It All Belongs: Love, Loss, & Learning to Live Again

Front Cover
SprkPoint Press, 2023 - Biography & Autobiography - 299 pages

WINNER OF 2024 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD, SILVER MEDAL, DEATH & DYING, GRIEF & LOSS CATEGORIES

WINNER OF TWO INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION AWARDS (IPPY) FOR DESIGN AND CONCEPT


For Judy Smoot, a devastating Glioblastoma Multiforme diagnosis means putting the spiritual practices she has taught so many others to the ultimate, personal test. As an artist, spiritual director, expressive arts teacher, retreat facilitator, and innovator of a non-profit organization supporting people with chronic disease, Judy shows us what it looks like to live fully into our own mortality by living fully into hers. It All Belongs invites its readers to journey with Judy as she first confronts her life's biggest challenge head-on and then travels through the end of her earthly existence with grace, humor, humility, courage, and the ultimate hope of our being. Family and friends said, "Judy showed us how to live ... and how to die."


But that's only half the story.


Following Judy's death, It All Belongs invites its readers to journey with Roy, Judy's husband of nearly 40 years, as he struggles to embrace the twin realities of love and grief. With extraordinary vulnerability, Roy offers a rare window into his struggle to learn the rhythms of this bittersweet dance. From the raw angst of navigating immediate day-to-day realities, to deep introspection during a long road trip out west, to culminating awareness on a spiritual quest in Iona, Scotland, Roy models the journey through unthinkable darkness to emerging triumphant into a full and abundant life.


Woven into both sides of this honest, beautiful, heartbreaking, and awe-inspiring narrative, readers will discover spiritual tools and practices to equip them and their loved ones for their own inevitable end-of-life realities. In this unique pairing of perspectives laced with exquisite art and poetry, It All Belongs brings hands-on help for navigating any unwanted life journey to embrace the amazing love, beauty, light, and joy tucked within even our most tragic experiences.

--Judy and Roy Smoot

About the author (2023)

Embracing both his successful commercial, retail management, and wealth advisor banking career and his role as "Sherpa," nurturer, and supporter of Judy's work and teachings, Roy calls upon the firsthand observations of Judy's work that prepared him to find a path through his unthinkable grief upon her untimely death. Marshaling his professional talents, Judy's example, and his own personal discoveries, Roy offers It All Belongs as a vulnerable tool of healing and hope for others who find themselves struggling with or confronted by end of life, an unexpected diagnosis, loss of a partner, and deep grief born only from deep love. Melinda Folse is a writer, editor, and collaborator on a mission to tell stories that make a difference. She believes this story will strike a meaningful chord in every life it touches. It All Belongs is her eighth book, joining Grandmaster, Dream Catcher, and Lessons Well Learned as her favorite explorations of lives and passions well lived. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas with her husband, horses, and way too many dogs.

Bibliographic information

TitleIt All Belongs: Love, Loss, & Learning to Live Again
AuthorsJudy Smoot, Roy Smoot, Melinda Folse
EditorsRoy Smoot, Melinda Folse
Compiled byRoy Smoot, Melinda Folse
Illustrated byJudy Smoot
ContributorsJudy Smoot, Roy Smoot, Melinda Folse
Editionillustrated
PublisherSprkPoint Press, 2023
ISBN098269606X, 9780982696064
Length299 pages
Subjects › 

Biography & Autobiography / Memoirs
Family & Relationships / Death, Grief, Bereavement
Religion / Spirituality
Self-Help / Death, Grief, Bereavement
Self-Help / General
  
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