Shelby's Reviews > A Living Remedy: A Memoir

“The only child I could think about was me.”

I have a generous commute and so am liberal with placing Libby holds. I recalled Chung’s successful first memoir and thought this one resonated with me: it’s about ill parents.

I can’t remember the last time I finished a book in one day.

This book perfectly captured what I’m currently going through (read: the hardest point of my life thus far). While I am not adopted and my parents haven’t died (yet)(thank god), Chung put words to emotions and experiences I thought were foreign to the alien planet that is my brain: feeling guiltily distant from parents, said parents becoming very sick and/or disabled, seeing them unable to afford medical costs and not being able to help financially, getting stuck in the purgatory that is applying for Medicare and Social Security, fathers smoking cigarettes, parenting your parents, fearing phone calls because phone calls deliver bad news always, carrying a crippling physical anxiety that seeps into every thought, moment, and breath.

I thank the author for relieving my sense of loneliness during a similar scary time.