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Swimming with Maya demonstrates the remarkable process of healing after the traumatic death of a loved one. Eleanor Vincent raised her two daughters, Maya and Meghan, virtually as a single-parent. Maya, the eldest, was a high-spirited and gifted young woman. As a toddler, Maya was an angelic tow-head, full of life and curiosity. As a teenager, Maya was energetic and independent – and often butted heads with her mother. But Eleanor and Maya were always close and connected, like best friends or sisters, but always also mother and daughter.
Then at age 19, Maya mounts a horse bareback as a dare and, in a crushing cantilever fall, is left in a coma from which she will never recover. Eleanor’s life is turned upside down as she struggles to make the painful decision about Maya’s fate.
Ultimately Eleanor chooses to donate Maya’s organs. Years later, she is able to hear Maya’s heart beat in the chest of the heart recipient. Along the way, Eleanor re-examines her relationship with her daughter, as well as Eleanor’s traumatic life as a child and young woman. In a story that has been called “heartbreaking and heart-healing,” Eleanor Vincent illuminates the kind of courage, creativity, faith, and sheer tenacity it takes to find one’s balance after unthinkable tragedy.
Praise for Swimming with Maya:
“Vincent’s poignant decision to donate Maya’s organs will resonate with even hard-boiled readers.” Booklist
“Powerful prose with a meaningful and memorable message.” Lee Gutkind, Founder, Creative Nonfiction Magazine
“An important addition to the literature of loss and restoration.” Maxine Kumin, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of Inside the Halo and Beyond: The Anatomy of a Recovery
“Heartbreaking and heart healing, this compelling story of surviving the death of a child will stay with you long after you’ve closed the book.” Ellen Bass, author of The Courage to Heal and The Human Line
“Every reader who has had to deal with traumatic loss will find wisdom and healing in these brave pages.” Chana Bloch, author of Mrs. Dumpty and Blood Honey
“Riveting, poignant, and utterly honest… It shows that one can recover from the loss of a child.” Judy Tatelbaum, author of The Courage to Grieve and You Don’t Have to Suffer
“Eleanor Vincent chronicles her grief and the healing that came with helping others.” Carol Lin, CNN
“Blows the reader away with its clarity, its unstinting honesty, and the searing accuracy of its vision of the medical and emotional complexity surrounding the tragic death of a young woman. Highly recommended.” John Ruark, MD, FACP, author of Dying Dignified
“Thoughtful, honest and beautifully written… a fabulous story about what it means to be a mother.” Wendy Lichtman, author of Blew and the Death of the Mag and Secrets, Lies and Algebra
“Life trumps death in this beautiful memoir.” Linda Joy Myers, author of Don’t Call Me Mother–A Daughter’s Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness and Power of Memoir
Excerpt from Your Book:
When I think of a stranger touching my daughter’s clothes it feels like a violation, so donating them to Goodwill is out of the question. But then several months after the funeral, one of her cousins asks if she can have Maya’s prettiest formal dress. I examine the dress, opulent as a peony, its hot pink bodice and spaghetti straps, the skirt with its cascade of pink flounces. Maya carried a little beaded purse on prom night. I find that too, then wrap the dress in tissue paper, tuck the purse in beside it in a gift box and present it to my niece.
The shoes are more difficult. Maya’s college roommates had shipped them home to me along with her other clothes. I unpack them and set them in a row in her closet with the high heels at one end, the flats at the other. Each time I pick one up and turn it in my hand I can feel my daughter’s missing foot. At last, I decide to call her girlfriends to see if anyone wants the shoes. Jo Anne agrees to take them. I stack the high heels in shoeboxes on the dining room table and Jo Anne and I stand side by side surveying the pile of shoes. “Do you want to try on a pair, just to be sure?” I ask. She steps into a pair of black patent leather pumps and walks a few steps, pivots, and comes back. Now taller than I am because she is standing in Maya’s shoes, Jo Anne opens her arms to me. As I hold her, I feel a tremor in her shoulders. Then she drives away with the shoes, and my daughter’s footfalls echo in my mind.
Grief seizes me by the scruff of the neck and will not let me go. Piece by piece I reconstruct the puzzle of our life together, opening myself to the slow truth of what it meant to be Maya’s mother.
Author Bio:
Eleanor Vincent is an award-winning writer whose debut memoir, Swimming with Maya: A Mother’s Story was nominated for the Independent Publisher Book Award and has been reissued by Dream of Things press. She writes about love, loss, and grief recovery with a special focus on the challenges and joys of raising children at any age.
Called “engaging” by Booklist, Swimming with Maya chronicles the life and death of Eleanor’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Maya, who was thrown from a horse and pronounced brain-dead at the hospital. Eleanor donated her daughter’s organs to critically ill patients and poignantly describes her friendship with a middle-aged man who was the recipient of Maya’s heart.
Since the initial publication of Swimming with Maya in 2004, Eleanor has been a national spokesperson on grief recovery and organ donation and been interviewed on radio and television programs around the country.
She was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College.
Her essays appear in the anthologies At the End of Life: True Stories about How we Die (edited by Lee Gutkind); This I Believe: On Motherhood; and Impact: An Anthology of Short Memoirs. They celebrate the unique and complicated bonds between mothers and daughters, making hard decisions as a parent – whether your child is 14 or 40 – and navigating midlife transitions with grace and authenticity.
She lives in Oakland, California.
Yes. If you want to hold a contest to giveaway a free copy of the trade paperback edition to your followers, I will provide an extra copy of the book for the giveaway.
Website(s)
http://eleanorvincent.com
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