The Way We Stay

Book excerpt: Cere's only son's opiate addiction leaves her coping with pain, fear, and humiliation for twelve long years. A small town psychotherapist, living in the idyllic islands of the Pacific Northwest, she struggles to balance the needs of her family beneath the shadow of addiction. She revisits her tumultuous childhood beginning in the Bay Area with her birth during the Summer Of Love to leftist radical hippies. Cere retraces her parents' intense, but brief, political involvement in the leftist militant group The Weather Underground. Eventually, her family moves to Whidbey Island where her parents raise her and her brother in a small, rural, alternative community. In the midst of a painful, high-risk, adolescence she invites the reader into her internal world as a teen-age mother in 1985, an adoptive mom in 2000, and a psychotherapist of twenty-five years desperately trying to heal her family and herself from the suffering caused by addiction. Written in a sparse, poetic language, The Way We Stay is a story of heartbreaking love, vulnerability, faith and healing. "Cere Demuth has written a brave and beautiful book that I believe will help many other people along their path of understanding and forgiveness when dealing with a loved one grappling with addiction." -Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance "Engrossing...heartfelt. A story of addiction told with transparency and compassion." - Jillian Lauren, NY Times bestselling memoirist of Some Girls, and Everything You Ever Wanted. "Cere Demuth's book THE WAY WE STAY is much more than "A Memoir Of Recovery." It is a thrilling intimate book of family survival that is impossible to put down. Born into the era of Peace and Love, Cere's story, as a daughter; wife; mother and grandmother takes us into the chaos of that era, it's aftermath and the power of drug addiction to ruin everything it touches. Told in a brilliant mixture of prose and poetry. A gripping and harrowing story that will have you falling in love with the characters and praying for them all to find peace and happiness." -Country Joe McDonald, Singer/Songwriter, Author, Activist "THE WAY WE STAY: A Memoir of Recovery by Cere Demuth shines a spotlight on how interwoven pain and love can be. Her tale, a mother with a heroin-addicted son, THE WAY WE STAY is told with a stark, poignant fragility. A story of one woman's heartbreak. A story meant for the world. A story you won't want to put down." -Susan Wingate, Amazon bestseller, award-winning author, www.susanwingate.com