Bücher von Jill Smolowe

When journalist Jill Smolowe buried her husband, sister, mother, and mother-in-law in the space of seventeen months, she assumed that it was only a matter of time before she fell apart. That's what all the movies and memoirs say will happen, after all. But when she never "e;lost it"e;-and when friends began to insist that her strength was amazing and unusual-she began to think there might be something freakish about her way of grieving, so she did what any self-respecting journalist would: she researched it. In Four Funerals and a Wedding, Smolowe jostles preconceptions about caregiving, defies clichs about losing loved ones, and reveals a stunning bottom line: far from being uncommon, resilience like hers is the norm among the recently bereaved. With humor and quiet wisdom, and with a lens firmly trained on what helped her tolerate so much sorrow and rebound from so much loss in her own life, she offers answers to questions we all confront in the face of loss, and ultimately reminds us all that grief is not only about endings-it's about new beginnings.

"e;Joe and I had been forthright about children. I was pretty sure I wanted them, Joe was pretty sure he didn't. Since we each perceived in the other some room for movement, the difference didn't worry us. Then priorities shifted, needs changed...."e; In her late thirties, journalist Jill Smolowe's life and career at Time magazine was on track. Her husband, Joe, was still her most trusted confidante and best friend. And now that she and Joe had decided finally to have a child, Jill assumed the pregnancy that had come so easily to all the women in her family would be her own next chapter. But nature had a different script in mind. As her quest for a child swerved from the roller coaster of infertility procedures toward the baffling maze of adoption options, Jill's desperation deepened -- while Joe's resistance to children only hardened. In the fog of depression, disappointments, and dead ends, their marriage began to founder. Then, halfway around the world, in Yangzhou, China, she encountered a future she'd never imagined might be hers. Honest and intimate, An Empty Lap is as much a window on a marriage as on a high-stakes baby chase. Compelling, beautifully told and as insightful as a novel, it's filled with emotions that anyone who has yearned for a child will recognize.