Let’s talk about grief and loss and love

My magic moment at the podium.

Am over the moon that Australia’s national paper, The Australian, ran a review on my memoir Farewell My French Love last weekend.  Published by Harlequin’s new arm HQ non-fiction, it was one of four reviews under the heading “Intrepid Women of the World.”  I was one of those four women. And it swelled my pride that the only quotation from those four reviews by noted reviewer and critic Agnes Nieuwenhuizen,  was mine. Strangely, I had not picked this quotation as pivotal to the grief experience, but I certainly quoted it yesterday at an author’s talk. It reads:

“I try and grasp the fact that I had a life before Olivier, an identity as a prominent newspaper woman…Surely I had a gathering of life skills to cope with my adversity? I am beginning to rue the fact that somewhere in the bliss of my marriage, I lost my sense of independence. I became joined at the hip with Olivier, and my feeling of wholeness included him.  Emotional interdependence. I wrote about its dangers before I met him and I never intended it to happen to me. However, such intense togetherness was Olivier’s idea of a French marriage…”

 

You can read more about my memoir here : https://www.facebook.com/Life-Style-by-Nadine-Williams-109475362455450/?ref=br_rs