Deborah Binner believed the stage was set for a contented midlife after
a rocky childhood. A happy marriage, good job, lovely home and three
daughters moving relatively peacefully towards adolescence and beyond.
What more could she ask for?
Then in 2013 her world came crashing down when an 'innocuous' pain in
her 15 year-old daughter's leg turned into a cancer diagnosis. And
despite an agonising three-year battle with bone cancer, Chloe died aged
just 18 and two weeks.
Flung into a tsunami of grief, the small family tried to navigate a path
to survival. But fate intervened again. Just 18 months after Chloe's
death, Deborah's beloved husband Simon was diagnosed with Motor Neurone
Disease. As a man who was adamant that "the endgame of motor neurone
disease is not for me", he ended his life in a Swiss suicide clinic
within months of diagnosis. Their family's story was the subject of a
BAFTA-nominated BBC documentary, How to Die: Simon's Choice.
In Yet Here I Am, Deborah looks back at a life ripped apart by so much
loss out of the natural order of things. Brutally frank, searingly
honest and heartbreakingly poignant, she charts her remarkable journey
from suicidal grief to some kind of survival and eventually, to a new
form of happiness. This is a book about the resilience of the human
spirit, hope in the face of agonising despair and the power of love.
