Everything changes everything: love, loss, and a really long walk : a memoir

"A gutsy, no-holds-barred immersion journalist, Lauren Kessler has explored everything from the gritty world of a maximum security prison to the grueling world of professional ballet; from the wild, wild west of the anti aging movement to the hidden world of Alzheimer's sufferers. But nothing prepared her for the kind of story no one wants to experience: her beloved husband's illness and his planned death in their living room. And eight months later, her daughter's death, a fentanyl overdose on a ratty couch in a drug house far from home. "It is solved by walking" is the oft-quoted wisdom attributed to Saint Augustine; not a religious person at all, but bereft and needing to do something, Lauren takes on the famed Camino de Santiago in in order separate the life she'd been living from the life that was now in front of her. A story about facing what needs to be faced and not turning away, Everything Changes Everything is about the wounds we suffer, the wounds we hide, and the wounds we learn to heal. It is about the privilege of choosing hardship, the solace of kindred spirits, and the surprise of temporary friendship. It is about ridiculous, unfounded optimism.