Everything All At Once

An intimate and evocative memoir one woman’s experience with the universality of grief and the redemptive power of love as she endures her husband’s 84-day battle with lung cancer.

When Stephanie Catudal met Tommy (Rivs), a professional endurance athlete, she thought that the love, stability, and warmth she shared with her husband had finally dispelled her pent-up anger and grief over the loss of her father and her faith. But when Rivs became ill and was put into coma at the height of the pandemic, the painful memories of her childhood—watching her father die of cancer—came flooding back.

Written with lush lyricism, Steph’s account of how this crisis forced her to confront her past is raw, illuminating, and heartbreaking: her father’s death that wrecked her faith in God and jumpstarted a decade of rebellion, including running away from home and living out of a van at age 16, struggling with alcoholism, and delving into the world of psychedelics to ease her pain. Sitting by Rivs's bedside, she grappled with the memories of the past and the uncertainties of the future while reckoning with the unknowns of her husband’s illness. Rivs would endure a grueling 84 days in a medically induced coma, eventually undergoing chemo for the same illness that stole her father. Then, a medical miracle—Rivs emerged from his coma, regained his strength, and remains in full remission today.

Like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, Everything All At Once is a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting reflection on resilience and a powerful reminder that we can find healing no matter how broken we are.