Download or read book My Dead Parents written by Anya Yurchyshyn and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of Esquire's "Best Nonfiction Books of 2018" "Sharp and searching...a potent look at the fraught, painful, and complicated relationship between parents and children, and the mysteries — revelatory, difficult — that can and cannot be solved." — Boston Globe Anya Yurchyshyn grew up in a narrow townhouse in Boston, every corner filled with the souvenirs of her parents’ adventurous international travels. On their trips to Egypt, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, her mother, Anita, and her father, George, lived an entirely separate life from the one they led as the parents of Anya and her sister – one that Anya never saw. The parents she knew were a brittle, manipulative alcoholic and a short-tempered disciplinarian: people she imagined had never been in love. When she was sixteen, Anya’s father was killed in a car accident in Ukraine. At thirty-two, she became an orphan when her mother drank herself to death. As she was cleaning out her childhood home, she suddenly discovered a trove of old letters, photographs, and journals hidden in the debris of her mother’s life. These lost documents told a very different story than the one she’d believed to be true – of a forbidden romance; of a loving marriage, and the loss of a child. With these revelations in hand, Anya undertook an investigation, interviewing relatives and family friends, traveling to Wales and Ukraine, and delving deeply into her own difficult history in search of the truth, even uncovering the real circumstances of her father’s death – not an accident, perhaps, but something more sinister. In this inspiring and unflinchingly honest debut memoir, Anya interrogates her memories of her family and examines what it means to be our parents’ children. What do we inherit, and what can we choose to leave behind? How do we escape the ghosts of someone else’s past? And can we learn to love our parents not as our parents, but simply as people? Universal and personal; heartbreaking and redemptive, My Dead Parents helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.
Download or read book I m Glad My Mom Died written by Jennette McCurdy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir by American former actress and singer Jennette McCurdy about her career as a child actress and her difficult relationship with her abusive mother who died in 2013
Download or read book My Dead Parents written by Anya Yurchyshyn and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of Esquire's "Best Nonfiction Books of 2018" "Sharp and searching...a potent look at the fraught, painful, and complicated relationship between parents and children, and the mysteries — revelatory, difficult — that can and cannot be solved." — Boston Globe Anya Yurchyshyn grew up in a narrow townhouse in Boston, every corner filled with the souvenirs of her parents’ adventurous international travels. On their trips to Egypt, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, her mother, Anita, and her father, George, lived an entirely separate life from the one they led as the parents of Anya and her sister – one that Anya never saw. The parents she knew were a brittle, manipulative alcoholic and a short-tempered disciplinarian: people she imagined had never been in love. When she was sixteen, Anya’s father was killed in a car accident in Ukraine. At thirty-two, she became an orphan when her mother drank herself to death. As she was cleaning out her childhood home, she suddenly discovered a trove of old letters, photographs, and journals hidden in the debris of her mother’s life. These lost documents told a very different story than the one she’d believed to be true – of a forbidden romance; of a loving marriage, and the loss of a child. With these revelations in hand, Anya undertook an investigation, interviewing relatives and family friends, traveling to Wales and Ukraine, and delving deeply into her own difficult history in search of the truth, even uncovering the real circumstances of her father’s death – not an accident, perhaps, but something more sinister. In this inspiring and unflinchingly honest debut memoir, Anya interrogates her memories of her family and examines what it means to be our parents’ children. What do we inherit, and what can we choose to leave behind? How do we escape the ghosts of someone else’s past? And can we learn to love our parents not as our parents, but simply as people? Universal and personal; heartbreaking and redemptive, My Dead Parents helps us to see why sometimes those who love us best hurt us most.
Download or read book The Long Goodbye written by Meghan O'Rourke and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Anguished, beautifully written... The Long Goodbye is an elegiac depiction of drama as old as life." -- The New York Times Book Review From one of America's foremost young literary voices, a transcendent portrait of the unbearable anguish of grief and the enduring power of familial love. What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief-its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies-an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond. O'Rourke's story is one of a life gone off the rails, of how watching her mother's illness-and separating from her husband-left her fundamentally altered. But it is also one of resilience, as she observes her family persevere even in the face of immeasurable loss. With lyricism and unswerving candor, The Long Goodbye conveys the fleeting moments of joy that make up a life, and the way memory can lead us out of the jagged darkness of loss. Effortlessly blending research and reflection, the personal and the universal, it is not only an exceptional memoir, but a necessary one.
Download or read book The Dead Moms Club written by Kate Spencer and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kate Spencer lost her mom to cancer when she was 27. In The Dead Moms Club, she walks readers through her experience of stumbling through grief and loss, and helps them to get through it, too. This isn't a weepy, sentimental story, but rather a frank, up-front look at what it means to go through gruesome grief and come out on the other side. An empathetic read, The Dead Moms Club covers how losing her mother changed nearly everything in her life: both men and women readers who have lost parents or experienced grief of this magnitude will be comforted and consoled. Spencer even concludes each chapter with a cheeky but useful tip for readers (like the "It's None of Your Business Card" to copy and hand out to nosy strangers asking about your passed loved one).
Download or read book Losing Your Parents Finding Yourself written by Victoria Secunda and published by Hyperion. This book was released on 2001-04-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eloquent book that explores the impact on one's life of losing a parent as an adult, and the effect it has on families, careers, and friendships -- now in paperback. Losing a parent is an event that happens, sooner or later, to nearly everyone. Yet seldom has the impact of parental death on the identities of adult offspring been examined. This book fills that gap. Backed by her original study and filled with compelling case histories, Secunda's book explores what happens to men and women when they are on their own in ways they have never been before. She addresses myriad issues, including: What does it mean to be living without parents to please or rebel against? How does adult "orphanhood" alter relationships with one's siblings, partner, friends, children, or one's career choices? How does it reshape one's sense of self? Losing Your Parents, Finding Your Self offers the assurance that out of loss can come unforeseen gain -- that on the other side of sorrow, we can discover new hope, wisdom, and strength.
Download or read book My Brother Sam Is Dead written by James Lincoln Collier and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic story of one family torn apart by the Revolutionary War All his life, Tim Meeker has looked up to his brother. Sam is smart and brave, and is now a part of the American Revolution. Not everyone in town wants to be a part of the rebellion. Most are supporters of the British, including Tim and Sam's father. With the war soon raging, Tim knows he will have to make a choice between the Revolutionaries and the Redcoats, and between his brother and his father.
Download or read book My Father s Wake written by Kevin Toolis and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate, lyrical look at the ancient rite of the Irish wake--and the Irish way of overcoming our fear of death Death is a whisper for most of us. Instinctively we feel we should dim the lights, pull the curtains, and speak softly. But on a remote island off the coast of Ireland's County Mayo, death has a louder voice. Each day, along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio runs a daily roll call of the recently departed. The islanders go in great numbers, young and old alike, to be with their dead. They keep vigil with the corpse and the bereaved company through the long hours of the night. They dig the grave with their own hands and carry the coffin on their own shoulders. The islanders cherish the dead--and amid the sorrow, they celebrate life, too. In My Father's Wake, acclaimed author and award-winning filmmaker Kevin Toolis unforgettably describes his own father's wake and explores the wider history and significance of this ancient and eternal Irish ritual. Perhaps we, too, can all find a better way to deal with our mortality--by living and loving as the Irish do.
Download or read book Modern Loss written by Rebecca Soffer and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the website that the New York Times hailed as "redefining mourning," this book is a fresh and irreverent examination into navigating grief and resilience in the age of social media, offering comfort and community for coping with the mess of loss through candid original essays from a variety of voices, accompanied by gorgeous two-color illustrations and wry infographics. At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit. Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize. Soffer and Birkner, along with forty guest contributors including Lucy Kalanithi, singer Amanda Palmer, and CNN’s Brian Stelter, reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics including triggers, sex, secrets, and inheritance. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message. Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.
Download or read book Songs for Dead Parents written by Erik Mueggler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a society that has seen epochal change over a few generations, what remains to hold people together and offer them a sense of continuity and meaning? In Songs for Dead Parents, Erik Mueggler shows how in contemporary China death and the practices surrounding it have become central to maintaining a connection with the world of ancestors, ghosts, and spirits that socialism explicitly disavowed. Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork in a mountain community in Yunnan Province, Songs for Dead Parents shows how people view the dead as both material and immaterial, as effigies replace corpses, tombstones replace effigies, and texts eventually replace tombstones in a long process of disentangling the dead from the shared world of matter and memory. It is through these processes that people envision the cosmological underpinnings of the world and assess the social relations that make up their community. Thus, state interventions aimed at reforming death practices have been deeply consequential, and Mueggler traces the transformations they have wrought and their lasting effects.
Download or read book Dead People Suck written by Laurie Kilmartin and published by Rodale. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An honest, irreverent, laugh-out-loud guide to coping with death and dying from Emmy-nominated writer and New York Times bestselling co-author of Sh*tty Mom Laurie Kilmartin. Death is not for the faint of heart, and sometimes the best way to cope is through humor. No one knows this better than comedian Laurie Kilmartin. She made headlines by live-tweeting her father’s time in hospice and her grieving process after he passed, and channeled her experience into a comedy special, 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad. Dead People Suck is her hilarious guide to surviving (sometimes) death, dying, and grief without losing your mind. If you are old and about to die, sick and about to die, or with a loved one who is about to pass away or who has passed away, there’s something for you. With chapters like “Are You An Old Man With Daughters? Please Shred Your Porn,” “If Cancer was an STD, It Would Be Cured By Now,” and “Unsubscribing Your Dead Parent from Tea Party Emails,” Laurie Kilmartin guides you through some of life’s most complicated moments with equal parts heart and sarcasm.
Download or read book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning written by Margareta Magnusson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *The basis for the wonderfully funny and moving TV series developed by Amy Poehler and Scout Productions* A charming, practical, and unsentimental approach to putting a home in order while reflecting on the tiny joys that make up a long life. In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations, and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming. Margareta suggests which possessions you can easily get rid of (unworn clothes, unwanted presents, more plates than you’d ever use) and which you might want to keep (photographs, love letters, a few of your children’s art projects). Digging into her late husband’s tool shed, and her own secret drawer of vices, Margareta introduces an element of fun to a potentially daunting task. Along the way readers get a glimpse into her life in Sweden, and also become more comfortable with the idea of letting go.
Download or read book Dead Mom Walking written by Rachel Matlow and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Vine Award in Non-Fiction "A comedy for catastrophic times." --CBC "A hilarious memoir of effervescent misadventures." --Toronto Star "How am I laughing at someone's mother's cancer? How? We think we can't laugh about death, about cancer, about our mothers and their suffering . . . and we can't, but we can. And there's so much relief in that." --Carolyn Taylor, BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW A whip-smart and darkly funny memoir about an unconventional family, the limits of wellness fads, and the mother of all catastrophes. Rachel Matlow’s eccentric mom, Elaine, never quite followed the script handed down to her. Her bold out-there-ness made it okay for Rachel to be their genderqueer self and live life on their own terms. But when Elaine decides to try to heal her cancer naturally, Rachel has to draw the line. What ensues is a tug of war between logical and magical thinking, an odyssey through New Age remedies ranging from herbal tinctures and juice cleanses to a countryside ayahuasca trip, and a portrait of a mother and child who’ve never been physically closer or ideologically further apart. In facing their inimitable mother’s death, Rachel has written a book bursting with life—the epic adventures and epic fails, the broken limbs and belly laughs. As hilarious as it is poignant, Dead Mom Walking is about writing the story of your life only to find out that life has other plans.
Download or read book Autobiography of My Dead Brother written by Walter Dean Myers and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful National Book Award Finalist from the acclaimed, bestselling author of Monster. "This novel is like photorealism; it paints a vivid and genuine portrait of life that will have a palpable effect on its readers." (School Library Journal starred review) With Harlem as its backdrop, Autobiography of My Dead Brother follows the diverging paths of best friends Rise and Jesse. When Rise becomes engulfed in gang activity and starts dealing drugs, Jesse, a budding artist, tries to make sense of the complexities of friendship, loyalty, and loss in a neighborhood plagued by drive-by shootings, vicious gangs, and an indifferent juvenile justice system. The innovative first-person storytelling, along with cartoons and photos, pulls in readers and makes Autobiography of My Dead Brother a strong and thought-provoking choice for sharing in a classroom or at home. "Though the story is starkly realistic, there is always hope in the gifts of Jesse the artist and C. J. the musician, of schools and churches and of caring parents." (Kirkus) "Touching and impactful, Autobiography cannot fail to intrigue, and hopefully influence youngsters with its poignant statement of two roads taken." (Judges' Citation, National Book Award)
Download or read book Sometimes I Lie written by Alice Feeney and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?
Download or read book Good Grief written by Theresa Caputo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The star of "Long Island Medium" shares inspiring, spirit-based lessons on how to work through and overcome grief, in a guide that also offers example testimonies about the experiences of her clients
Download or read book The Summer of Letting Go written by Gae Polisner and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2014-02-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just when everything seems to be going wrong, hope—and love—can appear in the most unexpected places. Summer has begun, the beach beckons—and Francesca Schnell is going nowhere. Four years ago, Francesca’s little brother, Simon, drowned, and Francesca’s the one who should have been watching. Now Francesca is about to turn sixteen, but guilt keeps her stuck in the past. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lisette, is moving on—most recently with the boy Francesca wants but can’t have. At loose ends, Francesca trails her father, who may be having an affair, to the local country club. There she meets four-year-old Frankie Sky, a little boy who bears an almost eerie resemblance to Simon, and Francesca begins to wonder if it’s possible Frankie could be his reincarnation. Knowing Frankie leads Francesca to places she thought she’d never dare to go—and it begins to seem possible to forgive herself, grow up, and even fall in love, whether or not she solves the riddle of Frankie Sky.
