Reflections on Grief
Recovery
It’s been 21 years since my 19-year-old daughter Maya was
thrown from a horse and went into an irreversible coma. Healing my grief over Maya’s
death has liberated me in ways beyond what I could ever have imagined. The
worst has already happened. What is left to fear?
Swimming with Maya
is a crisis memoir that plumbs deeply the intense shock, grief, and anger that
followed in the wake of my daughter’s accidental death. What I wrote in those
pages continues to move and amaze me.
As I prepared to reissue Swimming
with Maya in e-book and paperback format last spring, I read page
after
page, tears streaming down my cheeks. My publisher, Mike O’Mary at Dream of
Things, had asked me to identify quotes to use on the book’s Amazon page. I
thumbed through my own book, putting colored paperclips on passages so raw they
took me right back to the afternoon Maya died and I made the decision to donate
her organs and tissues to people in need.
The last third of the book is about how I healed my grief.
Those stories – how I wrote my way, slowly and haltingly, to acceptance, worked
out long buried family patterns in therapy, sought out people who inspired me,
including the man who received my daughter’s heart – are the light that draws
me as a reader. Of course, I know how
the story turns out. Yet there are
moments I had forgotten. Reading passages from the book made the experiences
alive and fresh again.
Here’s one from Chapter 3: “Maya’s chest rises and falls.
The ventilator hisses, the computers beep, fiber optic cable snakes into her
skull. I never knew love could be so big, that it could expand to allow even
this. I have a premonition of lifelong grief rolling toward me, but I know
that, once again, I am being asked to give my daughter her freedom.”
That was the moment I realized I had no right, nor any
power, to hold my daughter here. I had to let her go. I gave in to her coma and
ultimate death because they were hers not
mine, a destiny I could never have imagined. That moment of surrender marked me
for life.
This was not an easy book to write, nor is it easy to read.
So why read it? Is there something to be learned in these
pages that is valuable enough to offset the pain?
I believe we read to experience life vividly. Good writing
puts us inside the mind and heart of the writer, creating a world we can
inhabit, a safe space to vicariously experience another’s life. The death of a
child is something every parent fears, and few want to imagine deeply. Swimming with Maya offers one woman’s
way through the tangle of emotions. As one reader wrote after finishing the
book, “I feel broken and mended.”
Healing from grief is a long, slow process. Writing about it
helped me go all the way to the bottom of my grief, and that is where I found
treasures that continue to inspire me.
Swimming with Maya
is vital testimony about how losses can be healed. It was worth writing. I hope you find it worth reading.
Previously available only in hardcover, 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, in one of the most
An inspirational/motivational true story recommended for anyone who has experienced tragedy, who is grappling with traumatic experiences of the past, or who wants to better understand the strength and healing power of the human spirit.
Paperback: 340 Pages
Publisher: Dream of Things (March 26, 2013)
ISBN-10: 0988439042 Twitter hashtag: #SWMaya
Swimming with Maya; A Mother’s Story is available as a print and e- book at Amazon .
About the Author:
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 was reissued by Dream of Things press early in 2013. 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, appearing on
CNN and San Francisco’s Evening Magazine. She has been featured in the San
Francisco Chronicle, 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, where she
occasionally teaches writing workshops on creative nonfiction and
memoir.
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.
Find out more about this author by visiting her online:
Disclosure:
I received free the item(s) mentioned in this post in exchange for my honest review. Regardless ~ All my reviews are my honest and personal opinion.
I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”.
That seems a very heart touching story.
ReplyThank you! I've heard from readers that it has inspired their own grief recovery or changed the way they relate to their children. I hope you enjoy Swimming with Maya, which is all about how we move forward after loss.
Reply