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I'm so honored! 📣 Thank you to The Sentinel Enterprise, The Lowell Sun, and Nashoba Valley Voice for featuring My Book of Wishes and the mission behind it. 💛
It's surreal to see this dream becoming real.

#Grateful #LegacyPlanning #BookFeature #Newrelease #caregiving #endoflifeplanning #lifeorganizer #caregiver

SHIRLEY — Town resident and new author C.J. Shearer, recently self-published her first book “My Book of Wishes,” and is on a mission not just to sell her book, but to explain why it’s worth buying.“The most important thing…there isn’t anything else like it,” she said.

“My Book of Wishes: The Ultimate End-of-Life Planner and Organizer,” promises to help prepare for the “what-if’s” in your golden years. It’s also a keepsake she created to share hard-earned wisdom with others, Shearer said. And writing it was “a labor of love.”

Available in hard-bound and soft-cover editions, the 140-page book contains forms to fill out, pockets for papers and color-coded tabs for each category. And, most importantly, it has stories, told by a first-person narrator whose perspectives on end-of-life care and advice on dealing with details after a loved one’s death are rooted in personal experience, as a caregiver for her father in his final years. She said one of the important lessons she learned from the experience didn’t come to her until later, which is one of the reasons why she wrote the book.

Amid the demands of caregiving, she forgot how much it means to simply be there for someone.

“My biggest regret is…my dad would…look at me and quietly ask, ‘Can you just sit with me?’” she said. But she was too busy with his logistics of care. “That memory still breaks my heart … that’s why I created the book. It’s everything I wish we had so I could have had time to be more present with him.”

While selling the book on her website: www.bookofwishes.com, she is also promoting it with speaking engagements, workshops and interviews like this. But marketing, while essential, isn’t her first priority.

“I want to help people,” she said. As for the writing process, “that was the easy part."

She shares experience, knowledge and advice on a subject it’s tough to bring up: death. Her book may spark that conversation, providing a practical, personalized template to help people prepare for the inevitable. Instead of leaving loved ones overwhelmed with details at a difficult time, the book is a one-stop repository for everything they’ll need to know, from important documents to final wishes, including what they want their obituary to look like. The list goes on.

Asked what makes her an expert, she put it simply.

“Because I lived it. I had to learn everything the hard way,” she said, from finding the right medical equipment to sorting out meds to navigating the health care system.

When it came to writing the book, five years of “intensive research” went into it, she said.

Her dad, Jim Shearer, was, in a way, her trial by fire. And an inspiration for writing the book. “I was thinking about it while caring for him,” she said. “He was the best person I ever knew.”

Shearer died last year. The retired U.S. Air Force veteran had Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer, illnesses she attributes to agent orange, a deadly herbicide used during his 37-year military career.

Her mom had died years before, and while her dad lived alone and needed help at home, his care came mostly from her with assistance from her two younger siblings, and grandson, she said.

Baked into her stories were two watchwords: dignity and respect.

Mindful of those goals, she acknowledged role-reversal issues when an adult child cares for a disabled parent. More so for a daughter taking care of her dad. Once, when an awkward situation came up, humor lightened the moment. “I said, dad, I won’t look, I promise…” she said.

Did she ever get irritated? “Yes, but not that he knew,” she said.

Retrospective insights are telling. She shares them in the book, even things she regrets.

The publishing odyssey

Shearer's DIY publishing project is a story in itself. One publisher’s revisions were unacceptable, she said, while another turned out to be a fraud. Some deals were advertising gimmicks. One was an outright scam that cost her time and money.

Her takeaway: Don’t be discouraged, be cautious. “You learn…choose your own path,” she said.

That may mean doing things yourself, as she did. It can cost less, too. It could involve learning a new skill, like the technology she mastered to design her own web site. It was worth it, she said.

In the end, Shearer got her book published, her way, with “all the frills,” she said, netting just a few dollars on each sale. But profit was not the point, she said.

Shearer described subtle but meaningful differences between her books and others on the shelf, demonstrating their form-follows-function design with the two copies she’d brought along.

The “hard cover” version is padded. Pages are high-grade paper so print won’t bleed through.

The binding is flexible so the book can be laid out flat. The soft cover book is sturdy, sustainable. (Tabbed pages are thicker, and colored, in both books.) The spiral binder has concealed wire overlays, unlike a notebook. She wanted the book to be “classy…something you keep,” she said.

Cover art, by Sadie Stone, of Northboro, suggests the theme: wishes. She chose the design, which features a pair of dandelions, a person’s silhouette in profile and a soft pastel dreamscape.

Asked for a favorite quote from her book, Shearer chose a paragraph that reads, in part, “This is your story – write it down...share it.” Noting that everyone impacts the world in some way, even if only in their own communities, she advises: “Most importantly, do not leave your loved ones scrambling to remember if your favorite hobby was gardening or competitive bingo.”

She lives in Shirley with her husband. She serves on town boards and operates a dog boarding service in her home. She has an adult son and four young grandchildren. The book – and other related services – may be purchased on the website, www.bookofwishes.com.

Shirley woman’s book on end-of-life care was ‘a labor of love’

News By M.E. Jones

PUBLISHED: July 24, 2025