| Summary: | This study examines the experience of parents caring actively for children with chronic life-threatening illnesses in the Singapore context. The study draws data from a novel narrative e-writing intervention (NeW-I) study which aims to enhance wellbeing, alleviate burden, and reduce adverse grief outcomes among these parents. Legacy documents belonging to 10 parents whose children were diagnosed with a chronic life-threatening illness were extracted for analysis. These documents are records of each parent’s journal writings throughout their NeW-I journey. Thematic analysis revealed nine themes reflecting the experiences of these parents. Eight of these themes can be categorized under strengths: support from caregiving allies, pausing for a breather, building caregiving repertoire, emerging virtues of caregiving; and stressors: coping with financial adversity, caring for specially-abled children, enduring unpleasant social attitudes, a test of family adaptability, accordingly. These two categories interact with each other. The last theme – my child before the disability, underlies parents’ commitment within their caregiving journey. This is the first-ever known study in the Asian context which explores the experience of parents caring actively for a child with chronic life-threatening illness. The findings add value to the previously limited knowledge of the Asian parental experience of raising a child with chronic life-threatening illness. Clinical and policy implications are discussed.
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