When All That's Left of Me Is Love: A Daughter's Story of Letting Go - Paperback

by Linda Campanella (Author)

2013 Indie Excellence Book Awards finalist, 2012 Nautilus Book Award silver medalist, 2012 Living Now Book Awards gold medalist, 2012 Readers Favorite silver medalist, and 2011 Reader Views Literary Awards first-place winner in two categories: memoir/autobiography/biography and parenting/families/relationships

When All That's Left of Me Is Love is poignant and powerful. Linda Campanella provides an intimate look inside her family and her heart as she relives the joy-filled year and long goodbye leading to her terminally ill mother's death. In the process, she comes to terms with the permanence of her loss and finds comfort in profound gratitude for many unexpected gifts.

At once heart-wrenching and heartwarming, When All That's Left of Me Is Love is about living fully and purposefully after learning someone very dear to us will be gone too soon, and it's about realizing that letting go does not mean we stop holding on. Readers can expect to be touched deeply by one woman's example of grace and courage, one family's determination to embrace life while awaiting death, and one daughter's devotion to nurturing her mother's legacy of love.

The book itself is full of life. It is a moving love story, a spiritual journey, a poetry lesson, even a case for happy hour. It reminds us all to cherish loving relationships and each new day. Intensely personal, its themes-love, family, faith, courage, grief-are universal.

Campanella's beautiful story of bonds that do not break and love that never dies offers comfort to other motherless daughters, a testament to the gift of hospice and compassionate end-of-life care, and above all inspiration not only for those who face or fear death but also those who love and embrace life.

Author Biography

Linda Campanella is a daughter whose grief following her terminally ill mother's death flowed from her broken heart through her fingers and onto the blank pages of what became a memoir about her family's determination to enjoy life even while anticipating death. Linda considers herself an accidental author; her book, she says, essentially wrote itself. Since her mother's death and her book's publication, Linda has written and presented extensively about terminal illness, joyful and purposeful living, dignified and peaceful dying, and the journey through grief to gratitude. She is a very vocal and passionate advocate for compassionate end-of-life care, largely out of gratitude for her family's experience with hospice. She currently serves on the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare's National Compassionate Caregiver of the Year Award Review Committee. Before starting her own consulting company in 2001, Linda served as chief administrative officer at Trinity College in Hartford, as a senior executive at jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, and as an aerospace trade negotiator in the executive branch of the federal government. She holds a bachelor's degree from Amherst College and a master's degree from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is married to her high school sweetheart, and they have three grown sons.