From the Heart

Teresa Wilk was the only child of Polish parents who had been captured in Poland by the Nazis and experienced forced labor in Germany during World War II. Teresa and her parents were refugees after the war and, in early 1952, immigrated to the United States and lived in rural Georgia and later in rural Ohio. Teresa received her MSW degree and worked as a social worker in Chicago, Detroit, Fairfax, Arlington, and Washington, DC. Bruce and Teresa married in 1986. In 1990, their daughter Emilia was born. Teresa died at Arlington Hospital emergency room the day before Mother's Day on Saturday, May 13, 2000, after a long battle with inflammatory breast cancer.  

This book is about relationships, of life and death, and of a family continuing on after the death of a mother, stepmother, and spouse. These words are a tribute to Teresa's memory and to the memory and lives of so many women and their families who struggled and struggle with breast cancer.  

The core of the book are entries in a journal by Teresa and the author, interspersed with narratives by the author, and the inclusion of writings of his late wife, Teresa. The journal entries are not edited but remain as they were written. As the author states, "I feel that our humanness-mine and Teresa's-will best come through when our true voices come through, flaws and all. Though day-to-day details may seem mundane and trivial, they are the things that make up a life." It is an emotionally charged account of their journey together and of the author's journey of grieving, raising a daughter, and emerging into a new life.