Showing results for "Of Women and Salt" in Women

At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett was looking forward to new motherhood and all that was to come. But when the telephone rang, the news she received changed everything. Her eldest sister had died in a canoeing accident. Five years later, struggling with grief, the demands of being a parent-carer for her young son, and the impact of deeper austerity, life feels very different to the future she had imagined. A move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria offers Victoria and her family a chance to rebuild their lives.

Sarah Gormley spent most of her life trying to outrun the persistent self-loathing that plagued her from childhood, convinced that self-worth was something she had to earn by doing rather than being. When she returned to Salt Creek Farm at age forty-five, Gormley had no idea that detaching from the success she believed defined her, untangling the complicated relationship with her mother, and continuing the hard work of therapy would lead to a wildly transformed life.

Andrea Kott thought of herself as “the welfare Jew.” The daughter of a single mother whose depression and drinking pitched them into poverty, her stormy life looked nothing like that of the Jewish kids she knew: It defied every stereotype she associated with being Jewish—having an intact family and material wealth, and becoming a bat mitzvah. Alienated and ashamed, Kott felt ineligible to be Jewish, yet hungered for connection to the tradition and to God. It took a near-fatal accident, her mother’s death, marriage and motherhood, and losing a beloved brother for her to find her Jewish home.

Deep Salt Water is a stirring memoir about loss and abortion, expressed through the layering of imagery from the ocean. In detail at once sensual and sophisticated, Apostolides unfurls the emotional experience of a love affair and unwanted pregnancy, the abortion itself, and her reconnection with the man seventeen years later--a rekindling of love which stimulates this gentle attempt to come to terms with the abortion and its consequences.

Love, insecurities, divorce, career adventures, questions about belonging, embracing a disability, losing a parent. These and more are grains put together with love, honesty, and hope by Zohra Damani. As Zohra shares her life openly with you, it is with the intent of creating hope. Hope that you are not alone.