Fix You - A Memoir (Paperback)

Somewhere between The Glass Castle and Smashed, is Fix You: a raw and honest account of loss, love, and forgiveness about my poignant, often destructive journey from losing my mother to finding myself. The memoir recounts my past, growing up working-class in affluent New Jersey in the 1980s. I was ostracized because of my mother, turning to alcohol and men to escape the pain, while hurting from my parents' divorce. My mother a once beautiful but mentally unstable and abusive woman finally succumbed at the age of 54 to a disfiguring cancer she could have avoided. My mother's death starts me on an emotional journey, where facing my future means reconciling my past as I become a self-confident and self-reliant woman with the help of my best friend and two brothers. Along the way I discover my voice, my inner strength, and a life free from guilt and pain. I love my mother, I hate my mother, but sometimes I am my mother. Ultimately, Fix You is about finding acceptance in the one place you never thought to look-yourself. From Fix You: "I am fixated on her pale face, as she sleeps on the bed across from me, wondering how my mother and I got to this place. It all feels like a distant blur to me as I flashback to what seemed at the time to be irreconcilable differences. It was an important year for me, the year I graduated from college and got a job, so I could finally escape her insanity for good. But, here I sit, at the foot of her bed watching her die. A tear slips down my face. I've become witness to our tragic act; the last words she wrote to me still pierce my heart: You'll be sorry when I'm gone." "Sometimes it is the sharp contrasts in life, the bitter and the sweet; things not working out as planned, relationships falling apart, losing your loved ones-these are the things that shake you and make you appreciate life, see the good in it and love anew the people around you."