Download or read book The Bright Hour written by Nina Riggs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Built on her ... Modern Love column, 'When a Couch is More Than a Couch' (9/23/2016), a ... memoir of living meaningfully with 'death in the room' by the 38-year-old great-great-great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson--mother to two young boys, wife of 16 years--after her terminal cancer diagnosis"--

Download or read book The Widower s Notebook written by Jonathan Santlofer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written with unexpected humor and great warmth, The Widower's Notebook is a portrait of a marriage, an account of the complexities of finding oneself single again after losing your spouse, and a story of the enduring power of familial love. "This is deeply moving ... beautifully written and modulated, with a dollop of droll, black humor. It is such an achievement, like running uphill against a strong wind."--Joyce Carol Oates On a summer day in New York Jonathan Santlofer discovers his wife, Joy, gasping for breath on their living room couch. After a frenzied 911 call, an ambulance race across Manhattan, and hours pacing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor finally delivers the fateful news. Consumed by grief, Jonathan desperately tries to pursue life as he always had--writing, social engagements, and working on his art--but finds it nearly impossible to admit his deep feelings of loss to anyone, not even his to beloved daughter, Doria, or to himself. As Jonathan grieves and heals, he tries to unravel what happened to Joy, a journey that will take him nearly two years.

Download or read book Summary of Nina Riggs s The Bright Hour written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-04-23T22:59:00Z with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 When I was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, I was thirty-eight years old. I was told that dying isn’t the end of the world, and that there are many things worse than death. But the beautiful, vibrant world goes on. #2 I was reminded of a story I heard on NPR about a team-building exercise that an employer in South Korea was using to raise worker morale. The employees dress in long robes and sit at desks. Each writes a letter to a loved one as if it were their last correspondence. Sniffling and even outright weeping are acceptable. Next to each desk is a big wooden box. But not an ordinary wooden box: a coffin.

Download or read book When Breath Becomes Air written by Paul Kalanithi and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Download or read book Signs of Life written by Natalie Taylor and published by Two Roads. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signs of Life is Natalie Taylor's story. It starts the day her husband dies and ends sixteen months later on her son's first birthday. Natalie's journey from wife to widow to mother is heartbreaking, blackly funny and will move you to laughter and tears as she makes it across that finish line. And you have no doubt she will make it because Natalie is a warrior and a woman to cheer for. Intelligent, witty and moving, this is the very best kind of indie movie in a book. A book to delight, to treasure and to press into the hands of your best friend.

Download or read book Once More We Saw Stars written by Jayson Greene and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A gripping and beautiful book about the power of love in the face of unimaginable loss.” --Cheryl Strayed For readers of The Bright Hour and When Breath Becomes Air, a moving, transcendent memoir of loss and a stunning exploration of marriage in the wake of unimaginable grief. As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter's trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it--that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation--and a book that will change the way you look at the world.

Download or read book The Bright Hour written by Nina Riggs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “Stunning…heartrending…this year’s When Breath Becomes Air.” —Nora Krug, The Washington Post “Beautiful and haunting.” —Matt McCarthy, MD, USA TODAY “Deeply affecting…simultaneously heartbreaking and funny.” —People (Book of the Week) “Vivid, immediate.” —Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe Starred reviews from * Kirkus Reviews * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * Best Books of 2017 Selection by * The Washington Post * Most Anticipated Summer Reading Selection by * The Washington Post * Entertainment Weekly * Glamour * The Seattle Times * Vulture * InStyle * Bookpage * Bookriot * Real Simple * The Atlanta Journal-Constitution * The New York Times bestseller by poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is “a stunning…heart-rending meditation on life…It is this year’s When Breath Becomes Air” (The Washington Post). We are breathless but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other. Poet and essayist Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer—one small spot. Within a year, she received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal. How does a dying person learn to live each day “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two young children and adored husband for a loss that will shape the rest of their lives? How do we want to be remembered? Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, Nina asks: What makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? “Profound and poignant” (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Bright Hour is about how to make the most of all the days, even the painful ones. It’s about the way literature, especially Nina’s direct ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer. Brilliantly written and exceptionally moving, it’s a “deeply affecting memoir, a simultaneously heartbreaking and funny account of living with loss and the specter of death. As Riggs lyrically, unflinchingly details her reality, she finds beauty and truth that comfort even amid the crushing sadness” (People, Book of the Week). Tender and heartwarming, The Bright Hour “is a gentle reminder to cherish each day” (Entertainment Weekly, Best New Books) and offers us this important perspective: “You can read a multitude books about how to die, but Riggs, a dying woman, will show you how to live” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice).

Download or read book Bird of Paradise written by Raquel Cepeda and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker chronicles her personal year-long journey to discover the truth about her ancestry through DNA testing, sharing her findings as well as her insights into controversies surrounding modern Latino identity.

Download or read book Have You Found Her written by Janice Erlbaum and published by Villard. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And every week, there was the unspoken question, the one I didn’t know enough to ask myself : Have you found her yet? The one who reminds you of you? Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Janice Erlbaum went back to volunteer. Now thirty-four years old and a successful writer, she’d changed her life for the better; now she wanted to help someone else–someone like the girl she’d once been. Then she met Sam. A brilliant nineteen-year-old junkie savant, the product of a horrifically abusive home, Sam had been surviving alone on the streets since she was twelve and was now struggling for sobriety against the adverse health effects of long-term drug abuse. Soon Janice found herself caring deeply for Sam, following her through detoxes and psych wards, halfway houses and hospitals, becoming ever more manically driven to save her from the sickness and sadness leftover from Sam’s terrible past. But just as Janice was on the verge of becoming the girl’s legal guardian, she made a shocking discovery: Sam was sicker than anyone knew, in ways nobody could have imagined. Written with startling candor and immediacy, Have You Found Her is the story of one woman’s quest to save a girl’s life–and the hard truths she learns about herself along the way. “A rich and compelling account . . . Ultimately this is a book about the narrator’s journey and the dangers that attend the urge within us all to believe we can save another soul. A terrific read.” –Cammie McGovern, author of Eye Contact

Download or read book Bough Down written by Karen Green and published by Siglio Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book of dualities, probing the small spaces between lucidity and madness, desire and ambivalence, the living and the absent. Both an evocation of her love for her husband David Foster Wallace and an act of defiance in the face of devastating loss, Bough Down is a lapidary, keenly observed and composed work, awash with the honesty of an open heart.

Download or read book Dying A Memoir written by Cory Taylor and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bracing and beautiful . . . Every human should read it." —The New York Times A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice At the age of sixty, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: she now weighs less than her neighbor’s retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience—the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance—of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches: Taylor describes the tangle of her feelings, remembers the lives and deaths of her parents, and examines why she would like to be able to choose the circumstances of her death. Taylor’s last words offer a vocabulary for readers to speak about the most difficult thing any of us will face. And while Dying: A Memoir is a deeply affecting meditation on death, it is also a funny and wise tribute to life.

Download or read book We Don t Die written by Sandra Champlain and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We Don’t Die: A Skeptic’s Discovery of Life After Death” gives credible evidence of life after death. The goal of “We Don’t Die” is to have people believe that their deceased loved ones are still near them, help them navigate through the grieving process and educate that we are ‘eternal souls having a human experience. It is unique because it teaches people about the grieving process, keeping relationships whole, gives awe inspiring exercises that the reader experiences that we must be ‘more than our bodies.’ It gets readers in touch with the purpose of their lives and gets them on the path to producing results. Readers will no longer fear death, their pain of losing someone will be lessened, they will have hope, faith, and powerful access to live a successful life.

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 Glitter and Glue written by Kelly Corrigan and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A memoir from the author of The Middle Place about mothers and daughters—a bond that can be nourishing, exasperating, and occasionally divine. When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom—with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism—would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting. But it didn’t turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her savings shot, she had a choice: get a job or go home. That’s how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, 10,000 miles from the house where she was raised, her mother’s voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother, turning it over in her hands like a shell, straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral. This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers. But mostly it’s about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time. Praise for Glitter and Glue “I loved this book, I was moved by this book, and now I will share this book with my own mother—along with my renewed appreciation for certain debts of love that can never be repaid.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love “Kelly Corrigan’s thoughtful and beautifully rendered meditation invites readers to reflect on their own launchings and homecomings. I accepted the invitation and learned things about myself. You will, too. Isn’t that why we read?”—Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Water “Kelly Corrigan is no stranger to mining the depths of her heart. . . . Through her own experience of caring for children, she begins, for the first time, to appreciate the complex woman who raised her.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

Download or read book What Doesn t Kill You written by Rachel Haynes and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rachel Haynes survived bowel cancer, not once, but twice. There have been many unexpected consequences … this is her story. Exploring the ups and downs of treatment with sensitivity, humour and brutal honesty, Rachel reflects on the psychological impacts of survival not only on herself but on those who have supported her. Being diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer while bringing up two growing children, holding down a full time job, going through a break-up and having three days to adjust to a life-changing operation is far from ideal. Add to this a short period of remission, a new relationship, followed by an unexpected relapse and the whole thing starting again, and you know you are going to be in for an interesting read.

Download or read book Memoir of a Debulked Woman Enduring Ovarian Cancer written by Susan Gubar and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2012 New York Times Book Review Notable Book "Staggering, searing…Ms. Gubar deserves the highest admiration for her bravery and honesty." —New York Times Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008, Susan Gubar underwent radical debulking surgery, an attempt to excise the cancer by removing part or all of many organs in the lower abdomen. Her memoir mines the deepest levels of anguish and devotion as she struggles to come to terms with her body’s betrayal and the frightful protocols of contemporary medicine. She finds solace in the abiding love of her husband, children, and friends while she searches for understanding in works of literature, visual art, and the testimonies of others who suffer with various forms of cancer. Ovarian cancer remains an incurable disease for most of those diagnosed, even those lucky enough to find caring and skilled physicians. Memoir of a Debulked Woman is both a polemic against the ineffectual and injurious medical responses to which thousands of women are subjected and a meditation on the gifts of companionship, art, and literature that sustain people in need.

Download or read book Sanctuary written by Emily Rapp Black and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] often beautiful jewel of a book . . . Black’s power as a writer means she can take us with her to places that normally our minds would refuse to go.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) From the New York Times bestselling author of The Still Point of the Turning World comes an incisive memoir about how she came to question and redefine the concept of resilience after the trauma of her first child’s death. “Congratulations on the resurrection of your life,” a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Rapp Black pause. Her first child, a boy named Ronan, had died from Tay-Sachs disease before he turned three years old, an experience she wrote about in her second book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time, her life had changed utterly: She left the marriage that fractured under the terrible weight of her son’s illness, got remarried to a man who she fell in love with while her son was dying, had a flourishing career, and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. But she rejected the idea that she was leaving her old life behind—that she had, in the manner of the mythical phoenix, risen from the ashes and been reborn into a new story, when she still carried so much of her old story with her. More to the point, she wanted to carry it with her. Everyone she met told her she was resilient, strong, courageous in ways they didn’t think they could be. But what did those words mean, really? This book is an attempt to unpack the various notions of resilience that we carry as a culture. Drawing on contemporary psychology, neurology, etymology, literature, art, and self-help, Emily Rapp Black shows how we need a more complex understanding of this concept when applied to stories of loss and healing and overcoming the odds, knowing that we may be asked to rebuild and reimagine our lives at any moment, and often when we least expect it. Interwoven with lyrical, unforgettable personal vignettes from her life as a mother, wife, daughter, friend, and teacher, Rapp Black creates a stunning tapestry that is full of wisdom and insight.