Standing on My Brother's Shoulders

Tara's childhood was scarred by the debilitating mental illness of her father and by her mother's death from cancer when she was thirteen. Caught up in grief and despair, Tara and her older brother Adam developed a deep, caring bond, but Adam struggled silently with growing anxiety and depression.

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'A deeply affecting memoir. Tara's courageous book tracks the nature and processes of destruction, and more than this, the crucial reconstructions that can follow.' Alex GarlandEverything finds its place, just as the colour and the beauty do, so does the pain. Tara Lal's childhood was battered by her father's mental illness and by her mother's death when she was thirteen. Caught up in grief and despair, she developed a deep, caring bond with her charismatic and kind older brother Adam, though he struggled silently with growing anxiety and depression. Four years after their mother's death, Adam took his own life. Grief and insecurity threatened to engulf Tara, but eventually she found, through a dialogue with the words her brother left behind in his diaries, her reason to live. The book includes an Afterword on the possibilities for recovery and growth following a tragedy, written by Miriam Akhtar, author of Positive Psychology for Overcoming Depression.