Book Dedications

I am noticing that it is 8-28 so it seems appropriate to tell you this week I’ve been working on Chapter 8. This second memoir will share month-by-month reflections on what happened during the year-long termination process from my decade-long Freudian psychoanalysis. Spoiler alert: I learned that the secular and the sacred co-exist.

I write for 25 minutes and when the timer goes off, my body is delighted even though my mind wants to continue. So I get up and stretch and do other activities for a few minutes.

This week during one of my breaks, I started thinking about book dedications and realized that my first memoir, Fear, Folly & Freud: A Psychotherapist in Psychoanalysis did not have one. I remember vaguely thinking about creating one, but many people were so important in the process of writing that I found it too difficult to decide.

So I decided to start looking at book dedications. Here’s my favorite one so far from Mary C. Morrison’s book, Let Evening Come: Reflections on Aging:

To all the Old Ones of my youth,

Who taught me that aging could have dignity.

And to all the Young,

Who, now that I am old,

Are teaching me in their turn

By the amazing generosity of their love.

Morrison is in her eighties, and I find wisdom in her book – in addition to this fabulous dedication. I wonder what I will come up with? Do you ever look at book dedications? Do you have a favorite?