Ever lost your sense of self in a caregiving relationship? We did.

Janice Will

Founder / Writer / Mother

Brandon Will

Founder / Writer / Son

Brandon and Janice Will together are the social media presence @ourwillpower. Brandon's writing has appeared in Next Avenue. Their advocacy work has appeared in articles in The Nation, the 19th, the nonfiction book “All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive” by Rainesford Stauffer, and most recently a profile in the Wall Street Journal (“More Men Are Taking Care of Aging Parents. They Feel Unprepared.” Clare Ansberry, 10/24/23)

We've found great meaning in sharing our story, and now want to tell the fullness of it ourselves.

If you like the work we’re doing and are able to, please consider supporting us on patreon.com/ourwillpower, or by making a donation via paypal or Venmo (@Brandon-Will). All donations directly aid our caregiving expenses.

Another way to support us is to buy books we recommend that we link through our storefront at bookshop.org, where we curate and share our readings lists, and we get a small percentage of the profit.

Or, you can check out our caregiving wishlists in our linktree.

The Our WillPower Project’s Origins

(Brandon) Up until junior high I’d always wanted to go to Michigan State University for journalism like Mom had. She always talked about her time there in the ’70s as so magical.

Somewhere along the line, college started to not feel plausible. By my late teens, at the end of the century, I was very anti-college. Very Kevin Smith, very “I don’t need it!” writing my own movies and stories.

(Janice) Throughout my life, after any big change, I’ve always returned to writing. In 2005, after a divorce (my second!) and becoming an empty nester, I enrolled in Community College writing courses. There, Kathleen Ripley Leo helped me rediscover the writer in me.

And I took a Dancing.

(Brandon) She was making new friends, creative, like her. And returning to her writing, in a meaningful way, for the first time in over a decade. And now, mining her own life, not interviewing and writing about the lives of others. She was excited. My inbox regularly dinged from her latest drafts.

(Janice) Some ladies in the class and I formed a group. Three years of exchanging work weekly, always at Antonio’s, surrounded by religious memorabilia, garden statues, and pictures of the owners’ grandchildren. Before I knew it, some of us were driving to the AWP writer’s conference in February 2009, which happened to be in Chicago.

(Brandon) Where I was now attending Columbia College. I hadn’t gone until I was twenty-five and knew what I wanted more. Being from a blue collar background, even in art school I’d started on a practical route—video production. There’d be more solid jobs there, early 2000s wisdom said. At first I’d allowed myself one writing class a semester, as a reward. In my second year, I took my first fiction workshop. The moment I stepped into the classroom, with the city out the windows, I knew I was home. I pulled up a seat into the circle of classmates as the instructor started us on introductions. He had hair like eighties Meatloaf and was wearing a Star Wars Death Star tie. Chris DeGuire would be one of many writers there and beyond who would open up my world. By the time Mom was coming in for AWP, I’d been reveling in finding my own writer community.

(Janice) Being in the hotel, sleeping in a room with the girls, laughing all night—it was so lively! But I had to warn them about my gibberish. So they had me sleep in my own bed. But they were still surprised. I’d had sleep studies. Diagnosed restless leg syndrome. But Parkinson’s wasn’t on the radar yet. Now we know that the vivid acting out of night terrors is a clear sign of it.

(Brandon) I wish I’d spent more time with you that weekend, instead of running off to all those events.

(Janice) You were excited to be with your friends. And I was, too. We had that wonderful lunch.

(Brandon) In the hotel lobby! Among the busy bustle of the conference.

(Janice) The last time we’d been in a fancy hotel like that had been when you won the Detroit D.U.C.K. Club Contest, and we got to stay in a suite at the hotel at the top of the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit.

(Janice) In that fancy hotel in Chicago, all those years later, it was great fun to have you there with my teacher. I was proud. Of you. Being there with you. That I could share that we were both writers. We talked about the future. And I thought of getting a teaching certificate after I retired, and going back to college to devote to my own writing. We took pictures on the steps in the grand lobby. I was so sorry when it ended.

(Brandon) It was settled. After years of upheaval in her life, we knew what we were aiming for. For her to return to college upon retiring, about ten years down the road. I wanted Mom to have that feeling again. Of doing something she had never thought she would. In a new place, a new feeling, new people, finding a new part of herself. I wanted her going out for coffee after class and to write things she’d be embarrassed of later and to go to readings and be too afraid to read, and make friends who were reading even though they were afraid to, too—I wanted Mom to have all of that. To feel alive in a new way.

Even years later, when I was moving to NY for grad school. We figured I’d be there a few years, get my career going, then move back to Chicago around when Mom would be retiring, and we’d live in the same neighborhood, and she’d go back to school.

But something was going wrong.

Ten years later, we were in a life we’d never pictured. One we never would have chosen. One we were still struggling to accept. Mom had never been able to go back to school, like we’d dreamed. I’d had to reroute my career to be her caregiver.

One day, in physical therapy, I’m holding Mom’s safety belt as we’re trying to get her walking again, after a life-altering fall. All we can see are our new challenges. All of the tough steps before us. And I realized if life was going to keep being this bleak, we needed to be doing what was meaningful to us. I wrote on the appointment card what had come to me.

I could use my degree and experience in ways I’d never thought of. I could be her school of one.

(Janice) Pretty good student/teacher ratio. I signed up.