Leaping Past Zinnias - by Elizabeth Tingley (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

When Michael Laudor killed his pregnant fiancé, he didn't just destroy himself and his beloved. He damaged the lives of everyone who loved him-including his brother, Richard and Richard's soon to be wife, Liz Tingley. This book is her story. A psychoanalytically informed psychologist and child therapist, she tells how she met Richard and fell magically in love. Overnight, this transformed her sense of isolation, born of early childhood trauma and subsequent severe depression. But when Michael killed Carrie three months before the wedding, a long unraveling of their happiness began. Liz navigates this crisis for herself and her husband, whose mental health deteriorates to the point of no return. They divorce, Struggling, Liz finds a way through, in her own therapy, in her work as a child therapist and with humor, courage and determination to not only survive, but thrive, on her own.

This eloquently written, authentically alive and utterly true work is like walking into a dreamscape of pain and haunting poetry. It is brilliant, strong and every page is meaningful, every scene vibrant yet damning. It is written through the eyes of a most thoughtful child psychologist yet there is never a sense of being removed from each and every moment. This book must be read and will never leave you once it has, it will stay etched in your mind forever.-Steve Tuber, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology, City College of New York and author of Attachment, Play and Authenticity: Winnicott in Clinical Context, Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2019.

This brilliant memoir by Liz Tingley is at once a story of childhood loss and abuse, of a heartbreaking and doomed marriage, of the catastrophe of schizophrenia, and of ultimate resilience and redemption. After losing her beloved brother, Tingley is tormented by neighbor boys for years, too frightened and too afraid of loneliness to speak out. While her intelligence, her curiosity, and her pluck ground her, she ultimately falls headlong into a relationship that will gut her, and bring her dangerously close to tragedy. And yet she more than survives, and brings her pain and pathos to the work of helping others, finding her own clear and lyrical voice in the process. I couldn't put it down.-Arietta Slade, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Child Psychology Yale Child Study Center Co-Director, Minding the Baby

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and this gripping tale of a woman searching for love and companionship proves it. Liz Tingley weaves a fascinating tale of love turned upside-down and inside-out, as she unwittingly becomes part of a brilliant but troubled family, cursed with psychological and emotional problems, which ultimately results in murder."-Charles Salzberg is a former magazine journalist and three-time Shamus Award nominated author, for Swann's Last Song, Second Story Man, and Man on the Run.