When Alex Belth went on a first date with Emily Shapiro, he was smitten. He had finally met the woman of his dreams, and he imagined a life together filled with romance and kids. The were married in 2007, five years after that date.

Belth, now 50, and Shapiro, 49, remain deeply in love. But their life has been very different from what they first imagined. Shapiro has struggled with chronic illness, and Belth has been her caregiver. At the age of 22, Emily developed Crohn’s disease, an incurable autoimmune condition that affects the digestive system. Shortly after they married, she was diagnosed with chronic migraines and a spatial management disorder in which her eyes don’t work with each other.

Caring for loved ones with chronic illness has taken on new urgency during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of some 80 million Americans – and over 111,000 Vermonters -- who have been infected with Covid-19, some 10 to 30 percent of them will likely experience long-term chronic symptoms known as long Covid. Many people with the condition encounter frustrating barriers to getting effective care. Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said on the Vermont Conversation in December 2021 that he predicts “a pandemic of long Covid.” 

Instead of enduring their health challenges in silence, Belth and Shapiro have chosen to live their lives out loud – literally. Belth, an editor at Esquire magazine, and Shapiro, a former emergency room unit secretary who now has a practice in energy healing, have released a new Audible Original audio book, Here I Are: Anatomy of a Marriage. It consists of their candid conversations about love, sex, romance and life with chronic illness. They recorded the book in their home in Bristol, Vermont, where they moved in April 2020 after years in New York City.

“A lot of this stuff isn’t talked about so readily,” says Shapiro. “If someone else can feel a little bit better about themselves identifying with these universal themes, that's potent for me.”