In this moving memoir about the power of friendship and the resilience
of the human spirit, Amy Silverstein tells the story of the
extraordinary group of women who supported her as she waited on the
precipice for a life-saving heart transplant.
Nearly twenty-six years after receiving her first heart transplant, Amy
Silverstein's donor heart plummeted into failure. If she wanted to live,
she had to take on the grueling quest for a new heart--immediately.
A shot at survival meant uprooting her life and moving across the
country to California. When her friends heard of her plans, there was
only one reaction: "I'm there." Nine remarkable women--Joy, Jill, Leja,
Jody, Lauren, Robin, Valerie, Ann, and Jane--put demanding jobs and
pressing family obligations on hold to fly across the country and be by
Amy's side. Creating a calendar spreadsheet, the women--some of them
strangers to one another--passed the baton of friendship, one to the
next, and headed straight and strong into the battle to help save Amy's
life.
Empowered by the kind of empathy that can only grow with age, these
women, each knowing Amy from different stages of her life, banded
together to provide her with something that medicine alone could not.
Sleeping on a cot beside her bed, they rubbed her back and feet when the
pain was unbearable, adorned her room with death-distracting
decorations, and engaged in their "best talks ever." They saw the true
measure of their friend's strength, and they each responded in kind.
My Glory Was I Had Such Friends is a tribute to these women and the
intense hours they spent together--hours of heightened emotion and
self-awareness, where everything was laid bare. Candid and heartrending,
this once-in-a-lifetime story of connection and empathy is a powerful
reminder of the ultimate importance of "showing up" for those we love.
