I knew Alice Hoffman’s Survival Lessons would make me cry, and it did.  But I plan to trade the library book for one I will own, and read it again and again – and have its small presence propped prominently on a shelf where I can see it everyday.

Depending on where you are in your life, Hoffman’s book will have different meanings.  Like most memoirs or self-help books, Survival Lessons tells you what you already know, but the reminders are powerful.  Watching someone you love go through a health crisis can make you forget the saving choices she lists in her title chapters: choose to enjoy yourself, choose your friends, choose how you spend your time, choose to plan for the future, choose to dream, choose to be yourself, and a dozen or so others that Hoffman sprinkles with her own experiences and even a recipe for a killer brownie.  Basically, her message is to choose what matters most and be there with “loyalty and kindness.”

Not so much inspirational but Hoffman’s words make a connection.  Read it when you need it.