Vita's Will: Real Life Lessons about Life, Death & Moving On »

A powerfully honest and heart-wrenching story about emotional struggles, crippling feelings of loss, and valuable life lessons discovered after the loss of four family members in four years. Called Tuesday's With Morrie meets Chicken Soup for the Soul .

At age twenty-three, Debbie Gisonni had everything. She was on her way to becoming one of the top paid and youngest executives in Silicon Valley. She had found true love...and she could make a mean cannoli! Then in 1984, her mother Vita developed a brain tumor that left her permanently disabled. A few years later, her younger sister suddenly committed suicide. Within months her father was diagnosed with bone cancer and breast cancer struck her favorite aunt. Between 1990 and 1994, all of them died.

Vita's Will: Real Life Lessons About Life, Death and Moving On is a chronicle of Gisonni's unimaginable experiences. One day she was on the corporate fast track; the next she left it all so that she could stop and smell the red sauce.

Called Tuesday's With Morrie meets Chicken Soup for the Soul , Vita's Will brings humor and sorrow into the horrors of hospitals, the lost dreams of her parents, and the shock of her sister's suicide. Through these four deaths, Gisonni learns to squeeze the sweetest wine from a bunch of sour grapes without wallowing in self-pity. Her practical wisdom and sage advice works for any traumatic situation. You'll be moved to tears and laughter by her forty-four inspirational real-life lessons and her nightly chats with God.

Ten percent of the author's proceeds from this book will be donated to the following institutions: Y-me National Breast Cancer Organization, National Brain Tumor Foundation, International Myeloma Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

About the Author

Debbie Gisonni is Founder and President of Real Life Lessons(tm), a company dedicated to serving women in business, people who have lost a loved one, or those who have experienced a major change in their lives. For fifteen years one of the top executives in the high-tech magazine publishing industry in Silicon Valley, she left a lucrative career (stock options and all) to write Vita's Will: Real Life Lessons About Life, Death and Moving On.

Currently Gisonni is President of the San Francisco chapter of the Women's National Book Association. She also volunteers for organizations that teach teenage girls business and life skills. As an experienced speaker, she has addressed executives, marketing, sales, and advertising managers in corporate America and she is available to speak to women's groups, business organizations and, cancer or suicide or health care support groups. A speech entitled "Real Life Lessons You Can't Live Without" has become her signature. Originally, from New York, Gisonni currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their Siberian Huskies.

	Acknowledgements	xi
	Introduction	xiii
I	Vita	1
	The End	3
	Picture This--Sicily 1942	6
	Self-Diagnosis	10
	I Begin to Pray	13
	Mad Science	17
	The Alphabet	22
	Village Life	25
	Visiting Hours	28
	Life on the Outside	34
	She's Back!	40
II	Martha	45
	The Phone Call	47
	The Flaky One	51
	Unsolved Mysteries	54
	Where Was the Cry for Help?	61
	Somewhere Over the Rainbow	64
	Things That Matter	68
	Facing Your Demons	70
III	Tommy	77
	How Much is Too Much?	79
	Tommy George	82
	Bitterness	88
	The Green Juice	91
	Turning Thirty	96
	Choices	99
	Letting Go	102
	Real Life Lessons from Tommy	106
IV	Yolanda	111
	Yo's Turn	113
	Darling, You Look Marvelous!	118
	California, Here They Come	121
	The Other Side	124
	The Blackout	127
	Another Ending	130
V	Year Ten	133
	Vita's Will	135
	Somehow You Know	140
	She Looks Good	143
	Laughter	146
	A Moment in Time	149
VI	Reflections	153
	Playing Doctor	155
	The Grass Isn't Always Greener	159
	Small World	161
	Prejudice Has Many Faces	163
	It's Just a Job	166
	Coping	168
	Prayer of Thanks	174
	About the Author	175