Why this book exists
I did not start writing this book because I had answers. I started writing because my daughter was hurting, and I did not know what to do with the feeling of watching someone you love suffer while knowing you cannot take the pain away.
That is one of the hardest places for a parent to stand. You want to fix it. You want a plan. You want the doctor to have the answer, the treatment to work, and the person you love to wake up tomorrow feeling like themselves again.
Endometriosis does not work that way.
Samantha’s experience changed the way I understood pain, healthcare, advocacy, and what it means to show up for someone. Kellie’s changed it too. I had spent years in healthcare believing in the work we do, and then my own family taught me how much there is still to learn when someone’s pain is not believed quickly enough.
I am not a doctor. I am not a woman living with endometriosis. Women living with it are the experts on their own bodies and their own stories. My role is different. I am writing to the people around them — the men who love them, the dads who do not know what to say, the husbands who want to help and keep trying to solve the wrong problem, and the leaders and clinicians who need to understand that delayed belief has consequences.
I have missed things. I have tried to fix things that could not be fixed. I have learned that love is not only what you feel for someone. Love is what you do next.
She should not have to prove her pain to the person who promised to love her.
Who it’s for
Men who love someone with endometriosis and want to understand what showing up actually looks like. Dads, husbands, brothers, friends, and healthcare leaders who recognize that listening is a skill that has to be learned. People who want to move past sympathy and become someone a person in pain does not have to manage.
Who it’s not for
This is not a medical guide, and it is not written to speak over women living with endometriosis. It does not replace medical care, professional support, or the voices of people living with the disease. It is for the people around them who need to listen better, learn faster, and take responsibility for how they respond.
Questions it answers
Why does it take so long for so many women to receive a diagnosis? How do I support someone I love when I cannot fix their pain? What does a woman with chronic pain wish the people around her understood? How do I stop making someone explain the same thing over and over? What should husbands know about pain, sex, fertility, and relationships? How do I advocate without taking control away from the person living it? And how do we raise sons who believe women?
Inside
The book opens with It Started With My Daughter, on how Samantha’s experience changed me and forced me to see endometriosis differently. What Endometriosis Does to a Life looks past symptoms at what chronic pain takes from someone’s plans, relationships, mental health, and ordinary days — the medical maze, the costs nobody sees, the reality of living with a condition most people misunderstand.
How Men Show Up is the practical half: what partners miss, what not to say, flare days, intimacy, treatment and surgery, fertility. And From One Daughter to a Bigger Fight widens out to research, healthcare, advocacy, and why women should not have to become warriors just to receive care and belief.
Samantha wrote the foreword, in her own voice. It is the best thing in the book.
Before you start
This book includes discussion of suicide, self-harm, overdose, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, medical trauma, painful sex, and fertility grief. It does not go around the hard parts, because for some women the question of a life in pain versus no life at all is not theoretical.
If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call emergency services. In the United States you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
A note from me
I wrote this book because I love my daughter. That sounds simple, but sometimes love puts you in uncomfortable places. It asks you to learn words you never thought you would need. It asks you to sit with pain you cannot remove. It asks you to admit where you were wrong.
Samantha taught me that belief matters. Not the kind where you say the right thing and move on. The kind where someone can tell you they are hurting and you do not make them prove it first.
I cannot fix endometriosis for my daughter. I wish I could. What I can do is believe her. I can learn. I can listen. I can use whatever voice I have to make sure fewer women have to fight this hard to be heard.
380 pages · First edition, 2026 · Published by Mike Baker HQ, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Continue reading
- Man vs. Menopause — supporting the women we love through another season that gets misunderstood.
- Human First — listening, connection, and remembering the person behind every story.
- Still My Mom — love, caregiving, grief, and staying connected through the hardest seasons.
- Women Should Not Have to Lose a Decade Before We Believe Them — the essay this book grew out of.
The full companion workbook to the book. Thirty-six pages of exercises, built to be printed and filled in with a pen — alone or with the person you are trying to show up for.
Endometriosis 101 for menPart One — It started with my daughterPart Two — What endometriosis does to a lifePart Three — How men show upPart Four — From one daughter to a bigger fightDownload the companion workbook (PDF) →
