In this heartfelt, brave and honest account, Kerry Fisher and Pat Sowa share everything they’ve learnt from surviving the darkest of times. They shine a light on what it really feels like when your world shatters and how they found hope in the deepest despair.
Best friends since they met at university, Kerry and Pat had no idea that thirty years later, they’d need every ounce of their friendship to survive. In 2017, their worlds came crashing down when their teenage sons were both diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses within weeks of each other.
During the following rollercoaster months, Kerry and Pat regularly snatched time to message each other – often with black humour – providing a momentary refuge from their frightening realities. Together these two ordinary mums found a way to survive their extraordinary challenges and to navigate a new normal in an alien and isolating world. With raw honesty, they share the things they’ve learnt and what they wish they’d known – from how to tame raging mother guilt to restoring their natural optimism in the aftershock of tragedy.
In this profoundly moving book, Kerry and Pat take readers on a very personal exploration of the universal experiences of grief and loss, love and friendship that connect us all. Like a wise companion offering comfort, Take My Hand is a lifeline both to those overwhelmed by heartbreak and for friends and family who don’t know how to help. Most of all, it’s a powerful reminder that no matter how difficult life gets, you are not alone.
Kerry Fisher and Pat Sowa
Inspirational Memoir
Kerry Fisher is an internationally bestselling author of seven novels and has sold over a million books worldwide, with translations in nine languages. Take My Hand – co-written with her lifelong friend, Pat about both of their sons’ struggles with life-threatening illnesses – is an extension of her honest and forthright storytelling.
After studying French and Italian at the University of Bath, she lived in Italy and Spain for several years, eventually settling in Surrey, with her husband, two children and her much-adored Lab/Schnauzer. She has now adjusted her favourite quotation from her writing teacher: ‘This is fiction, we can skip the boring bits’ to ‘This is real life, let’s celebrate the boring bits.’
Pat Sowa is on what she calls a survivor’s mission to change the way we think about, treat and respond to mental illness, both as professionals and in our home lives. Pat campaigns for everyone to be taught the skills to spot mental distress. She is an inspirational keynote speaker and has addressed over 2000 leaders in education since 2018 as a way of honouring her love for Dom, her son who died from mental illness at the age of seventeen. She also trains Mental Health First Aid and is a member of the North Yorkshire Suicide Prevention Strategy Group – just one of the many examples of the work she does to get people talking about suicide so we can get better at keeping our loved ones safe.
She confesses to having an eye permanently on the next horizon and is working on appreciating this moment RIGHT NOW. Pat is a proud blow-in to her adopted county, North Yorkshire, where she lives with her husband, Jan and Caragh, the Chihuahua who definitely read the brief on how small dogs can rule the roost.
“As a human I just want to make a difference – make the world a kinder place to live in.”
Take My Hand: An Inspirational Memoir
By Kerry Fisher and Pat Sowa
Review by Heidi Lynn’s Book Reviews
First, I want to thank Kerry Fisher, Pat Sowa, Bookouture, and NetGalley for providing me this book so I may bring you this review.
Kerry Fisher and Pat Sowa are two incredibly strong mothers who open up and share their story not only of their son’s battle of cancer in Take My Hand. They give you an inside look how not only did this affect their sons but as a family as a whole. This is a very powerful must read book.
Warning: You will need tissues handy while reading this book! Yes, I admit I teared up at many points.
Kerry Fisher would like to dedicate this book to her little warrior family, and everyone else battling away in the eye of a sudden storm. May these be our worst days.
Pat Sowa would like to dedicate this book to Jan, Greg and Dom. I love you to Pluto and back a googolplex times.
Take My Hand focuses on very important topics such as mental health as it took a toll on Dom big time. Also, this book focuses on Suicide. Pat included some incredibly helpful resources for someone suffering from mental health issues or is thinking of committing suicide. Her hope is this book can make a difference in someone’s life!
Kerry and Pat were so blessed to have the tight knit bond with each other through all of this. They really leaned on each other when things got tough through emails back and forth.
It goes without saying this book is near and dear to everyone’s heart that was a part Even Kerry’s and Pat’s husbands contributed and wrote something in this book.
0 comments:
Post a Comment