Audiobooks by Kate Washington

Midstream: A Life Remade in 50 Swims

"'A winning narrative...guided by a road map for joy. A poignant portrait of a woman stepping into her power in middle age."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review A memoir of jumping feet first into a new life, reclaiming long-forgotten joys, and discovering a renewed sense of self after divorce A fresh vision of midlife to women who have abandoned themselves in service of others As Kate Washington approached her 50th birthday, she was also contemplating ending a 23-year marriage in which she had become so focused on serving others that she'd lost her sense of self. To find herself again, she embarked on what she calls the 50 Dunks Project. The rules: Go to 50 different bodies of water-swimming holes, hot springs, rivers, lakes, creeks, and oceans. Immerse fully, head under water. Chronicle the dunk with a picture and a post. Complete the challenge by the time she turned 50. Largely set in Kate's native California but taking us as far as southern France, dunking us in the waters of the American River, Lake Tenaya, Big Chico Creek, the Rive Gard, and beyond, Kate shares the highlights of her 50 Dunk challenge-including dozens of fantastic, semi-secret places to swim. Along the way, she combines self-examination, wry humor, lyrical description, and cultural critique to illuminate the factors that so often cause women to lose themselves. Midstream makes the case for embracing joy and pleasure as a necessary act of resistance, both for individuals and for the culture at large."

Kate Washington (Author), Beth Hicks (Narrator)

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Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America

"The story of one woman's struggle to care for her seriously ill husband-and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support. Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad's diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver. Brad's cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors' appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: "You're already toast!" Through it all, she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly. As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of family caregivers will continue to grow. Readable, relatable, timely, and often raw, Already Toast-with its clear call for paying and supporting family caregivers-is a crucial intervention in that conversation, bringing together personal experience with deep research to give voice to those tasked with the overlooked, vital work of caring for the seriously ill."

Kate Washington (Author), Siiri Scott (Narrator)

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