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Praise for "It's Hard Being You"
"Emery's book is a gift to the world."
– Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of "The Life List"
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"Emery has the piercing insight of someone who's been there."​
– Chuck Stokes, editorial/public affairs director for WXYZ-TV/Channel 7 Detroit
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"Her memoir packs more inspiration than heartbreak, a solace to anybody coping with life or death, which is all of us."​
– Ron Fournier, journalist, autism advocate, author of New York Times bestseller “Love that Boy”
Chapter One: Lodestar
To tell you where I'm coming from – and maybe who I really am – I have to set off a little bomb:
I am the mother of a dead child.
Forgive the brutality of that, but there is no word in the English language for this condition. Children who survive dead parents are orphans. But what are parents of dead children?
The death of my eldest child, Jessica, is not the center of my life. Yet it is undeniably the lodestar that has helped me align the crucial losses and limits I've faced and assign them meaning and purpose. This, I now know, is the overriding task of survival...
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