THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO CARRY
Love, Loss, Family, and the Quiet Cost of Doing What’s Right
The Things We Choose to Carry is a memoir about memory, family, responsibility, and the things we continue to carry long after we believe we have put them down.
V. P. ŠILININKAS looks back across a life shaped by separation, love, work, marriage, parenthood, estrangement, loss, and the choices made along the way. Some of those choices were deliberate. Others were made in moments when there seemed to be no good choice at all. Years later, their consequences remained.
At the heart of the book is a question that returns again and again: Why?
Why do people we love hurt one another? Why do families remain silent about the things that matter most? Why do some memories fade while others remain almost painfully clear? And what happens when an unanswered question is left for someone else to carry?
The memoir does not attempt to turn a complicated life into a simple story of heroes and villains. It looks instead at what was seen, what was remembered, what was misunderstood, what can be documented, and what can only be understood from the inside of a life as it was lived. Along the way, it examines the difference between intention and consequence, between protecting someone and leaving them without an explanation, and between surviving the past and finally being willing to look at it.
The death of Vid’s daughter, Sabina, runs through the book as both a profound loss and an unanswered question. Her story becomes part of a larger reflection on what families carry in silence, what disappears when no one speaks, and why telling a difficult story can sometimes be an act of remembrance rather than accusation.
Ultimately, The Things We Choose to Carry is not simply a book about what happened. It is about what remains — the love, the regret, the memories, the questions, and the possibility that some things become lighter only when we are finally willing to examine them.
Coming December 2026
Published by Gates End