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Elle Cuardaigh

Goodreads Author

Born

Tacoma, Washington, The United States

Website

http://ellecuardaigh.com/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/ElleCuardaigh

Genre

Memoir, Spirituality, Psychology

Member Since

April 2014

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/ellecuardaigh

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Elle was born into the social experiment known as closed adoption in the early 1960s and has dealt with the ramifications of it thereafter. She believes Socrates' famous quote: "The unexamined life is not worth living," so wrote her memoir as a life study, and as something to leave behind for her children.

Elle Cuardaigh is a nom de plume created to provide privacy for herself and her family. In day-to-day life, she is a rather boring person. It is only upon reflection that a story emerges.

Those who know her will guess her other identity by reading her book. And those who really know her will understand why she prefers to keep it private.

The Tangled Red Thread:

http://tinyurl.com/lbuxw8c
...more

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Combine Editions
Elle Cuardaigh’s books

Average rating: 4.39 · 69 ratings · 10 reviews · 3 distinct works

	The Adoptee Survival Guide: Adoptees Share Their Wisdom and Tools by Lynn Grubb (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Von Coates, Wendy Barkett 4.35 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tangled Red Thread 4.46 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 2014 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tangled Red Thread by Elle Cuardaigh (2014-04-11) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

151 posts
Elle Cuardaigh's Blog

New Wildly Inappropriate Game

Fun for the whole family!

Picture it: You’re at the table after a holiday dinner, about to enjoy dessert. The host says, “Let’s go around the table and say one thing that we’re thankful for.”

You may have done this. It may be a tradition in your home. Here’s how it went one New Year at my adoptive grandmother’s house, decades ago:

“I’m just grateful I was adopted.”

This was said in syrupy sweet to

Elle’s Quotes

“The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story - of course that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you - and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something IS missing. That isn't of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

tags: adoption, birth, life, longing-for-death, narrative, nostalgia, opening

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