Family Puzzles: A Private Life Made Public

Women too often get caught in the crunch between meeting the needs of their families and their own personal needs. They struggle to balance their roles as wife, mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, grandmother, sister with their individual quest to live a fulfilled life. Is there room to be myself? is the contemporary woman's cry.Award-winning columnist Linda Weltner speaks to these women. For fifteen years, she has invited readers into her private life through her Boston Globe column, Ever So Humble. Now for the first time in book form, these weekly first-hand personal accounts, revealing the struggles and joys of Weltner's family relationships as they unfold, are offered in an intimate collection.Over the years, I have been offering up my life, with all its problems. In the course of this book, a sister-in-law commits suicide, a father and two mothers die, two daughters marry, grandchildren are born, and people struggle to overcome selfishness, envy, resentments, and hurt feelings. These stories of risks taken, responsibility accepted, are meant to be provocative, disturbing, and controversial. I have dared to reveal myself as fully human and to address the personal longing for intimate connection all of us share.As one of Weltner's readers has said, You speak with my voice. I feel what you write. Women everywhere will welcome these honest, encouraging, and inspirational words. An ideal Mother's Day gift book!