This is a sad memoir. It tells of a woman's commitment to be present for her aging adoptive parents while at the same time being unable to feel the love and connection that would have made this journey pleasant for her. I felt throughout the reading that she wrote for healing of childhood traumas. Her entire life seemed to be in a state of coping with a great sadness that could never end. She eventually found peace through Buddhism.

I agreed to read the memoir because it was presented to me as a woman working with the elderly in order to prepare herself for aging. Since I'm at that end of life as well, I thought it could help me to bear witness to her experiences. Unfortunately, I did not feel that she had a happy experience of helping the extremely elderly, sometimes senile people she was assigned to. Nor did she find joy in being a sometimes-companion to her adoptive mother during those final years before the inevitable death.

Now, before you think that the entire memoir was a bummer to read, let me assure you it wasn't all that bad. Hollis Giammatteo has an amazing writing style. At first I thought it meandered too much, but after a few chapters I began to see beauty in her sentences and choices about what sector of her life to write about. It all worked together to show the ways her life experiences worked together to make her into the person she is now. I especially appreciated reading about her experience in trying to build a relationship with her birth mother. Also, chapter 13 about her experience of Christian Science was of great interest to me.

Hollis' adoptive mother was a dedicated Christian Scientist and raised her in that religion. Her observations about Christian Science writings and services matched my experience of it as well. I was happy to read that I wasn't the only one completely mystified about the meanings of Mary Baker Eddy's writing. Here was a woman who was raised in that church, who was willing to say it just made no good sense. Tragic, to be forced into that cult by a woman obsessed with it. I ended up having a lot of sympathy for Hollis. Understanding the losses of her childhood helped me understand more of why she became who she is today.

Hollis is gay, married to another woman. She didn't write much about that aspect of her life - other than to occasionally mention her wife, Dana. Since I've never been gay and am in fact, a Christian, I wondered if that would make this a difficult reading experience for me. The answer is no ... it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of this book in any way. I have a great appreciation for the author's talent in writing such a great, albeit slightly depressing memoir. The style and depth of her writing is truly remarkable. She explores subjects about parental relationships that most of us never have to deal with. I'm grateful for the sharing of her life.

I recommend this book to other writers who would like to study her writing style, which I found remarkable and worthy of perusal.

I initially found this book at NetGalley and planned to read it in exchange for the manuscript. Unfortunately, I failed to download the galley back in 2016 when it was offered to me. It ended up in a list on my account there called "Archived, Not Downloaded." I decided to redeem my Netgalley account by finding those books and reviewing them anyway. I purchased a Kindle copy from Amazon. No regrets! I'm so glad I bought the book and really enjoyed reading it despite the sometimes-somber subject matter. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for considering me as a reader, even though it took until 2022 for me to actually complete the deal.