Conversations Families Need
Before Aging Options Become Crisis Decisions
LET'S START TALKING!
Choose your hard.
A hard conversation now,
or a harder decision later.
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The Silent Gap is a nonfiction guide for adult children and aging parents navigating the conversations most families avoid, until a crisis forces them.
Author Jodi Hooven cared for both of her parents through the end of their lives. Her father passed in 2017; her mother passed in May 2026, six weeks after serving as Jodi's flower girl, in a wheelchair, at Jodi's wedding. Drawing on that experience, Hooven built a book around a simple but urgent idea: the conversations families put off out of love, about driving, money, legal authority, housing, sibling roles, forgiveness, and quality of life, become exponentially harder once a health crisis removes the option to have them calmly.
Structured across fourteen chapters, the book pairs real conversation examples with both sides of every issue, the adult child's fear and the aging parent's, so neither reader feels alone in the discomfort. Each chapter closes with a reflective writing exercise, "What I Wish You Knew," designed to help families say things out loud that are otherwise easy to leave unsaid.
The book is accompanied by two companion journals, one written for the adult child, one for the aging parent, each designed to help readers personalize what they learn in the book. The journals mirror the book's chapters, giving each reader space to reflect privately, work through their own fears or hopes before bringing them into conversation, and prepare to speak with more clarity and less panic when the moment actually arrives.
What distinguishes The Silent Gap from a clinical caregiving guide is its voice. Hooven writes from inside the experience rather than above it, sharing specific, often funny, often heartbreaking family stories: her father's habit of witnessing to telemarketers, her mother's passive-aggressive cleaning requests delivered at walker speed, the DNR she witnessed her mother sign, and the six weeks between her wedding and her mother's death. The book doesn't offer easy answers. It offers company, and a framework for having these conversations while there's still time to have them well.
The book's guiding principle, repeated throughout:
Safety first. Dignity second. But dignity always.
The Silent Gap will resonate with the millions of "sandwich generation" adults currently caring for aging parents while raising their own families, as well as with aging parents who want their voices heard in decisions being made about their own lives.
The Book
Companion Journals
Two journals. Two voices. One conversation.
This is where you say the things no one's asked you yet. Before your voice gets left out of the decisions being made about your own life, put it here first, on your own terms, in your own words.
This is where you find the courage before you need it. Work through the fear, the guesswork, and the things you're afraid to say, so when the real conversation comes, you're ready to show up for it instead of running from it.
The Author
Jodi Hooven
Jodi Hooven is an Oregonian, Portland style. She moved to Tampa Bay with her parents at the age of 15, and resides there still.
Jodi is the publisher and owner of Shine Press. She’s been a book publisher since 2016. Her additional hats include: Shine Now Journal Therapy and Shine & Sign, a Mobile Notary Service.
Hearing loss found her later in life, unexpectedly. Jodi considers it one of the most pivotal stories of her life, one she’s telling in Loud Enough releasing in 2027. It's a revision of her first publication, Rocket Fuel For Your Kite, retired earlier this year to make room for something better. Through it, she found a determination and grit that has led to purpose and opportunities she wouldn’t have found otherwise.
She’s the mother of four wonderful adult children and married to Billy, a man who exceeds her dreams, and who loves every bit of her quirky wonder.
Peace and laughter are her mode, and she chooses not to get stuck in the pits of life. The Silent Gap is the story and guide born from her own experience caring for her amazing parents, and a passion for helping others find their own way through hard chapters, and how to end well.
For speaking engagements, events, workshops, and collaborations, please contact:
Jodi@Shine-Press.com | Subject: The Silent Gap