Splitting the Difference

A Heart-Shaped Memoir

Tré Miller Rodriguez

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781938314216
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

At 18, Tré Miller-Rodríguez gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. At 19, her only sibling was killed in a car crash. At 34, she lost her husband to a sudden heart attack. Then, at 36, her now-teenaged daughter found her on Facebook—and began to reshape the course of Tré's life. With sharp, immediate prose, Tré unpacks the experience of being young and widowed in New York City: the "dumb sh*% people say"; the "brave face" she wears to work and social events; the solace she doesn't find in one-night stands; and how her perspective only begins to shift when she spontaneously brings Alberto's ashes on a trip and sets into motion the ritual of spreading him in bodies of water around the world. Once she's begun, Tré discovers that traveling to her bucket list destinations—places like Savannah, Brazil, and Cuba—is a viable strategy for facing her roughest days, and her loss of her husband becomes a lens through which she begins to view her past and embrace her future. By the end of her journey, Tré has quit her corporate job, explored Alberto's homeland of Cuba, and joyfully reunited with her biological daughter in North Carolina. Equal parts inspiring, irreverent, and heart-rending, Splitting the Difference is written with the "raw-thenticity" of a woman transformed by heartbreak and inspired by love's legacy.

Table of contents

• title page
• copyright
• dedication
• 1 Sunday Mourning
• 2 Dumb Shit People Say
• 3 I'm the White Elephant in the Room
• 4 Ring on the Right Hand
• 5 The Cruelest Month
• 6 Meltdowns and Melanoma
• 7 Fight or Flight
• 8 Travel as Prozac
• 9 (Not) Home for the Holidays
• 10 Lost and Found in Brazil
• 11 Thanks for the Memories
• 12 Striped Shirts and Epitaphs
• 13 Waking Up in Havana
• Heart-Shaped Gratitude
• About the Author