Filling Her Shoes : A Memoir of an Inherited Family

On the day that she decided to marry a widower--also a long-time friend--Betsy Graziani Fasbinder knew that she wasn't only gaining a husband, she was inheriting a son. Unlike many stepmothers, Betsy didn't have to struggle with an ex, or court battles, or the weekend shuffle between houses--but she did have to navigate living in the shadow of a young mother taken too soon, to honor the memory of her son's first mother, and to become the kind of parent and partner she herself wanted to be. Over time this family would learn how love's roots were formed in their shared losses, and how the new family love and joy they created together would become the richest kind of inheritance. The story of a woman who stepped into the shoes of another mother taken too soon, who learned along the way that she'd need to find her own stride in the journey her new family would walk together--a story of how love and loss are not opposites but cohabitants in family life, and how family is the richest inheritance of all. A "sweet-bitter" story of how, with tenderness as their guide, a family formed in the wake of loss and learned that joy and grief can be entwined cohabitants in our lives.