Book #51: Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson

I wasn't going to read this book. I've read NieNie's blog for years now and don't love it. I just keep going back to it out of habit and some curiosity, but her writing style annoys me (so many incomplete sentences and so much bad grammar--it's pathetic that it bugs me so much, but it does) and so does the fact that half of her posts are advertisements for people and products she loves (her cupcake shop, her photographer friends, etc.), which is nice for those people, but not really the reason why anyone checks her blog in the first place, right? For those of you who are totally out of the Mormon mommy blog loop, NieNie got in a plane accident four years ago and was severely burned over 80% of her body. A lot of her blog details her recovery and her journey back to normal life with her four (now five) kids, and her book does the same. I decided to check out the book after reading a few recommendations about it and I'm glad I did.

I checked this book out from the library (I was impressed that the Durham County Library had a copy) and powered through it just last night. I was totally absorbed in it, and it made me so sad at parts I got teary-eyed (but, then again, that's not a huge accomplishment nowadays--I cry at everything). I felt like the book filled in a lot of the gaps in NieNie's story that I've always wondered about and never really appreciated--how emotionally difficult it was for her after the crash, how it took her nearly three months to look at herself in the mirror, how hard it was for her to see her kids again and how terrified she was that they would reject her now that she looked so different. After the crash, she felt guilty for leaving her children like she did, terrified of dying during surgery, mortified/disgusted about how she looked. It was really eye-opening to read much more in-depth about her recovery, both physical and emotional, because you can't really get the full story from her blog (which she has a perfect right to keep to herself if she wants to). She doesn't shy away from talking about how hard it was and how long it took her to start getting back to normal, which I thought sounded so much more realistic than her description of her life pre-crash.

Several things: she must have had a really great co-author (slash editor) because it was soooo much better than her blog: totally coherent and flowing and grammatically correct (haha). Also, her entire extended family lives in Provo (as far as I can tell from the book), which makes half of my mind writhe with jealousy and half of it scream with incredulity. HOW can all nine of the kids in your family live in Provo? How is it that no one has moved away for jobs or school or anything? It just seems so foreign to me, having grown up with a similarly large extended family that reaches to every corner of the country. Sure, who WOULDN'T love to have everyone living in the same city and all of your kids and their cousins going to high school together? But how realistic is that? It almost bugs me that they have that amazing, perfect family situation, but on the other hand, I think she deserves and needs the family nearby with everything she's gone through.