In just a decade, journalist Monica Nicolson Oosterbroek Hilton-Barber Zwolsman married and lost both her beloved husbands, award-winning photographers Ken Oosterbroek and Steven Hilton-Barber, as well as her precious 16-month-old son, Benjamin. Most people would have collapsed under the weight of such tragic devastation. But Monica, a survivor of note, now finally tells the story of her roller-coaster ride of a life, in Love. Loss. Life. In 2004, within weeks of losing her precious baby boy, and with the loss of her two husbands barely behind her, Monica finally ends up in Australia, desperate to obliterate the pain of death and start a new life. This poignantly honest tale is a story of deep passion, crushing letdowns, new beginnings, huge humor, and the renewal of hope. It is also a book filled with penetrating insights into a South Africa in the 1990s, in political transition. It sees Monica hurtling through war zones of Africa with the men in her life--Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Egypt--to Britain, Europe, and America, delightfully written in a travelogue style.

A vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, Love, Loss, and What We Ate traces the arc of Padma Lakshmi’s unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera—a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron’s Heartburn Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home—and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India. Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather—a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth—to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external. Love, Loss, and What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family—both the ones we are born to and the ones we create—and their enduring legacies.

Have you ever wondered what a therapist really thinks? Have you ever wondered if a therapist truly cares about her patients? Have you tried to imagine the unimaginable, the loss of the person most dear to you? Is it true that `tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? ` Love and loss are a ubiquitous part of life, bringing the greatest joys and the greatest heartaches. In one way or another all relationships end. People leave, move on, die. Loss is an ever-present part of life. In Love and Loss, Linda B. Sherby illustrates that in order to grow and thrive, we must learn to mourn, to move beyond the person we have lost while taking that person with us in our minds. Love, unlike loss, is not inevitable but, she argues, no satisfying life can be lived without deeply meaningful relationships. The focus of Love and Loss is how patients' and therapists' independent experiences of love and loss, as well as the love and loss that they experience in the treatment room, intermingle and interact. There are always two people in the consulting room, both of whom are involved in their own respective lives, as well as the mutually responsive relationship that exists between them. Love and loss in the life of one of the parties affects the other, whether that affect takes place on a conscious or unconscious level. Love and Loss is unique in two respects.The first is its focus on the analyst's current life situation and how that necessarily affects both the patient and the treatment. The second is Sherby's willingness to share the personal memoir of her own loss which she has interwoven with extensive clinical material to clearly illustrate the effect the analyst's current life circumstance has on the treatment. Writing as both a psychoanalyst and a widow, Linda B. Sherby makes it possible for the reader to gain an inside view of the emotional experience of being an analyst, making this book of interest to a wide audience. Professionals from psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and bereavement specialists through students in all the mental health fields to the public in general, will resonate and learn from this heartfelt and straightforward book.

A love story and an inspirational tale of recovery and self-discovery, Marie Tillman opens up for the first time about her marriage to ex-NFL star Pat Tillman, and her journey to rebuild her life after his death. In 2003, Pat Tillman, serving in the US Army, hastily wrote a "just in case" letter to his wife, Marie. When he returned on leave before his departure to Afghanistan, he placed the letter on top of their bedroom dresser. For months it sat there, sealed and ever-present, like a black hole through which Marie knew her stable life would be pulled if she ever had reason to open it. Then, in April 2004, Marie's worst nightmare came true. In the days following his death, it was Pat's letter that kept her going and, more than that, it was his words that would help her learn to navigate a world she could no longer share with her husband. In The Letter, Marie's talks for the first time about her journey to remake her life after Pat's death. In it, she recalls meeting and falling in love with Pat when they were kids, his harrowing decision to join the army after 9/11, and the devastating day when she learned he'd been killed. She describes how she withdrew from the public spotlight to grieve, learning along the way the value of solitude, self-awareness and integrity in the healing process. And, finally, Marie recounts her work to rebuild her life, including founding The Pat Tillman Foundation, an organization established to carry forth Pat's legacy of leadership, and her decision to step back into the public eye in order to inspire people to live with meaning and purpose. Filled with the lessons Marie learned and the wisdom she gained since Pat's death, The Letter is both a heartrending love story and an inspiring tale for anyone, young or old, whose life has taken an unexpected hard turn -- and who struggles to get back on the right path.

In a volume originally intended just for friends, the author reflects on her fortunes and misfortunes through the clothes she has worn, clothes that have expressed her hopes and dreams--from her Brownie uniform to her first maternity dress. Reprint.

A powerful exploration of grief and resilience following the death of the author's son that combines memoir, reportage, and lessons in how to heal Everyone deals with grief in their own way. Helen Macdonald found solace in training a wild gos­hawk. Cheryl Strayed found strength in hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. For Carol Smith, a Pulitzer Prize­ nominated journalist struggling with the sudden death of her seven-year-old son, Christopher, the way to cross the river of sorrow was through work. In Crossing the River, Smith recounts how she faced down her crippling loss through reporting a series of profiles of people coping with their own intense chal­lenges, whether a life-altering accident, injury, or diag­nosis. These were stories of survival and transformation, of people facing devastating situations that changed them in unexpected ways. Smith deftly mixes the stories of these individuals and their families with her own account of how they helped her heal. General John Shalikashvili, once the most powerful member of the American military, taught Carol how to face fear with discipline and endurance. Seth, a young boy with a rare and incurable illness, shed light on the totality of her son's experiences, and in turn helps readers see that the value of a life is not measured in days. Crossing the River is a beautiful and profoundly moving book, an unforgettable journey through grief toward hope, and a valuable, illuminating read for anyone coping with loss.

The plains stretch out, endless, distant and unknown for those who live constrained by the limitations of nature’s hardships and by their poverty. Cara’s village is poor, inhabited by those left bitter, unhappy and resigned to the hardships of life and its bleak monotony. They live in constant fear for their lives. Their minds and hearts are closed, their experience of the world is muted and dull, lacking in enjoyment, excitement and feeling. The riders come every year causing destruction, taking young women for their slaves and small boys to train and make their own. The villagers fear the riders and live lives darkened under their constant threat. Only Cara takes a different view of them. She rebels inwardly against her folk and their way of life. The riders’ wild ways and free nature hold a sense of magic for her, an invitation to experience the unknown, to feel and live fully. When her turn to be taken comes, she is not afraid. She is excited and her unique character wraps her up in isolation. With her slavery, a new life begins for Cara. One that brings her a deep powerful love, a freedom of being herself truly and fully, a time of learning from the wise and experienced, a sense of belonging somewhere, having a home and the beginning of inner growth and understanding. She experiences the joys of love and tastes the bitterness of loss. She roams the desert, hungry, thirsty and fighting to survive, searching for answers. She enters the ocean and roams lands hidden by mist, learning every day a little more about herself, her dreams and fears. With the help of those she meets along her journey and the guidance she finds in nature and in her dreams, she eventually reaches a place of peace. Cara is a lively young woman full of excited interest for life. She learns to survive, to forgive, to love with all her heart and to let go. She gets to know her own true nature and learns to accept her passions, desires, fears and resentments, finding within herself a place of peace and a source of happiness. Love, Loss, Life takes the reader through Cara’s journey through love, loss, desert and ocean, making the reader part if her dreams, hopes, fears and through understanding them, her personal growth and journey towards light, forgiveness and happiness