Category: books, literature, arts

To Joey, With Love- a movie review

“To Joey, with Love” is a poignant film documenting the challenges faced by country music duo Joey and Rory Feek, including the birth of a child with Down syndrome and Joey’s battle with cervical cancer. Rory’s candid storytelling in his book “This Life I Live” and the movie portrays the enduring power of love and faith in overcoming life’s trials.

updated June 14, 2024; contains affiliate links that help support this blog

To Joey, With Love

A Story of Life, Love, and Hope That Never Dies

90 minutes, with Spanish and English subtitles for the hearing impaired

Provident Films 2016

To Joey, with Love is the intimate, authentic, and transparent story of a couple who met head-on two of life’s most difficult challenges- a special needs child and a terminal illness. Rory Feek produced the film because he believed their story needed to be remembered, documented, and shared.

Joey and Rory

Joey and Rory Feek had a successful career as a country music singing duo and a happy 12-year marriage when they decided to take a year off to have a baby. For many years Joey had been afraid to have a baby, fearing she would not be a good mother.

Her pregnancy progressed normally and culminated in a planned at-home birth attended by a midwife. Sudden complications forced a trip to a hospital where both mother and baby were stabilized and in no immediate danger.

Unfortunately, the doctors and nurses told Joey and Rory that their much-anticipated child had a problem- their new baby girl had Trisomy 21, also known as Down syndrome.

Indie’s challenge- Down Syndrome

People with Down syndrome have an increased risk for certain medical conditions-

  • congenital heart defects,
  • respiratory and hearing problems,
  • Alzheimer’s disease,
  • childhood leukemia and
  • thyroid conditions.

Many of these conditions are now treatable, so most people with Down syndrome lead healthy lives.

Here are more  Down Syndrome Facts

 

Trisomy 21 chromosomes
Children with Down Syndrome have an extra chromosome, number 21 (see arrow) Diagram courtesy of Dr. Clark Heath of the CDC

 

Joey’s challenge-Cervical cancer

A few months after their baby Indiana’s birth, Joey faced the recurrence of cervical cancer diagnosed and treated years before. Despite more surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy the cancer persisted until further treatments were futile and and likely to cause more suffering.

Joey decided to leave their Nashville farm, her horses, chickens, and gardens, to move home to Indiana to spend her remaining time with her extended family.

FACED WITH THE PERSISTENCE OF THE CANCER
“JOEY DECIDED TO COME HOME-NOT TO DIE, BUT TO LIVE.”

Cervical cancer starts in the cervix, the narrow opening into the uterus from the vagina. More than 12,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, and more than 4,000 women die from this disease.

Cervical cancer is the second most common type of cancer for women worldwide, but because it develops over time, it is also one of the most preventable types of cancer since the widespread use of the Pap test to detect cervical abnormalities leads to early treatment.

Cancer of the cervix tends to occur during midlife. Half of the women diagnosed with the disease are between 35 and 44 years of age. It rarely affects women under age 20, and approximately 20 percent of diagnoses are women older than 65. Women should ask their doctor how often and for how long they should continue having Pap smears.

Use this link from the American Cancer Society to learn more about cervical cancer.

Rory Feek-musician and writer

In 2014 Rory Feek started sharing their lives in a blog and on Facebook where I first learned about them.

Eventually, he shared the entire story on the blog, leading to his book by the same name, and eventually the movie.

 

 

 

This Life I Live: One Man’s Extraordinary, Ordinary Life, and the Woman Who Changed It Forever 

 

“In This Life I Live, Rory Feek helps us to connect more fully to his and Joey’s story and to our own journeys. He shows what can happen when we are fully open in life’s key moments, whether when meeting our life companion or tackling an unexpected tragedy.

He also gives never-before-revealed details on their life together and what he calls “the long goodbye,” the blessing of knowing that life will end and taking advantage of it. Rory shows how we are all actually there already and how we can learn to live that way every day.” (Amazon review)

 

And now as a single dad, raising their daughter Indie with the help of family and friends, Rory continues his musical career and blogs at this life I live.

And he has learned that love comes softly with a new person in his life. Read about it here.

Rory Feek’s new life and love-an update again

After 9 years of blogging, I am reviewing old posts, sharing updates and new insights. This post reflects on a review written in 2017 about “To Joey, with Love,” a film about a married couple facing life’s challenges. It also shares Rory Feek’s personal story, including finding love again after his wife’s passing.

Keep reading

 

sharing the HEART of love and faith

Although I cried throughout,  I’m glad I watched To Joey, With Love, and recommend it to you; it is an extraordinary love story that demonstrates the power of love and faith to get ordinary people through the worst life can throw at them. The movie is available to watch on several streaming services.

I’d love for you to follow this blog. I share information and inspiration to help you transform challenges into opportunities for learning and growth.

Add your name to the subscribe box to be notified of new posts by email. Click the link to read the post and browse other content. It’s that simple. No spam.

I enjoy seeing who is new to Watercress Words. When you subscribe, I will visit your blog or website. Thanks and see you next time.

Dr. Aletha

Say Goodbye for Now- a book review

This post reviews Say Goodby for Now. Dr. Lucy lives alone except for the menagerie of injured animals she has doctored back to life. She likes her life the way it is, until she opens her home to three unexpected and unlikely guests. The book references important historical events.

Say Goodbye for Now

A novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Published by Lake Union Publishers
(This post contains affiliate links.)

The Plot of Say Goodbye for Now

In 1959, Dr. Lucille Armstrong, or Dr. Lucy as she is called, practices medicine of sorts in a small Texas town. Although she is a “doctor of human beings”, she spends most of her time taking care of stray and injured animals.

To support them and herself, she occasionally treats people; “ it’s not a hobby, I do it for the money.” But because “people there didn’t take well to a woman doctor”, her patients are not always the town’s model citizens.

Dr. Lucy lives alone except for the menagerie of injured animals she has doctored back to life. She likes her life the way it is, until she opens her home to three  unexpected and unlikely guests.

Their effect on her life causes her to realize she doesn’t like being alone, it was “just better than being with most of the people I’ve known.”

SAY GOODBYE FOR NOW- A Novel
SAY GOODBYE FOR NOW by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Two of them were boys, Pete and Justin, who learn they live in a world where “just walking down the street together can get you viciously beaten.”

The other, Calvin, a man who quit smoking, helps her learn to trust again. He remembers the day he quit because it was the day the Surgeon General announced smoking is harmful to health.

My Thoughts and Reactions

I  have reviewed several medical books, most of them non-fiction. I also enjoy medical fiction and have read many, mostly along the lines of medical mystery/thriller/drama. Probably the best known medical fiction are those written by physicians –

This book is different. I identified with the main character, a woman physician. Like her, I entered medicine when there were not many women physicians.

 I like that she doesn’t read the newspaper because “the news breaks my heart.” (It breaks mine too but I still read it.)  Dr. Lucy saves letters; not just the ones she receives, but copies of the ones she writes.

 

What this book is about

As is true in the practice of medicine, the main subject of this book is pain, along with loss, grief, injustice, loneliness, fear, and anger.

But it is equally about resilience, recovery, friendship, love, sacrifice, and healing .

Almost like a surgeon, the author skillfully uses words to dissect and repair intense human interactions and emotions.

man and woman holding the letters L O V E
photo from Lightstock.com

Like most good fiction, this book left me feeling  I had made new friends. They were not perfect people , but none of my real friends or I are either. Each character faced the “rottenness of the world”, finding a way to live in it anyway and doctoring each other back to health.

The author, Catherine Ryan Hyde

The book intrigued me even more when I learned the author, Catherine Ryan Hyde, has written over 30 books, including Pay It Forward  (1999) named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association.

The book became a major motion picture, Pay It Forward.

In 2000 Ms. Hyde  founded the Pay It Forward Foundation, a 501 c3 non-Profit Organization dedicated to promoting opportunities to do just that.

“The philosophy of Pay It Forward is that through acts of kindness among strangers, we all foster a more caring society. In the book, Reuben St. Clair, a social studies teacher in Atascadero, California, challenges his students to “Change the world”. That’s something we would all like to do, right? What if we could change the world, even in some small way?

One of the students in the class is Trevor, who takes the challenge to heart. As he goes about his day, he wonders what he could do, just a twelve year old student, to change the world. He starts by showing kindness to a stranger, and from there, moves on to the next person he can help.”

Loving vs the Commonwealth of Virginia court case

Besides mentioning the Surgeon General’s warning about tobacco use, Say Goodbye for Now references another historical event that impacted the characters’ lives.

In 1968 the Supreme Court considered the case Loving vs the Commonwealth of Virginia which challenged laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The ruling on June 12 in favor of Mildred and Richard Loving changed their lives and thousands of  couples since.

The landmark ruling was detailed in a “documentary novel”, Loving vs. Virginia and dramatized in a 2016 movie, Loving.

LOVIE a movie
LOVING “A landmark film”

 

 

In the book, Calvin quit smoking. What reason do you need to quit also? Consider this post.

7 Surprising Reasons to be Smoke Free

In this post I remember how smoking has changed since I was a child. The health risk was minimized or even ignored. But that changed. Even so, it remains a leading cause of preventable illness. Here are resources for quitting .

Keep reading

Exploring the HEART of health in fiction

I’d love for you to follow this blog. I share information and inspiration to help you transform challenges into opportunities for learning and growth.

Add your name to the subscribe box to be notified of new posts by email. Click the link to read the post and browse other content. It’s that simple. No spam.

I enjoy seeing who is new to Watercress Words. When you subscribe, I will visit your blog or website. Thanks and see you next time.

 

Dr. Aletha