Patti Callahan Henry Untangles What it Means to Remember
S11E72
44:31
August 9th 2022
What are memories?
Do our memories make us who we are? What happens to “us” when our memory fails, and cognitive decline ensues? I discussed these profound questions with one of my favorite authors, Patti Callahan Henry.
She is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, a podcast host, and a co-creator and host of the popular show, Friends & Fiction. Prior to becoming an author, she was a Pediatric Clinical Nurse Specialist with a fascination for memory and focused on neurology and brain trauma. Her novel, The Favorite Daughter, joined our collection of carefully vetted books in November 2019.
“Memory,” she says, “haunts all my work but takes center stage in this one. Who do we become without those memories?”
Patti is the recipient of The Christy Award 2019 Winner “Book of the Year”; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year for 2020, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for 2019. She is also a contributor to the monthly life lesson essay column for Parade Magazine. A full-time author and mother of three, she now resides in both Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Bluffton, South Carolina with her husband.
In this podcast, we explore how our memories define us, if they do, the landscape of memory, and the concept of “ambiguous loss.”
After the Podcast
Read Patti’s AlzAuthors post:
Purchase The Favorite Daughter on Amazon. https://amzn.to/2D9TDnQ
Connect with Patti
About the Podcast
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Thanks for listening.
AlzAuthors: Untangling Alzheimer's & Dementia
Welcome to the AlzAuthors podcast! We’re so glad you found us. We are the global community of authors writing about Alzheimer's and dementia from personal experience to light the way for others. Join us each week as one of our authors shares their dementia journey, revealing intimate details and painfully obtained knowledge to help others currently on this path. We hope our stories offer comfort and support as we strive to break the silence and stigma surrounding a dementia diagnosis. May one of our authors speak to your experience. For more info please visit https://alzauthors.com.
Marianne Sciucco
Podcast Producer and Host
Marianne is a registered nurse, dementia daughter, and author of the novel Blue Hydrangeas, an Alzheimer’s love story. She is also a founding member of AlzAuthors and a director and manager. With more than 250 authors contributing to AlzAuthors, there is a wealth of knowledge to share. “Our goal is to eliminate the silence and stigma surrounding the most important disease of our generation, estimated to affect 50 million people worldwide,” she says. “We’ve curated hundreds of powerful and profound stories, spanning all disease types and stages through a variety of genres. And now you can listen to these authors tell their stories on the podcast.”