Keep Your Head Up

A testament to the depth of familial love and our ability to endure in the face of childhood terminal illness

Keep Your Head Up is the incredible tale of one family's path to perseverance in the face of devastating odds. When author Tasha Faruqui gave birth to her second daughter, Soraya, she knew immediately that something was wrong. Yet as years passed and every medical test for Soraya came back normal or inconclusive, Tasha began to realize that science doesn't always have the answers, and there are some issues in life that simply cannot be fixed. Yet, we can continue to find happy moments and celebrate the beauty of what we have.

This story gives a voice to parents and loved ones of terminally ill children, illuminating the way to comfort, community, and unbreakable hope. This book discusses terminal illness with raw honesty, demonstrating how families can provide transparency to life-limited children around a terminal diagnosis, comfort them when they are afraid of what comes next, and continue to embrace life despite ongoing challenges. With beautiful narration and a heartfelt perspective, Keep Your Head Up testifies to the true depth of familial love and the hard things we can endure with grace and resilience.

This book:

• Provides guidance, hope, and understanding to parents and caregivers of terminally ill children
• Tells a story that will resonate with families facing elusive diagnoses, fickle healthcare systems, and emotional turmoil
• Offers hope that it is possible to find joy in the face of tragedy and give sick children the gift of a fully lived life
• Presents the balanced and relatable perspective of an award-winning pediatrician and parent to a child in hospice

Parents, family, and friends of terminally ill children, as well as healthcare professionals and educators, will appreciate Keep Your Head Up for its candor and its value as a guide to moving through a situation no family should have to face.

Prologue: Boulevard of Broken Dreams ix

Chapter Playlist xiii

1 Waving Through a Window 1

2 Send Me on My Way 9

3 Perfect 17

4 Take the Power Back 27

5 Nothing Better 35

6 Father of Mine 41

7 Follow You into the Dark 47

8 Welcome to Your Life 57

9 It’s Quiet Uptown 65

10 Cherub Rock 73

11 Ways to Go 81

12 Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang 87

13 Fix You 93

14 Underwater 99

15 All I Need 105

16 Vindicated 113

17 I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For 121

18 Float On 127

19 The 7th Element 137

20 Mr. Brightside 141

21 The World Has Turned and Left Me Here 147

22 Sleepyhead 153

23 Just Breathe 161

24 False Confidence 169

25 Good Life 175

26 Home 181

27 Pompeii 187

28 Riptide 191

29 Don’t Give Up on Me 197

30 Time of Your Life 205

31 Landslide 209

32 Take Me to Church 217

33 Let Me In 225

34 Another Life 231

Conclusion: Take This Ride 237

Acknowledgments 241

About the Author 243

Index 245

DR. TASHA FARUQUI is a pediatrician, public speaker, medical advocate, and author. She’s passionate about helping parents of children with complex medical conditions and reduced life expectancy. She was named a top doctor by Cincinnati Magazine in 2022 and 2024. She continues to share her family’s journey on Instagram (thefaruqui5).

In Keep Your Head Up: A Mother’s Story of Chasing Joy in the Face of Grief, experienced pediatrician and mother of a young daughter with complicated medical issues, Dr. Tasha Faruqui, delivers an incredible tale of her family’s difficult but rewarding journey in the face of unimaginable obstacles and challenges. The book gives a voice to the parents and loved ones of terminally ill children, showing you how to provide comfort, community, and hope in situations that seem bleak. It discusses terminal illness with sincere and compassionate honesty and deep, firsthand understanding of the ways in which diagnoses impact children and their families.

Dr. Faruqui’s beautifully narrated and heartfelt perspective offers powerful lessons about familial love and the hardships we can all learn to endure with grace, resilience, and humanity. She walks you through how to provide children with serious, complicated, and terminal illnesses the gift of a full life, packed with meaning and connection.

Keep Your Head Up provides parents and families of sick children with devastating diagnoses a way to survive the confusion that comes with uncertain and hard-to-understand medical conditions, complicated and bureaucratic healthcare systems, and the extraordinary emotional swings that come hand-in-hand with these situations.

Perfect for the parents, families, and friends of terminally ill children, Keep Your Head Up is also invaluable for healthcare professionals and educators who help patients navigate these diagnoses. It’s a compelling discussion from an author who combines deep medical experience and competence with the insight and empathy of a mother who has unexpectedly found herself in this uniquely difficult position.

Praise for Keep Your Head Up

“Dr. Tasha Faruqui’s Keep Your Head Up is an insightful journey through the challenges and triumphs of raising a child with medical needs. As the CEO of Make-A-Wish America, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of a wish in bringing hope, strength and joy to children and their families. Dr. Faruqui’s heartfelt narrative beautifully captures this perspective, showcasing the resilience that defines the Make-A-Wish experience. This book is an inspiring reminder that even in the face of adversity, joy and hope can be found.”
—LESLIE MOTTER, President and CEO of Make-A-Wish America

“Keep Your Head Up is a powerful, heartfelt journey through grief, faith, resilience, and redemption. With raw honesty and hard-won wisdom, Tasha offers more than just a story—she offers hope. This book doesn’t shy away from the weight of loss, the depths of despair, or the questions that often go unspoken in the wake of tragedy. But through it all, it radiates courage—the kind that inspires you to face your own pain and keep going. Whether you’re walking through the valley of loss yourself, loving someone who is, or simply longing to live with more intentionality and grace, this book will meet you where you are—and lift you higher. It’s not just a book you read. It’s a book you feel.”
—WHITNEY LYN ALLEN GADECKI, certified grief coach, widow, and author of Running in Stilettos and What Must Be Carried

“As a fellow rare-disease mom, I saw so much of my own story reflected in these pages. With unflinching honesty and a rare blend of medical insight and maternal tenderness, Tasha Faruqui offers a poignant and powerful memoir that captures the heartbreak and hope of parenting a medically complex child—her story is a masterclass in surrender, resilience, and the fierce pursuit of joy in the face of profound uncertainty.”
—JESSICA FEIN, author of Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes

Praise for Keep Your Head Up

“Dr. Tasha Faruqui's Keep Your Head Up: Chasing Joy in the Face of Grief is an insightful journey through the challenges and triumphs of raising a child with medical needs. As the CEO of Make-A-Wish America, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of a wish in bringing hope, strength and joy to children and their families. Dr. Faruqui's heartfelt narrative beautifully captures this perspective, showcasing the resilience that defines the Make-A-Wish experience. This book is an inspiring reminder that even in the face of adversity, joy and hope can be found.”

—Leslie Motter, President & CEO of Make-A-Wish America

“Anticipatory grief can feel messy and isolating. But in Keep Your Head Up, Tasha Faruqui manages to paint her devastatingly beautiful journey with relatable strokes—reminding us all that even while staring down grief, there is so much life to live.”

—Kelly Cervantes, USA TODAY bestselling author of Normal Broken

“In Keep Your Head Up, Dr. Faruqui speaks openly about some of the lesser-known aspects of parenting a child with medical complexity, including mental health issues, spirituality, sibling experiences, parental dreams and expectations, and learning to embrace an unexpected path. Readers of any background will find something in this book that resonates with them.”

—K. Jane Lee, MD, author of Catastrophic Rupture: A Memoir of Healing

“Tasha Faruqui's memoir Keep Your Head Up is a story of becoming. Who we chose to be, and who life requires us to become. In this beautiful pager turner, the reader is left breathless by what life and parenting can truly ask of us. This beautifully written book offers so many often-left unsaid truths about grief and loss written plainly on the page. On every page we are gifted a deep understanding of what it means to be wholly human in the most deeply spiritual way.”

—Meghan Riordan Jarvis, trauma and grief therapist, author of Can Anyone Tell Me: Essential Questions About Grief & Loss

“Parents, providers, and caregivers will find themselves deeply seen in these pages. With the heart of a mother and the insight of a physician, Dr. Faruqui shows us how to live and love even in life’s most uncertain terrain.”

—Kacie Gikonyo, RN, Death Doula, and founder of Death Doula School™

“Keep Your Head Up is a powerful, heartfelt journey through grief, faith, resilience, and redemption. With raw honesty and hard-won wisdom, Tasha offers more than just a story—she offers hope. This book doesn’t shy away from the weight of loss, the depths of despair, or the questions that often go unspoken in the wake of tragedy. But through it all, it radiates courage—the kind that inspires you to face your own pain and keep going. Whether you’re walking through the valley of loss yourself, loving someone who is, or simply longing to live with more intentionality and grace, this book will meet you where you are—and lift you higher. It’s not just a book you read. It’s a book you feel.”

—Whitney Lyn Allen Gadecki, certified grief coach, widow, and author of Running in Trauma Stilettos and What Must Be Carried

“As a fellow rare-disease mom, I saw so much of my own story reflected in these pages. With unflinching honesty and a rare blend of medical insight and maternal tenderness, Tasha Faruqui offers a poignant and powerful memoir that captures the heartbreak and hope of parenting a medically complex child—her story is a masterclass in surrender, resilience, and the fierce pursuit of joy in the face of profound uncertainty.”

—Jessica Fein, author, Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes