Recommendations based on "The Sum of Our Days"

The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address...What would happen if your memory of these began to fade?Is it possible to rebuild your life? Raise a family? Fall in love again?When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold on to the past when her future is slipping through her fingers...?Original, heartwarming and uplifting, The Memory Book is perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes.

The talented and beautiful woman who has moved us with her singing now moves us with her words.Celine Dion -- My Story, My Dream is an unforgettable true story of courage, perseverance, dedication, and devotion -- told with the wide-eyed honesty of someone who has basked in the glowing adoration of millions of fans but has never lost touch with her working-class roots. Here is a book for anyone who has ever wondered about the real person behind the magnificent voice. Touching and funny, fascinating and uplifting, it is an exquisitely detailed portrait of a remarkable woman who has never backed away from any challenge...even the most daunting challenges of the heart.

With Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of the smash #1 bestseller Toxic Parents, offers a powerful look at the devastating impact unloving mothers have on their daughters—and provides clear, effective techniques for overcoming that painful legacy.In more than 35 years as a therapist, Forward has worked with large numbers of women struggling to escape the emotional damage inflicted by the women who raised them. Subjected to years of criticism, competition, role-reversal, smothering control, emotional neglect and abuse, these women are plagued by anxiety and depression, relationship problems, lack of confidence, and difficulties with trust. They doubt their worth, and even their ability to love.Forward examines the Narcissistic Mother, the Competitive Mother, the Overly Enmeshed mother, the Control Freak, Mothers who need Mothering, and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse.Filled with compelling case histories, Mothers Who Can’t Love outlines the self-help techniques Forward has developed to transform the lives of her clients, showing women how to overcome the pain of childhood and how to act in their own best interests.Warm and compassionate, Mothers Who Can’t Love offers daughters the emotional support and tools they need to heal themselves and rebuild their confidence and self-respect.

Constance's mother systematically abused her daughter throughout her childhood. Regularly beaten and starved, she tried to get herself taken into care without success and even drank bleach. When she was 13, her mother left her to fend for herself but Constance found the courage to survive and this is her story.

A year-long journey by the renowned psychiatrist and his writer wife after her fatal diagnosis, as they reflect on how to love and live without regret.Internationally acclaimed psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom devoted his career to counselling those suffering from anxiety and grief. But never had he faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In A Matter of Death and Life, Marilyn and Irv share how they took on profound new struggles: Marilyn to die a good death, Irv to live on without her.In alternating accounts of their last months together and Irv's first months alone, they offer us a rare window into facing mortality and coping with the loss of one's beloved. The Yaloms had numerous blessings — a loving family, a Palo Alto home under a magnificent valley oak, a large circle of friends, avid readers around the world, and a long, fulfilling marriage — but they faced death as we all do. With the wisdom of those who have thought deeply and the familiar warmth of teenage sweethearts who've grown up together, they investigate universal questions of intimacy, love, and grief.Informed by two lifetimes of experience, A Matter of Death and Life is an openhearted offering to anyone seeking support, solace, and a meaningful life.

I'm no Job - though I think we went to the same school....So says Jim Beaver in this memoir.In August 2003, Jim and his wife, Cecily, received what they thought was the worst news possible - their daughter, Maddie, was autistic. Then, six weeks later, the roof fell in - Cecily was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.Jim immediately began writing a nightly e-mail as a way to keep 125 family and friends up-to-date about Cecily's condition. Soon four thousand people around the world were reading it. Initially a cathartic exercise for Jim, the prose turned into an unforgettable journey for his readers. Life's That Way is a compilation of those e-mails; yet what started out as nightly missives makes for a unique and compelling, wholly original reading experience.Life's That Way is not an author looking back on his experience with the advantage of hindsight - there is an immediacy to this book that is singular. While highly personal, Beaver's experience is at the same time universal for anybody who has lost a loved one.But Life's That Way is not solely about loss. It is a day-by-day account of what it's like to discover the joy of a child, to be on the receiving end of unthinkable kindness, and to navigate life anew. As Beaver says, these are hard-won blessings. Then again, life's that way.

From the bestselling author of One Child comes this incredible, true story of the six-year-old girl who touched the hearts of millions—and the courage of one teacher who would not give up on her.What ever became of Sheila?When special education teacher Torey Hayden wrote her first book One Child thirty-five years ago, she created an international bestseller. Her intensely moving true story of Sheila, a silent, profoundly disturbed little six-year-old girl touched millions. From every corner of the world came letters from readers wanting to know more about the troubled child who had come into Torey Hayden's class as a “hopeless case,” and emerged as the very symbol of eternal hope within the human spirit.Now, for all those who have never forgotten this endearing child and her remarkable relationship with her teacher, here is the surprising story of Sheila, the young woman.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 'So very important' NIGELLA LAWSON 'Brilliantly alive' SUNDAY TIMES 'A truly wonderful book. Read it' HENRY MARSH 'Shows us the very best of human nature' ADAM KAY 'Her words are brimful of love, grace and kindness' GUARDIAN As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Every day, she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable. Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love. And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine. For if there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world. Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis. It is a love letter - to a father, to a profession, to life itself.

"Funny, furious, and profane." —The New York Times “Not your typical celebrity memoir.” —Jimmy Kimmel Unflinchingly honest and darkly funny, You with the Sad Eyes unveils a side of Christina Applegate we’ve never seen, forever cementing her formidable and iconoclastic legacy.  Christina Applegate came of age on sets and stages, expected to be on time, with lines learned, ready for lights-camera-action. What started as a financial necessity soon became an emotional escape from a tumultuous home life in the infamous Laurel Canyon scene of the 70s and 80s. She rocketed to stardom on the sitcom Married...with Children and went on to captivate audiences in classics like Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead…, Anchorman, and Dead to Me in her five-decade long career. Then it all stopped. A Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2021 confined her to a king-sized bed and the company of memories she’d rather forget: memories of the self-doubt and body dysmorphia that stalked her meteoric rise, of her mother’s fight against addiction and abuse after her father left, and of the tax life had taken on her body and mind that was suddenly coming due.  Now, at her most intimate and vulnerable, she unveils a story not even those closest to her fully know. She returns to the diaries she kept her whole life, finding the pain matched by joy, the losses mitigated by the extraordinary, and the weight of life lifted by her unrelenting belief that something greater lay ahead. No longer willing to lock herself away and with the perspective only our own mortality can bring, she knew it was imperative to tell it all.                      You with the Sad Eyes presents a remarkable woman and her legacy. In her own words, “I truly believe that books can make people feel less alone. That’s why I’m doing this. You with the Sad Eyes won’t be some big violin scratching for my life. But it will be real. It will be filled with the ups and downs, the humor and grief of life. So here I am. Real me. Lots to say.”

"Two kindred spirits find each other in this beautifully written memoir about the human-animal bond" (Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation). The horse Susan Richards chose for rescue wouldn't be corralled into her waiting trailer. Instead Lay Me Down, a former racehorse, walked right up that ramp and into Susan's life. This gentle creature--malnourished, plagued by pneumonia and an eye infection--had endured a rough road, but somehow her heart was still open and generous. It seemed fated that she would come into Susan's paddock and teach her how to embrace the joys of life despite the dangers of living. An elegant and often heartbreaking tale filled with animal characters as complicated and lively as their human counterparts, this is an inspiring story of courage and hope and the ways in which all love--even an animal's--has the power to heal.