Cynthia Barlow

Four Fridays with Christina

Friendship, Death, and Lessons Learned by Letting Go

By Cynthia Barlow

How do you handle yourself when a loved one is dying? Can you see past your own pain to the wonders of life that are there ... if you only pay attention?

Author Cynthia Barlow explores the nature of life, love, loss, and letting go, inspired by the passing of a friend taken by cancer.

Four Fridays with Christina: Friendship, Death, and Lessons Learned by Letting Go is full of gripping moments, laugh-out-loud reflections, and sassy insights as Barlow chronicles her friend’s precious final days and her own perceptions on finding purpose within pain.

Bold and insightful, tender and lighthearted, Four Fridays with Christina will take you through the small delights and big decisions, the painful boundaries and celebratory bowel movements, the massive closet clean-out and the final goodbyes on the road to peace.

Barlow travels back to Boca de Tomatlán, Mexico, where she used to live for five winters, and spends four weeks cooking bacon, directing and limiting visitor traffic, and giving Christina an anchor to this life as she prepares to leave it. As much as Barlow gives to her adopted big sister, Christina gives back in spades as the author finds a new window and different light shining right into her own soul.

An uplifting story that honours the four Fridays Cynthia spent with her friend and all the profound moments in between, Four Fridays with Christina will leave you feeling more invigorated about life itself—and more grateful for it

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“The cancer’s back,” she said calmly. No embellishment. A scalpel slice. Swift. I didn’t even feel the cut. She let it sink in before the blood began to flow. And I knew, before she told me the story, before she said anything else, I knew that this was it. I would not grow old with my friend.

This. Was. It.

— Cynthia Barlow, Four Fridays with Christina

"Anyone who has had a friend or lost a friend. Anyone who’s wondered about the mysteries of life or wrestled with the finality of death, will be taken in by this poignant, unexpectedly funny and soul stirring memoir."

KAREN M. BLACK

Author of Back to the Water: A daughter’s tale of truth, love and letting go

"I read Four Fridays through tears of wonder—it is an unforgettable journey of illumination. You could not ask for a more astute witness to life and death than Cynthia Barlow."

TERRY CHENEY

Author of the New York Times bestseller Manic: A Memoir

“Four Fridays is beautiful and elegantly written. A memoir of deep friendship, loss and love. A must read for every woman rising above their circumstances. Open, with raw honesty—a reflection of the depths of a life-long friendship."

Stephanie Thornton Plymale

Author of American Daughter: A Memoir

About Cynthia

A specialist in emotional intelligence, Cynthia Barlow has conducted leadership development programs for over thirty years, for clients like TD Bank, Bell, Bank of America, AutoZone and Amex. Her coaching clients range from top executives to everyday people looking for ways to notch up their performance.

As a speaker and personal development program leader, Cynthia has inspired thousands of people to look a little deeper and reach a little higher with her direct, humorous, and slightly sassy style. She is also the author of Threads of Silver: a five-year search for simplicity, sunshine and a fresh start and co-author of the bestseller Resilience: It’s Not About Bouncing Back: How Leaders and Organizations Can Build Resilience Before Disruption Hits.

Cynthia is driven by truth, trust and transparency, and makes her home in Toronto, Canada.

The way I processed grief in general has been to journal for decades—that and a good therapist. So this book became the goal, if you will: The desired end result was that there would be a book of some sort. The conceit under which I operated could very well have been that I got to the end of that process and found I did not have a book at all, but that I had processed my grief. As it turned out, I think I did both. I hope. And I hope the reader will have that same kind of sense of connection to, and discovery in loss.

— Cynthia Barlow