Love No Matter What: The dignity and worth of all human beings
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Love No Matter What: The Dignity And Worth Of All Human Beings

Every person has a family member who is either:
  • Mentally ill
  • Autistic
  • Deaf
  • Transgendered
  • Disabled
  • Down's Syndrome
  • A Criminal
  • A Dwarf
  • A Prodigy
  • Conceived from rape
"It's the family secret that everybody shares," says award-winning writer Andrew Solomon.
No one has thought or written more about the dignity and worth of all human beings than Solomon. He spent eleven years interviewing hundreds of families, exploring how they grew stronger or fell apart while coping with raising children who were profoundly different. He wanted to understand and share how parents deal with raising a child who isn't what they expected him or her to be.
What he discovered is revealed in twelve astonishingly acute, riveting and compassionate chapters of his latest book, Far From the Tree. In it, Solomon shares stories of children who have been heartbreakingly tragic victims of intense prejudices - and also stories of parents who have embraced their children's differences and tried to alter the world's understanding of their conditions.
Solomon is a man who understands and has had experience with mental illness and depression and as a gay man, knows a bit about being rejected because you are 'different'. This phenomenally brilliant writer and master storyteller will help us understand the dignity and worth of all individuals, the unconditional love of parents for their children, and the desire for all humans to be valued as individuals. He will teach us how to love the people in our lives who are different -- no matter what!
This conversation and fund-raising event is on Veterans Day. This day was chosen to also highlight and discuss the mental well-being of veterans returning from war. Across the country, nearly 60 million American live with mental illness and each day over 23 veterans commit suicide. These statistics are frightening and "sadly underscore the urgent need for a sustained, national effort to ensure all our vets get the care and support they deserve," says Paul Rieckhoff, CEO and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
A charitable donation will be made to Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America and National Alliance on Mental Illness from proceeds from the event.
"People don't talk about mental health issues or mental illness because of the shame and brokenness surrounding the topic" - Rebecca Thiegs
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Join us for what promises to be a fascinating and stimulating evening as Andrew Solomon, contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker, shares the “timeless commentary on the complexity, and the very definition, of ‘disability’ and the mystical bond between parents and their children.” An exquisitely moving and engaging orator, check out his famous TED Talks: ‘Love No Matter What,’ ‘Depression, The Secret We Share,’ and ‘Forge Meaning, Build Identity,’ watched by over 4 million people. Click here.

Andrew Solomon is the author of TheNoonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of fourteen national awards, including the 2001 National Book Award. It is a New York Times bestseller and is published in twenty-two languages. He is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Cornell University and Special Adviser on LGBT Affairs to Yale University’s Department of Psychiatry. His latest book, Far from the Tree, which was awarded the 2014 National Book Award and the Wellcome Book Prize, is described as “a stunning work of scholarship and compassion, explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance – all rooted in the insight that loves can transcend every prejudice”. He is a graduate of Yale and received a Ph.D. in psychology from Cambridge. For more information visit Andrews’s website.(http://www.andrewsolomon.com)

“Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination” – Andrew Solomon

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Mr. Solomon will be available to sign his books following the conversation. Books will be available for purchase at the event. Should you want to purchase the book prior to the event simply click on the book images below.

“One of those rare books, which is truly transformative. When you turn the last page, you know you are not the same person who started reading it.” – Veena Venugopal, MINT

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