A Love Letter In A Hammock

A Love Letter Written in Blisters and Jungle MudA memoir of love, loss, endurance, and the brutal beauty of trying to hold on to the person you love.A love letter written in blisters and jungle mud.What began as an attempt to outrun anxiety became something far more painful — and far more beautiful — when Paula was diagnosed with cancer.A Love Letter in a Hammock follows a coast-to-coast crossing of the Panamanian jungle, a journey fuelled by love, fear, and the desperate hope that movement could keep grief at bay.Raw, darkly funny, and unfiltered, this is a memoir for anyone who’s ever kept going when stopping felt easier.

What You Will Learn From The Book

This is not a book about being strong.It’s a book about what happens when life strips you down to your bones — and you keep going anyway. Through jungles, grief, storms, and silence, you’ll travel with me across Panama and through the rawest parts of being human.In these pages, you’ll learn what endurance really looks like: not medals, not finish lines — but the quiet decision to move forward when every part of you wants to stop.And maybe, you’ll find pieces of your own story along the way.

  • • How to keep moving even when your mind is telling you to stop.

  • • Why love can push you into impossible places — and carry you through them.

  • • What the jungle teaches you about anxiety, fear, and the stories we believe about ourselves.

  • • Why survival isn’t glamorous — but it’s always meaningful.

  • • How grief, endurance, and hope can coexist in the same breath.

Chapters (some of them)

Blackened
The story begins where most endurance tales end — with the truth about anxiety, panic, and the quiet battles no one sees.The Monster Triathlon
Loch Ness to Richmond, London, on foot, bike, and water — and the moment everything changed.After the Monster
Life doesn’t pause after you break yourself open. Sometimes it becomes even more complicated.Training for Hope
Preparing for something far harder than any race: loving someone through illness.Panama - Coast to Coast
Jungle mud, broken feet, river crossings, and the reason he kept going when stopping would’ve been easier.Death March Day
A chapter about the moment the story almost ended — and the one reason it didn’t..The Symbolic Ending
A hammock, a letter, and the truth about how love carries on.

About The Author

David Shiels is an endurance athlete and writer whose work explores love, loss, and what it means to keep going when life gives no choice. He’s crossed countries on foot, raced through mountains, survived jungles, and learned—often the hard way—that the hardest terrain is always the inside of your own mind.His debut memoir, Love Letter in a Hammock, follows the journey through his partner Paula’s cancer diagnosis and the extraordinary endurance events he undertook while trying to hold onto hope.It is a book written in blisters, mistakes, devotion, dark humour, and the kind of honesty that arrives only when there’s nothing left to lose.When he isn’t writing or training for his next ultra, David can usually be found outdoors—somewhere between exhaustion and peace—running, climbing, or simply trying to understand the beautiful, brutal way a life can change.

  • • Endurance athlete with multi-day jungle, mountain, and ultra-distance experience

  • • Memoirist focused on mental health, grief, and resilience

  • • Advocate for real, unfiltered conversations about struggle and survival

  • You’ll connect with this book if you’ve ever:

  • • loved someone you were terrified to lose

  • • tried to outrun anxiety or grief

  • • carried your pain into the wilderness

  • • survived something you didn’t know you could

  • • found yourself again in the middle of nowhere

Take the First Step Into the Story

A memoir about love, loss, endurance, and the impossible things we do for the people who shape us.
If any part of this journey speaks to you — the grief, the grit, the hope — this book was written for you.