Heart Work

If you have lost a sibling or a child or grandchild, particularly after a CHRONIC CHILDHOOD ILLNESS, you will identify with the journey of the Gandour family in HEART WORK: A FAMILY PILGRIMAGE INSPIRED BY SIBLING GRIEF. If you teach students preparing for careers in medical or mental health professions, HEART WORK will enrich their and possibly your understanding of the family backdrop of CHILDHOOD CANCER and sibling grief.
Aimee died at the age of 14 after an eight-year bout with leukemia. Her younger sister and only sibling, Molly, was just 10 at the time. Sixteen years later during a visit to her childhood home in Indiana, Molly proposed to her parents that together they attempt deeper and riskier therapeutic work on her sister's death. And possibly film much of it. The result was a years' long heart pilgrimage for the Gandour family and a more proximate presence of Aimee in their lives. Written from the perspective of the mother of both the deceased and surviving sibling, the memoir Heart Work takes us by the hand and leads us through her family's and her own journey. It offers a rare and intimate developmental perspective on a family living with life-threatening illness and death. Much of it is based on actual data including diaries that the author kept on each of her daughters from birth; taped conversations between family members and Aimee's hematologist; journaling and notes from therapy and interviews; and writings from each of the siblings as children. Even though the author writes from a bereaved mother's point of view, she enlightens us psychologically along the way and leaves us with deep questions to ponder. Heart Work is the story of one family in the Midwest but it touches on multiple themes that will resonate with parents and surviving siblings, as well as those who have cared for and supported them.