A memoir in the truest sense of the word
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A memoir is a written account of the events that have been observed by someone throughout their life; an autobiography is the story of a person's life as written by that person. Most "memoirs" these days are really autobiographies. But in Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup makes sure that the star is her colleagues, her "clients," her state, and the God she shares with all of them.
Surrounded by death, accidents, and lost children, Braestrup reveals that an amazing kind of grace can come with witnessing trauma on a daily basis. She lives on the turn of a dime in others' lives, where loved ones don't come home and lives end. Somehow, though, it isn't sad. It's beautiful and thoughtful and poignant and funny, and though you may cry, you feel somehow blessed after reading it. Braestrup clearly loves her job, which more than anything consists of just "being there" for others in some of their most trying moments. The title couldn't be more appropriate.
I'm being pretty saccharine about this book. But in a world where "minister" usually gets attached to political agendas, Braestrup is a reassuring figure, there only to make the transition easier, no matter what kind of transition it is. Be warned--it may move you so much that by turns you will want to either become a Unitarian Universalist minister or move to Maine.