Overview

How do we become the persons we are? Solace seeks to answer that question. A portrait of the emotional legacies and psychological landscapes that shaped the author's life, Solace unfurls in a series of vignettes drawn from diaries and personal stories about her relationship to others as daughter, mother, friend, wife, therapist, and grandmother. These are stories of compassion and attention bringing about healing from grief and brokenness and the necessity of our deep and caring connection to others: the comfort offered to us and the comfort we offer to others.

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9781956907162

Table of Contents

Reviews

In the wonderful memoir Solace, Cornelia Maude Spelman says, ""Everything I have always been writing in my diaries is about Time."" With compelling frankness and consistent intimacy, she explores a rich tapestry of generations of lives, considering so many facets of what makes a life difficult as well as profound-alcoholism, recovery, loss, illness and death, the raising of children, presence and absence, mixed feelings about parents and ancestors, a devotion to art, and marriage-both when it's comfortable and when it isn't. I admire deeply what I have always loved about Spelman's writing-her willingness to tell an honest story, create moods, and then gaze thoughtfully into them, weighing what one does next or figuring out how it all goes together. This book is a gem. - Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Everything Comes Next and Voices in the Air Solace is deeply moving, honest, and immensely readable. Cornelia Maude Spelman's candid revelations take shape in letters to her mother and in intimate, emotionally precise episodes of her struggle with alcoholism, the devastating loss of her best friend to cancer, her marriages, the crux of aging, the rewards-and the disappointments-of parenting, as well as, the particular difficulty of the writing life for mothers. These are braided with excerpts from her vivid, lucid diary entries where her knack for capturing the essence of the moment shines. Spelman, at her core, is a healer. In Solace, you can't shake the sense that she has at last healed herself. - Suzanne Frischkorn, author of Whipsaw and Fixed Star

"In the wonderful memoir Solace, Cornelia Maude Spelman says, ""Everything I have always been writing in my diaries is about Time."" With compelling frankness and consistent intimacy, she explores a rich tapestry of generations of lives, considering so many facets of what makes a life difficult as well as profound-alcoholism, recovery, loss, illness and death, the raising of children, presence and absence, mixed feelings about parents and ancestors, a devotion to art, and marriage-both when it's comfortable and when it isn't. I admire deeply what I have always loved about Spelman's writing-her willingness to tell an honest story, create moods, and then gaze thoughtfully into them, weighing what one does next or figuring out how it all goes together. This book is a gem. - Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Everything Comes Next and Voices in the Air Solace is deeply moving, honest, and immensely readable. Cornelia Maude Spelman's candid revelations take shape in letters to her mother and in intimate, emotionally precise episodes of her struggle with alcoholism, the devastating loss of her best friend to cancer, her marriages, the crux of aging, the rewards-and the disappointments-of parenting, as well as, the particular difficulty of the writing life for mothers. These are braided with excerpts from her vivid, lucid diary entries where her knack for capturing the essence of the moment shines. Spelman, at her core, is a healer. In Solace, you can't shake the sense that she has at last healed herself. - Suzanne Frischkorn, author of Whipsaw and Fixed Star"

Author Information

Cornelia Maude Spelman M.S.W., is a writer, an artist, and former therapist. She is the author of picture books for children, including a series called ""The Way I Feel."" Her work has been translated into ten languages and sold over four million copies worldwide. www.corneliaspelman.com

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