| Surviving in Spirit: A Memoir about Sisterhood and Addiction Contributor(s): Berliet, Melanie (Author) |
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ISBN: 1515177564 ISBN-13: 9781515177562 Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform OUR PRICE: $9.49 Product Type: Paperback Published: August 2015 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs |
| Physical Information: 0.28" H x 5" W x 7.99" (0.29 lbs) 116 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: What prompts a young woman to abandon the safe bounds of convention for the unknown? At first, all M lanie Berliet understood was that she'd lost her sense of what 'supposed to' meant. And that her older sister C line was sick. While it's tough to understand what leads a person into addiction--to witness someone you love kind-of kill herself--the truth is that you can learn from it. By the time C line died at age 30, she was Kermit The Frog green and she vomited blood more frequently than she was able to eat. In less than a decade, she had gone from summa cum laude Columbia graduate to NYU PhD student to unemployed, rambling, stumbling drunk saddled with a cirrhotic liver beyond repair. By the time C line died, her younger sister M lanie was no longer a Miss Goody Two Shoes from a waspy Connecticut suburb trotting down the sensible path. She was an adult who had abandoned a secure job on Wall Street to establish a career as a writer committed to exploring fascinating subcultures. As C line's illness escalated, you see, a basic lesson crept up on M lanie: Life is beautifully short, and fragile as hell. Life happens. Gradually, M lanie stopped agonizing over what she was supposed to do/think/know/read/listen to/watch/feel, or who she was supposed to be/befriend/love/like/learn from. So she pitched projects that sounded crazy and/or dangerous to most, but which gave her a thrill and helped her establish a career as an immersive journalist. She grew some balls, so to speak, after freeing herself from caring about what others might think. The devastating beauty of what happened to C line forced M lanie to question who she is. However unwittingly, in dying, C line empowered her younger sister to take risks--to live. This is their story. |