Everything Left to Remember

Everything Left to Remember

"This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle." - Publishers Weekly Between Two Kingdoms meets Wild in this heart wrenching and inspirational memoir about a woman and her mother, who is suffering from dementia, as they embark on a road trip through national parks, revisiting the memories, and the mountains, that made them who they are. Steph Jagger lost her mother before she lost her. Her mother, stricken with an incurable disease that slowly erases all sense of self, struggles to remember her favorite drink, her favorite song, and―perhaps most heartbreaking of all―Steph herself. Steph watches as the woman who loved and raised her slips away before getting the chance to tell her story, and so Steph makes a promise: her mother will walk it and she will write it. Too aware of her mother’s waning memory, Steph proposes that the two take a camping trip out to Montana―which her mother, on the urging of Steph’s father, agrees to embark upon. An adventure full of horseback riding, hiking, and “tenting” out West quickly turns into one woman’s reflection on childhood, motherhood, personhood―and what it means to love someone who doesn’t quite remember the person she spent her lifetime becoming. A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of who our memories make us under the constellations of the vast Montana sky. Praise for Everything Left to Remember "Jagger offers a beautiful reflection on love, memory, and inheritance in this heartrending account of a road trip she took through Big Sky Country.... This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle." ― Publishers Weekly "With keen insight and thoughtful prose that captures both the emotions involved and the significance of the natural world in the author’s life, she recalls their journey across the Rockies, where they shared moments of loss, endured times of frustration, and found genuine joy in nature.... A beautiful yet heart-wrenching tribute to the mother-daughter relationship." ―Kirkus, starred review “In this thoughtful and intimate memoir of a mother and daughter on a road trip, many destinations are reached - what it is to have Alzheimer’s, what it is to love someone with Alzheimer’s and who really is in the navigator’s seat. Wonderful addition to the genre.” ―Gayatri Devi, author of The Spectrum of Hope: An Optimistic and New Approach to Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias "This book infuses a devastating topic with a generosity of spirit that makes the pages within it soar. It is a life-changing read that connects us to the greater truth that none of us are ever truly alone. A tribute to love and family and what it means to be human in this fleeting journey called life. Simply put, this book is exquisite, a classic of our time, a must-read if we are ever going to save the natural world and ourselves within it." ―Linda Sivertsen, host of the Beautiful Writers Podcast & author of Generation Green and Beautiful Writers "Both soaring and intimate, this spellbinding book maps a daughter's journey into the wilds of herself. Using her mother-- who is slowly forgetting herself through Alzheimer’s-- as a codex, Jagger reconnects with the unspoken histories of her body and lineage, and somehow finds the language to share her journey with us. If you let it, Everything Left to Remember will unmake you… and then help you rediscover your path home." ―Maia Toll, award-winning author of the Wild Wisdom series “Steph Jagger’s Everything Left to Remember deftly grips both sweetness and rage, recognition and refusal. Jagger treads cultural oceans, the performance of childhood, cinders of inheritance, and how much of who we are is in what we cannot let go. Everything Left to Remember is a reminder that what we commit to forgetting, we also commit to memory.” ―E. J. Koh, award-winning author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love “This memoir is a gift. Steph Jagger writes with a combination of crisp humour, grace, and clarity that takes my breath away. This book shows us how to accept the steady parenting of Mother Nature, and how to open our heart to her love and magic ― even when we are facing the impossible.”―Sarah Selecky, award-winning author of Radiant Shimmering Light Everything Left To Remember left me breathless in many moments ― suspended in between pages because the feelings, inner experiences, and emotion captured through Steph’s narrative were so viscerally felt within me. Steph has captured the complexity, grief, and beauty of mother-daughter relationships, as well as the depth from which they are born, in such a way that will leave readers captivated, reflective, and ready to step more fully into their own relationships, lives, and selves. This memoir holds within it a balance of tenderness and humor, grit and grace, mystery and meaning, all weaving tog