THE THIEF AND THE GIFT
The Thief and The Gift
Finding Understanding and Peace Amid a Degenerative Illness
Degenerative illness brings profound loss—not only for the person who is ill, but for those who love and care for them. The Thief and the Gift explores what can also emerge within that difficult journey: deeper connection, honest conversation, changing family relationships, and unexpected opportunities for understanding, meaning, and love.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
About The Thief and The Gift
Degenerative illness changes more than health. It can reshape relationships, family roles, communication, and the ways we understand the people we love—and ourselves.
When someone we love develops a degenerative illness, loss often begins long before death. Abilities change, familiar roles shift, and families are asked to adapt again and again as the person they know and love changes before them.
The Thief and the Gift examines this difficult experience through both psychological understanding and the realities of family life. Deborah Wagner explores the emotional challenges that accompany degenerative illness: grief, caregiving, changing relationships, difficult conversations, and the struggle to remain connected while confronting what cannot be restored.
Yet illness can reveal as well as take away. Within experiences of vulnerability and loss can come opportunities for honesty, deeper connection, reconciliation, and a different understanding of love. The book considers how families can acknowledge what illness has taken while also recognizing what may still be discovered, shared, and ultimately carried forward.
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What The Thief and The Gift Explores
Living With Ongoing Loss
Degenerative illness brings a series of changes rather than a single moment of loss. Families may grieve abilities, roles, expectations, and familiar ways of relating while continuing to love and care for the person who is changing.
Relationships in Transition
Illness can alter the relationships between partners, parents, children, siblings, and caregivers. As responsibilities and roles shift, families must find new ways to communicate, connect, and understand one another.
What Can Still Be Found
Even amid decline and uncertainty, meaningful possibilities can remain: honest conversations, reconciliation, deeper connection, expressions of love, and moments that may change how we understand both the person who is ill and ourselves.
FROM DEBORAH
Why The Thief and The Gift Needed to Be Written
Degenerative illness is often described in terms of what is lost. But living through it can reveal a more complicated emotional reality—one in which grief and love, pain and connection, loss and discovery can exist together.
Families confronting degenerative illness are asked to adapt repeatedly. The person who is ill may lose abilities and independence, while those around them take on unfamiliar responsibilities and begin grieving changes that can be difficult to name.
These experiences affect relationships as much as they affect individuals. Roles can reverse. Old patterns may be disrupted. Conversations that once seemed unnecessary—or impossible—can become important as families confront vulnerability, dependence, unfinished business, and the reality of limited time.
The Thief and the Gift makes room for both sides of that experience. It does not deny what illness takes. Instead, it asks us to recognize that even within profound loss there may still be opportunities for greater understanding, deeper connection, reconciliation, and love.
FOR READERS
This Book May Speak to You If...
There is no simple way to navigate degenerative illness. But understanding the emotional and relational changes that accompany it can help families make sense of what they are experiencing and recognize what still matters.
Someone You Love Is Changing
You are watching illness change someone you know deeply, while trying to understand how to remain connected as abilities, behaviors, needs, and familiar parts of your relationship begin to shift.
Your Role Is Changing Too
You may be becoming a caregiver, making difficult decisions, or taking on responsibilities that once belonged to someone else. The relationship continues, but its balance and expectations may no longer feel the same.
You're Living With Love and Loss
You are grieving what illness has taken while still loving the person who is here. You want to understand how loss, connection, difficult conversations, and meaningful moments can coexist within the same experience.
INSIDE THE BOOK
A Closer Look at The Thief and The Gift
Through the story of a father and daughter confronting degenerative illness together, The Thief and the Gift explores how profound loss can reshape a relationship—and create unexpected space for understanding, connection, and meaning.
“My aim is to shed light on how beauty can evolve in the face of tragedy as we explore painful topics with loved ones.”
— From The Thief and The Gift
“When The Thief first visits our protagonist, what it steals away is barely noticeable. But as time marches forward, and our protagonist’s body continues to deteriorate under The Thief’s covert missions, it becomes clear to our protagonist, His daughter, and all who know and love Him, that life will never be the same.
His daughter, a psychologist, enters this painful and confusing reality with Him, and together they explore, confront, and share the journey, fleshing out the deeper meaning of life and redefining what is and is not important. They root out the lessons offered early in life that can be revisited and utilized when events take unexpected turns, resulting in a new definition of self.”
— From The Thief and The Gift
THE THIEF AND THE GIFT
Continue the Journey
Explore how families can navigate the losses and changing relationships that accompany degenerative illness—and discover how moments of connection, understanding, and meaning can emerge even within the most difficult transitions.
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Where Would You Like to Go Next?
Explore Dr. Wagner's writing, discover perspectives organized around the changes and questions that shape our lives, or learn more about the books that extend these ideas into longer-form reflections.
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Topics & Transitions
Discover ideas and experiences related to identity, relationships, change, adaptation, purpose, loss, health, aging, work, caregiving, and other life transitions.
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Insights
Read Dr. Wagner's articles and reflections on the psychological and emotional dimensions of change and the experiences that shape our lives.
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About Dr. Wagner
Learn more about Dr. Wagner's perspective, professional experience, and the work that shapes her understanding of people, change, and life's transitions.
Psychologist | Author | Expert on Life's Transitions
Exploring how we understand, navigate, and integrate the changes and challenges that shape our lives.
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© 2026 Deborah Wagner, Ph.D. All rights reserved.