New Life, No Instructions

New Life, No Instructions: A Memoir by Gail Caldwell    Audio Book:4 hrs. , 30 min       Paperback Book:  192 pages            

A look into the life of Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times Best Selling Author, Gail Caldwell.    Gail developed Polio in 1951 and her life was changed forever after that.   She likens it to being on a train and getting off at the wrong stop    You are still you, the you that got on for the ride, but, now it is you in a strange and unexpected place that you now have to figure out how to manage your way through to get back to some semblance of what you know.   She tells the highs and lows of her life – low being Polio that she says she doesn’t want to give power to by demonizing it and saying everything changed because this happened, she would rather say, this happened it was just simply that she was one of the people that it happened to but she woud rather give strength to herself by going further saying, this happened and  then this is how it turned out because I learned to deal with it and go on with my life from there.     She talks about how many dogs she has loved better said adored over the years.   We aren’t talking about tiny little yip yip lap dogs, we are talking big Alaskan sled dogs that can pull a tractor.    She found comfort and solace in these big loving friends who have been beside her all through her struggles with health problems, Polio, hip replacements, recovering from broken bones from her falls due to Polio having made her body unsteady over the years.    She talks about grief and sorrow at losing both of her parents.   She spins loving tales of times they shared over the years.   She talks about feeling all alone and devastated due to her contracting Polio but realizing how blessed she really was with her force field of familial love and loving friends surrounding her and bolstering her spirits.   While we may have a certain path in mind sometimes our lives turn out to be completely different stories that was expected it to be.    She talks about how much she enjoyed sharing walks along the sand on the east coast with her various dogs over the years and how good it felt to take her shoes off and feel the sand and water flowing over her toes.    She talks about the joint love she has shared with family, pets and friends over the years when she felt like it was a solo adventure she was going through only to find she had her own tribe surrounding her and bearing her up when her strength started lagging.      She talks about how all big changes in our lives originally start out as something small then it accumulates and how we can create hope out of where sorrow used to be.    Very insightful just showing how good can come from tragedy if we forge on no matter how hard the struggle or how much life seems to try to hold us back or hold us down.   Fortitude will get you through and when you get through and look back at how far you have come from where you started you will not only be amazed but you will also feel good to know you overcame the odds.  And how good that will make you feel and yeah, humbled by the circumstances but proud of the inner strength, too.     A spiritual journey into the darkness all the way through to the light on the other side.     A good story, lots of great wisdom and teaching moments to be be found here.    It starts out a little dodgy,  You will ask yourself, “Where is she going with this?”  But then she gets in her groove and the reader will be saying, “Oh that is what she was getting at.   Ah!  Now I see.   Good book insight into what it is like to be down with a devastating diagnosis and how to find the inner strength to perservere through it and come back stronger.    The definition of Vas micht nicht umbringt mach me schtarker – that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.    Good book.    A good read for any age, I think

 - Shirley J.