The Water Giver
The Story of a Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance
-
- 7,99 €
-
- 7,99 €
Publisher Description
Both a medical drama and meditation on motherhood, The Water Giver is Joan Ryan's honest account of her doubts and mistakes in raising a learning-disabled son and the story of how his near-fatal accident gave her a second chance as a parent.
Joan Ryan tells the powerful story of how her son’s near-fatal accident, and his struggle to become whole again, gave her a second chance to become the mother she had always wished she could be.
• Acclaimed journalist and author: Joan Ryan’s sports columns earned her thirteen Associated Press Sports editors Awards, the National Headliner Award, and the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Journalism Award, among other honors. Her first book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters was named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of all Time by Sports Illustrated.
• Medical drama: When Ryan’s sixteen-year-old son fell off of a skateboard, it wasn’t obvious at first how serious his injuries were. With a journalist’s eye for the telling detail and the rhythms of a natural storyteller, she captures his medical ordeal as he lurches from crisis to crisis—and with harrowing honesty and astonishing insight, relates her own journey through unknown emotional terrain.
• A mother’s story: Ryan’s son was diagnosed with Sensory Integration Dysfunction as a toddler; by the time he reached school age, it was clear that he suffered from ADHD and other learning disabilities. Though she loved him fiercely, she never stopped trying to fix him. When he is restored to her after his accident, she realizes she has the opportunity to be his mother all over again—only this time she lets go of the illusion of control. Now she not only accepts, but also embraces her son for who he really is.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
How does one raise children to be the best they can be, instead of the best of who you want them to be? Former San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ryan (Little Girls in Pretty Boxes) wrestled with this question for most of her adopted son Ryan's life, never quite feeling as if her mothering instincts fit the boy she loved. His early childhood diagnosis with sensory integration dysfunction gave her analytical side a roadmap of therapies and teaching tools, but the heartbreak of watching him struggle endlessly in school and at home left her emotionally exhausted and unsure of herself. Then their lives changed: after falling from his skateboard just blocks from their home at age TK, her son suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him unable to walk or talk, requiring multiple complex surgeries and months of rehabilitation. Her story of supporting him through this experience, with expert medical teams and tremendous aid from family and friends, is a testament both to her stamina and to his strength. Given the perspective that sometimes only a crisis can bring, Ryan learns to forgive herself for the smaller struggles of her son's earlier years, to take each day's challenges as they come and to trust herself to be the only mother that he needs.