This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.
Life presents each of us with many wonderful moments of celebration but it can also present many challenges that include the loss of our loved ones. Having been faced with many such challenges, I wanted to write a memoir about my grief experiences that might help others experiencing their own grief and loss. My own grief has changed my landscape but it does not define me. I have identified themes in my memoir from my own grief experiences that have led me to reset and reshape my own life that will hopefully resonate with others in the context of their own grief journeys.
Reviewed by Gisela Dixon for Readers' Favorite
Hitting My Reset: A Memoir on Grief and How to Make It Fit Your Life by Lisa Gallate is a non-fiction memoir on Lisa’s experiences with the deaths of near and dear ones and the ways in which she coped with grief and loss. Hitting My Reset is a memoir, but it is mostly restricted to narratives around the deaths of some of her family members and how she coped with it. The narrative also includes a fairly detailed description of her own efforts to conceive with her second husband, her fertility treatments, and the birth of her children. Mostly though, the book revolves around the topic of coming to terms with grief in general. The chapters go into detail of her sister’s death by accident, her ex-husband’s suicide through depression, her brother’s death to brain tumor, as well as chapters on her mother’s slow decline into dementia, while the end of the book presents Lisa’s own strategies for dealing with grief and the legacy she hopes to leave behind for her children to take the positive from these experiences.
Hitting My Reset is a well-written book and the tone that strikes one the most is Lisa’s sincerity in narrating it. She obviously would like to share her own experience and also enable people to learn what they can from it. The one thing that still seemed a bit inexplicable to me was her ex-husband’s suicide and her reason for leaving him to go to her parents. It wasn’t clear if that was just meant as a break or indeed, a separation, and while depression or any mental illness of course can be a factor in suicide, I felt that this part was just skimmed over and that abandonment could have been a trigger as well. Still, except for this portion of the book, I found the rest of it to be clear and convincing. It is also nice to see the obviously close bond Lisa shares with her parents and family, and this shows that mutual support and care are a huge help during times of grief or loss as well. Overall, this is a well-written memoir on the important topic of grief.
