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Bedtime Stories for the Living: A Memoir
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About Bedtime Stories For The Living: A Memoir
A memoir about a father who chose to live life to the fullest after being diagnosed with a rare, degenerative brain disease. "It is a unique experience to read a book that speaks directly to your heart. If you live with a rare life altering disease, you spend a lot of time in your head. It's hard to put the thoughts into words.In "Bedtime Stories for the Living", Jay Armstrong accurately articulates the thoughts of any person living with a rare disease or anyone simply struggling to overcome their challenges.”Kyle Bryant, spokesperson for the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance and host of the Two Disabled Dudes podcast."This is a book of bedtime stories for the living. Stories that, if I did my job well, slow time, and make you and me glad to be alive. These stories are real. Or as real as memory allows them to be. As I discovered, life is both a funny and a heartbreaking experience. These stories are the moments I want to share with you because I believe, deep in my dad heart, we all have stories worth sharing."~ Excerpt from IntroductionA regular dad. A rare brain disease. A chance to live foreverA cell phone’s ring interrupts the silence as Jay Armstrong sits in his high school classroom preparing for the year ahead. Something about the ring makes his stomach drop. It’s his doctor. Life, for this once healthy father, was about to change.The words, “diffuse cerebellar atrophy", a rare, degenerative brain disease, float through the speaker. As he listens to his doctor detail the severity of the disease all of Jay’s youthful dreams of becoming a writer came rushing back. Suddenly jolted by his mortality, Jay recognizes he has many lessons to deliver, many stories to share, and many jokes to tell before it is too late. Forced to accept his crippling diagnosis, Jay discovers the power and strength harbored in the human voice. "Bedtime Stories for the Living" is a heartfelt, fatherly memoir in which Jay shows his children how to accept their limitations and still find joy in life. This collection of tender, witty stories about parenting, persevering despite a long-term illness, and pursuing dreams, demonstrates how love inspires us to face heartache with bravery, humor, and grace.Reviews:“Jay Armstrong’s debut, Bedtime Stories for the Living, is part memoir, part confession, and a love letter for his children. Cataclysmic news - a hole in his brain, a rare and poorly understood condition, steady loss of motor skills and speech obstructing his desire to share in each activity with his young children - haunt each page, woven into the prism of sundry fleeting moments. Yet here, these earthy glimpses are charged with mystery, and the holiness of love. Jay’s book is about the quandary of fear and suffering that faces us all, and while his avowed intent is to leave a breadcrumb trail of wisdom for his children, other readers will also laugh, weep, and find solace. Humorous, heart-rending and sage, Bedtime Stories teaches us to be brave in despair, honest when we fail, and most of all, to wrench our dreams from the jaws of disappointment.”Blake Kilgore, poet and author of Leviathan“Jay Armstrong offers an emotional peek into his life living with a degenerative illness, cerebellum atrophy, while fulfilling the role as a husband, father, son and teacher. Jay's stories are meant to leave a legacy to his children so that they may know the man-- and his journey of facing the unthinkable, a slow walk into the abyss. Jay taps into our soft spots of human kindness, empathy, vulnerability, and sometimes a little humor. In turn, Jay's stories make us consider our own legacy and purpose here on earth. What a beautiful book!”Michele Hill, educator and coauthor of 100 No-Nonsense Things that All Teachers Should Stop Doing
