I Miss You, I Love You, I Hate You

A memoir of a life that ended too soon. A life worth celebrating and remembering. Through the book you can glimpse inside the story of a young wife trying to come to terms with her husband’s terminal cancer. Through her blog posts from that time and through fresh eyes years later. It’s a story of love, endurance, forgiveness and, yes, even hate. It’s emotionally raw in its truthfulness. It’s healing. It’s powerful.

The story takes you back to the time when they first got diagnosed, through the years of treatments and through the final months and weeks. It shows you the reality of what cancer does, not only to the patient but everyone around them.

It’s controversial in its openness and will no doubt raise a few eyebrows. The author doesn’t hide the brokenness of the situation or the hurt and confusion. It’s written in its raw form for a reason, to make people understand what the reality is and to help those that are going through the same as she did, and to let them know that it’s okay to feel what they are feeling, it’s okay to voice those feelings and it’s okay to be heard.

The book is there to also remind readers that life does go on. You are allowed to open your heart again, to love again. To find happiness and meaning after all that heartache.

Life is scary. Don’t be afraid to live it to the fullest.

Maria Marsh was born in Finland in 1987. As the second oldest and the only girl, she struggled to find her place in the world. She married her first husband when she was only 19; it lasted over 10 years, giving the couple a daughter, Joanna, in 2010. In 2013 her husband was diagnosed with colon cancer, and within a year it was terminal. Three-and-a-half years later he succumbed to his illness, leaving behind a 6-year-old daughter and a 29-year-old widow. She found her strength to go on in her daughter and in writing. Although she had been writing various stories since her teenage years, she now had a story that needed sharing, a story that wouldn’t stay in her cupboard. A real story, of love, of hardship, of forgiveness, the story of her life she never saw coming. Maria moved with her daughter to all the way to England to start over. She remarried in 2018 and is now happy fulfilling her lifelong dream of writing full time.