Terry: My Daughter's Life and Death Struggle with Alcoholism - Softcover

"McGovern's story is riveting as he investigates his daughter's life, reads her anguished and accusatory diaries, interviews her friends and doctors, sifts through the sordid police and medical records... a family drama of love and loss."--The New York Times Book Review

"Terry reads like William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness... Heartbreaking... It is probably the quintessential American experience of the second half of this century, a precariously stable family trying to hold on to a child who--because of drugs, drink, depression--cannot be held on to, and who sinks away, into some form of oblivion."--Carolyn See, The Washington Post

How I remember Teresa
My name is Sölvína and I am a recovering alcoholic. In the 90´s I was linving in Minnesota, I sometimes went to AA meetings in Madison Wi. there I meet teresa. We did not get to know one another very well then. But we were aquinted. I admired her sweet disposition and calmness but also hers humor and boldness. In 1992 we meest again, at Hazelden MN. At that time she was terribly sick, she had changed totally. We had four or five days togeather at that time. Then she told me what had happened to her since we last saw each other in 1986. After that she wrote to me several times, but I had a hard time gettiing any messega to her, since she never stayed very long in the same place. I was very moved when I read this book. Her father tells her story so truthfully and honestly. I have never read any other book about an alcoholic that is so true. When I and teresa stayed togeather at Hazelden she recited a poem to me, which I wrote up. I never knew if she had written it or someone else.
Slowly she celebrated the scrament of letting go
First she surrended her green
then the orange, yellow and red
finally she let go of her brown
shedding her last leaf
she stood empty and silent stripped bare
she began her vigil of trust
shedding her last leaf
she watched its journey to the ground
she stood in silence
Wearing the color of emptyness
her branches wondering
How do you give shade with so much gone? and then
the scarament of waiting began
the sunrise and sunset watched with tenderness
clothing her sihouettes
they kept her hope alive
they helped her ubderstand that her vulnerability
her dependence and need, her emptiness
her readiness to recieve
were giving her a new kind of beauty
Every morning and every evening they stood in silence
and celebrated togeather
the sarcament of waiting.
today I feel that this poem is about Teresa´s life and death.>BR> Teresa was a wonderful person, but she did not know it.