Brookfield resident Nina Gaby and 24 other women collaborated to create the book “Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women.”
By Aaron Retherford
It doesn’t take long while wandering through your local bookstore’s self-improvement section to find books dealing with breakups or romantic relationship struggles. One Brookfield, Vermont author is taking a look at a different type of loss that doesn’t get a lot of attention.
Nina Gaby’s book, Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women, is a collection of 25 essays written by 25 women that explore the pains of losing a best friend without knowing why.
These aren’t stories of friends who mutually fall out of touch. These are stories of how women deal with the heartache of being “dumped” by their best friends.
Gaby, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, has always been interested in connections between people. She has studied a lot about how the brain works and how connectedness is crucial to a person’s sense of belonging, and lessening the risk for depression or drug/alcohol dependence. Gaby has also lost friends over the years, and faced a feeling of alienation when she moved to Vermont from Rochester, New York, saying those experiences derailed her a little bit.
“I felt like it wasn’t something I could grieve with the same amount of importance that I would grieve in a loss of a romantic relation or the loss of a family member,” she said. “It always kind of went on the backburner.”
Gaby hopes her book can help anyone who has suffered the loss of a best friend; to not feel alone and aid in the healing process.
“Just on a daily basis in my professional life, I watch the power of personal narratives,” Gaby said. “If you have somebody who is going to tell the story and somebody who is going to listen to the story, it’s an alchemy that is very, very healing. One of the altruistic reasons for doing this book was to provide a place where people could tell their stories, but also for anyone who picks this book up, it’s going to resonate with most people.”
Although some lucky readers received their copies early, the official release date was this week. Anyone interested can find Gaby’s book locally at Bear Pond Books as well as online retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.
Gaby will be attending a reading and signing event at 7 p.m. on March 17 at the Kimball Public Library in Randolph. The two Vermont writers who also contributed to the book will be in attendance.
