Stay

A Story of Family, Love, and Other Traumas

Julie Fingersh

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781538195291
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

FEATURED IN PEOPLE MAGAZINE'S "PEOPLE PICKS": "The best memoirs reveal the worlds of others and help you reflect on your own. With a keen eye on family secrets and generational trauma, this one does just that."

"Rich, wise, funny, and beautifully written. It's hard to put down once you start." - Anne Lamott, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Profound, funny, and masterfully told. I read it in a single day. I couldn't stop thinking about it." - Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and podcast host of Happier with Gretchen Rubin

For readers of Anne Lamott, Dani Shapiro, and Kelly Corrigan, a riveting and emotionally captivating debut that explores the joyous and painful complexity of family, the cost of family secrets, and the quest to help the people we love without losing ourselves.

"What happened to Danny"––which was how Julie Fingersh's family often referred to her brother's life––had long been held in sacred privacy. Things like this did not happen to people like them. Decades later, Julie is no longer a young sister trying to save her beloved brother who struggles with depression. She is a midlife parent and it is her own child––struck by a chronic illness right at the start of college––whose life suddenly careens off course.

Told through the eyes of the author as both a young sibling and midlife parent, Stay offers an inspiring roadmap for those grappling with two of the most urgent challenges of our time--mental illness and chronic illness--and the ways in which they affect relationships, personal identity, and life trajectories. Sparkling with lyrical prose, insight, and joyful wit, Stay invites readers to examine the hidden blueprints shaping their own lives--and to see their own path forward with new eyes.

Table of contents

• PREFACE
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-One
• Twenty-Two
• Twenty-Three
• Twenty-Four
• Twenty-Five
• Twenty-Six
• Twenty-Seven
• Twenty-Eight
• Twenty-Nine
• Thirty
• Thirty-One
• Thirty-Two
• Thirty-Three
• Thirty-Four
• Thirty-Five
• Thirty-Six
• Thirty-Seven
• Thirty-Eight
• Thirty-Nine
• Forty
• Forty-One
• EPILOGUE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• POSTSCRIPT
• ABOUT THIS GUIDE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR