I’m sure there was a time when expats had to wait weeks or even months to hear news about what was going on back home. You know, something goes down and you have to wait for a telegram or a letter via snail mail to learn about the news. You ended up living in a sort of expat bubble where by the time you got the news so much time had passed it didn’t shock as much. After opening up Yahoo! at 9:30 on Saturday night to see that Whitney Houston was dead at the age of 48, I really wanted to go back to those times. I’m usually not that effected by celebrity deaths, because I

always think – well, I didn’t really know them. But, something was different with Whitney (yes, we were on a first name basis). I mean, regardless of all the trouble that she has had in the past and how uncouth her behavior has been in public, this woman had a gift.

I usually don’t review books here, but I just read the book What Alice Forgot and felt so impacted by it I had to share. The premise of the book is this woman (Alice) who falls and hits her head at the gym which results in her forgetting the last 10 years of her life. Pretty interesting right? Well, I don’t know for other avid readers, but eventually most books start blending into each other; however, the way that this book explains how much we can change over a period of time – basically into someone we don’t even know, is memorable.

Throughout the story, Alice is being told about the person she is today, as well as some occasional flashbacks. Her last memory is of her being pregnant for the first time and being happily married while 10 years later she has 3 three children and is getting divorced. You also get a glimpse of how her relationship have changed with family and friends; all to her surprise. So, even though it’s completely understandable why her life isn’t as it was 10 years before, I eventually started to sympathize when Alice says things like ‘how could we be getting a divorce? We are so committed to making this work!’ (not an exact quote). I was also touched with how she struggled to figure why she and her sister, as well as some friends were not as close as they used to be. There are certain times in your life when you feel so sure about everything and everyone in it that you can’t imagine anything being different. But then of course, life happens.

Expat life is synonymous with change. If I hit my head and temporarily lost the last 10 years of my life, I would wake up thinking I had just graduated from college, had started my dream job in Haiti and was planning my upcoming wedding. As much as I had my future planned out then, it ended up something quite different. Some of the actors have exited the stage and the stage set up is definitely not how I imagined. Others have gone from a starring to a supporting role. But, like Alice (without the head injury), I have to pause and appreciate all the scenes that have played out and learn to embrace last minute changes in the script. I have to trust that in the end, it will be a masterpiece. My masterpiece.

For anyone who has ever wondered how and why your life has become what it has, What Alice Forgot will get you on the path to those answers