Kim Cook severed ties with her mother in order to find her own healing path. The choice to go no contact is not a choice about love or no love-it is about discovering independent identity, recovering from wounds and establishing personal mental health. However, when her mother was ill and heading towards death, she refused to see Kim. How Kim navigates a reconciliation after death, finds her truth through compassion, and ultimately understands both the tragedy and the poetry of her relationship with her mother unfolds in this series of letters. This book is a journey through time, humor, trauma with an eventual arrival at the awareness that what remains is love. A brilliant book for mothers, daughters, families who have found themselves estranged or at a loss for words when the damage is too much-the work speaks to the multiple ways of moving forward through loss.
According to Karl Pillimer, Ph.D. and author of
Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them
, published in 2022, 27% of Americans, or the equivalent of 70 million people are currently estranged. CBS News Poll conducted in 2021 evidenced that 56% of Americans have been estranged at some point, and of those 39% never reconciled. As witnessed in the recent New Yorker article, August 30, 2024, by Anna Russell, Why so Many People Are Going No Contact with Their Parents, this is a growing phenomenon.
Timely and meaningful, Kim Cook's book opens doors to ways of approaching reconciliation even without contact. She gently finds a way to be both empathic and candid; allowing readers to explore their own relationships without judgment. Valuable and helpful for those recovering from many kinds of hurt,
What Remains is Love
is uplifting and encouraging for readers of all kinds.