“Estrellas teaches the reader about the prayerful meditation of the journey. Maggio’s story about Spain’s famous pilgrimage fills the soul and guides us to find the humanity DNA deep inside us. It is the spark that Dr. King called us all to be. Become the light in the darkness.’”
“This is an astounding book. I learned so much that I wanted to buy copies for everybody I know.”
“I am filled with a strange mix of exhilaration and exhaustion. My feet roll over the cobblestones as I wander along the main street. The air is pregnant with the smell of spices and freshly baked bread. I pause to read a pilgrim menu posted on the wall outside a restaurant. I repeat this again and again as I amble down the street, trying to muster up the will to take the next step, to go inside. Finally, after I do this three or four times I conjure up enough courage to poke my head in, trying to gauge the lay of the land.”
From Estrellas - Moments of Illumination Along El Camino de Santiago
Introduction: Estrellas
MOMENTS OF ILLUMINATION ALONG EL CAMINO DE SANTIAGO
Prologue
“Wherever you go, there you are.” - Buddhist saying
Despite evidence to the contrary, I do not think of myself as a particularly courageous soul. I am not content to bask in my accomplishments nor do I spend much time tooting my own horn. I wasn’t raised that way. I was taught to downplay my successes. To steer clear of vanity. I was raised to be humble. So, as I sit down to write this, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying something completely out of character, but I feel the need to tell you that 779 kilometers is a long way to walk - and I took every single step.
“When Suzanne Maggio’s vivid, demanding, and self-absorbed mother develops dementia, Suzanne is compelled to apply the wisdom she’s acquired from decades of experience as a family therapist to her own family of origin. The Cardinal Club: A Daughter’s Journey to Acceptance is a memoir that will engage and move readers even as it invites them to ponder how they might attempt to come to terms with the unfinished business within their own families.”
“I loved this beautifully detailed, tender, compassionate rexamination of a complex mother/daughter relationship. The Cardinal Club is written with graceful prose and kindness — a guidebook to rethinking self-worth through our reactions to loss and grief. I especially enjoyed Suzanne Maggio’s nostalgic and moving depiction of her New Jersey Italian/American childhood in the 1960s and 70s.”
"As I sat on the floor and watched Dylan carefully unwrap the packages my mother had given him, I grew more and more concerned with each one. Inside this box was a girl's grey cardigan sweater with a wide neck and small pearl buttons. In fact, each box he opened contained clothing for a little girl, certainly not appropriate for her 8 year-old grandson."-From The Cardinal Club - A Daughter’s Journey to Acceptance
Introduction: The Cardinal Club
A DAUGHTER’S JOURNEY TO ACCEPTANCE
Prologue
Although I’ve spent more than thirty years helping families face the stories they could not face, I could not face my own.
It was the fall of 1991. I was a young social worker, married for five years and pregnant with my first child. While I tried to appear calm, my stomach was doing flip-flops, the way it so often did when I was about to speak my truth. I tugged at the blue cotton sundress that stretched across my growing belly and tightened my grip around the scroll of butcher paper that lay in my lap. Was I ready to share my story?