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When Life Gives You Lemons: An Inspirational Memoir of a Breast Cancer Survivor

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A unique memoir by a cancer survivor about pain, hope and enormous female strength.
The life of Ronit, a thirty-seven-year-old woman, married and the mother of two, is thrown into turmoil when she receives the bitter news that she has breast cancer.

This announcement launches Ronit into the hardest physical and emotional journey she has ever known.

This book is the diary of Ronit’s journey. It describes with touching honesty, humor, and a rich language teeming with surprising metaphors, her experiences from the moment she was diagnosed with cancer until her complete recovery.

She provides a rare glimpse to the initial shock, anger, and feeling of loneliness, the preparation for hair loss, her tenacity in dealing with exhausting treatments and their side effects, surgery, and losing the marks of her femininity, while she struggles to preserve the family framework and protect her young children.

When Life Gives You Lemons is a moving memoir about family and motherhood, daring friendships and a woman who raises her head each time anew, while gradually parting with her hair. Despite the difficulties, with each falling strand, she discovers in herself new strength and a power she had never known before.

169 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 14, 2020

51 people are currently reading
23 people want to read

About the author

Ronit Jan Kletter

2 books3 followers

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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
149 reviews
November 2, 2020
When Life Gives You Lemons

A wonderful read for anyone going through Cancer treatment or having recovered from Cancer. It is amazing what the body can endure but keeping the right frame of mind is also difficult. Having physical and emotional support is paramount to recovery. Ronit is a fighter and I am happy for her recovery.
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81 reviews
November 17, 2020
Such an excellent book. Plan to recommend it to all my nurse friends for their patients. So insightful
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61 reviews
January 16, 2023
A book of enormous courage and heart.
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Author 51 books1,823 followers
August 8, 2020
‘Strangely enough, I came out feeling stronger’

Israeli author Ronit Jan Kletter is a physicist who engineers robots and advanced aviation systems. Her foundation in science makes this book about the emotional aspects of dealing with malignancy - the threat of life possibly abruptly ending – all the more impressive. When living throws unexpected curve balls, processes become inexplicable even to the scientific mind. This fine book shares Ronit’s confrontation with breast cancer, and from the moment of diagnosis to the present she shares her manner of dealing with the threat that diagnosis creates – and how to survive. The result is a supportive mechanism for women who are meeting the same crisis.

As she states in the opening of her book, ‘There is nothing good about coping with breast cancer, or any cancer, but knowing that there is a way out, that it is possible to heal, can make you stronger and give you hope. And it is that hope, which I experienced alongside all the difficulties, that I wish to offer you in this book. I want you to know you are not alone, that all of us have bleak thoughts and unbearable moments, and that even when it looks like it’s impossible to go on, we can. Here’s to recovery.’

Her journal/diary begins in December 1917 when she learned the results of the biopsy of her left breast as being positive for malignant carcinoma, and follows her response (and the response of her family and friends) to this possibly fatal diagnosis, offering each step of the rigorous and trying journey – to recovery, the prime message is her discovering her inner strength during that peregrination.

One of the reasons this book is meaningful and relatable is Ronit’s literary style – that ability to infuse humor and wide-eyed optimism even in the most dire steps of the course of her treatment and accompanying physical – and emotional – transformations. She allows us to feel her trauma, but also her impressive vicissitude, and in doing so, provides a resource for other women who are coping with the challenges of cancer.

Uplifting and entertaining as well as supportive, this book is recommended for all who face unexpected life variances. Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews

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