MARK KUNERTH

WRITER. AUTHOR. STORYTELLER. SPEAKER.

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For twenty-five years, I made my living making people laugh — as a writer on Friends, About A Boy, Speechless and Showtime's The Big C.

For sixteen of those years, I was also something the resumé doesn't show: the husband and caregiver of my wife, Sky, through her diagnosis with glioblastoma, a brain cancer with a typical survival window of twelve to eighteen months.

She lived a miraculous sixteen years. Three brain surgeries. Hundreds of rounds of chemo. A personal blessing from Pope Francis. More laughter than I can count.

I wrote about it in my forthcoming memoir, One More Lap: A Story of Love, Impossible Odds, Bad Jokes and Showing Up.

And somewhere along the way, I learned something about what happens when life stops following the script.

We all spend our lives writing the story we think we're going to live. A career. A relationship. A family. A plan. But we sometimes forget that life gets a vote too.

I couldn't choose what was happening to Sky. I couldn't choose what the next MRI would show. But even when life took away the choices I wanted most, it never took away every choice.

That's what I speak about now: what we do when the story we planned is no longer available to us. How we keep moving when we don't know what comes next. And how sometimes the next good decision is enough to begin writing a different story.

I bring those stories to healthcare and caregiver communities, companies, conferences and organizations navigating change — with the perspective of someone who spent twenty-five years writing stories for a living, and sixteen years learning what happens when you can't control the one you're in.

If that's a conversation your organization needs, I'd love to talk.

WATCH: “CHANGE OF PLANS”