands.
Publishing is the goal — for now, it’s a project.
A raw, real, ongoing one.
Thanks for being here as it unfolds.
to the ones who left this world - and the ones who left long before they died …
To the ghosts who shaped me, the grief that rewired me, and the love that refuses to quit.
This is for you. All of it. Even the rage. Even the healing.