Half The Mother Twice The Love

As a talk-show host and inspirational speaker, Mother Love used to have to just grin and bear it -- all that extra weight and the poor health that went along with it. Today she can truly smile as she serves up sound advice with big portions of humor in her new book about better living and good health that can turn your life around just like it did hers. Half the Mother, Twice the Love tells about the major weight loss Mother Love achieved over the last three years to reverse the decline in her health and regain control over her life. She went from size 22 to size 10 using a multitiered approach that included exercise, diet, and other lifestyle adjustments, and all her secrets are here in this informative and uplifting book. Half the Mother, Twice the Love speaks to everyone who wants the good life without the bad habits that can make us tired, overweight, and eventually ruin our health. Part memoir and part self-help, this book teaches you how to learn from the mistakes which almost cost Mother Love her life. In the end, she may be half the woman she used to be, but she can give twice as much love as ever.

Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers—which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues. To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for the adoption paperwork and investigate search options, and the sisters will split the costs involved in locating their birth relatives. But their adoptive parents aren’t happy that their daughters want to locate their birth parents—and that is only the first of many obstacles Julie will come up against as she digs into her background. Julie’s search for her birth relatives spans eight years and involves a search agency, a PI, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist. By journey’s end, what began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest—one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.

The inspiration of this book came from the death of my mother, Frances Edith Nix – Tolliver. She died February 19th, 2007. She was born April 24th, 1920, I was fortunate enough to have her 56 years of my life. We are not raised to die, we are raised to live, even though the plot from mankind is like they would do sheep, cows or chickens – although you are cared for to a certain degree, you are not going to make it out of this world alive. My thought on this is, that if we were raised to die, there would probably be more tragedy, probably be more destruction and chaos, and then again maybe not. I also agree that because there are enormous amounts of people, and quite a few that would like to run the world a certain way, we will never unite to a calm and peace that can exist given the right circumstances.

After the agony of witnessing her mother's multiple—and ultimately successful—suicide attempts, Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of the acclaimed poet Anne Sexton, struggles with an engulfing undertow of depression. Here, with powerful, unsparing prose, Sexton conveys her urgent need to escape the legacy of suicide that consumed her family—a topic rarely explored, even today, in such poignant depth. Linda Gray Sexton tries multiple times to kill herself—even though as a daughter, sister, wife, and most importantly, a mother, she knows the pain her act would cause. But unlike her mother's story, Linda's is ultimately one of triumph. Through the help of family, therapy, and medicine, she confronts deep–seated issues and curbs the haunting cycle of suicide she once seemed destined to inherit.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

The author shares her life story to help others find love and acceptance in God's love and mercy. (Christian)