Rooted in two vastly different cultures, a young man struggles to understand himself, find his place in the world, and reconnect with his mother—and her remote tribe in the deepest jungles of the Amazon rainforest—in this powerful memoir that combines adventure, history, and anthropology."My Yanomami family called me by name. Anyopo-we. What it means, I soon learned, is ''long way around'': I''d taken the long way around obstacles to be here among my people, back where I started. A twenty-year detour."For much of his young life, David Good was torn between two vastly different worlds. The son of an American anthropologist and a tribeswoman from a distant part of the Amazon, it took him twenty years to embrace his identity, reunite with the mother who left him when he was six, and claim his heritage.The Way Around is Good''s amazing chronicle of self-discovery. Moving from the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey and back, it is the story of his parents, his American scientist-father and his mother who could not fully adapt to the Western lifestyle. Good writes sympathetically about his mother''s abandonment and the deleterious effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression and drinking, and the near-fatal car accident that transformed him and gave him purpose to find a way back to his mother.A compelling tale of recovery and discovery, The Way Around is a poignant, fascinating exploration of what family really means, and the way that the strongest bonds endure, even across decades and worlds.

Eine bewegende Familiengeschichte am AmazonasDavid Goods Vater, ein Anthropologe, trifft Mitte der siebziger Jahre im Amazonas-Dschungel fernab der Zivilisation eine Yanomami-Frau, und zwischen den beiden entwickelt sich eine ungewöhnliche Liebesgeschichte. Bald kommt das erste Kind zur Welt, David, und die kleine Familie zieht in die USA. Für Yarima, Davids Mutter, ein Kulturschock. Sie passt sich an, doch nach fünf Jahren hält sie es nicht mehr aus: Von einem Besuch bei ihrem Stamm kehrt sie nicht mehr zurück, lässt David und seine beiden Geschwister beim Vater.Als junger Erwachsener gerät David durch Alkohol und Drogen aus der Bahn – bis ihm plötzlich klar wird, dass er zu seinen Wurzeln zurückkehren muss. Er macht sich auf die lange Reise zu seiner Mutter in den Dschungel; und er findet dort, wonach er all die Jahre so verzweifelt gesucht hat.«Das exotischste Familientreffen des Jahres.»(BILD)

Some mornings, the entire project for the day was making it fifteen feet to the bathroom.David Good spent most days of the week in bed. Migraines and neck pain that had not let up in months. A depression that medication after medication failed to touch. A twenty-year software career that was finished. He was thirty-seven years old, and by any reasonable projection, that was the end of the story.It wasn't.Eighteen sessions of electroconvulsive therapy did not touch the depression, and they took something with them. His memory became a library with missing books. He lost advanced math. He lost board games. He rebuilt anyway, from a boba tea shop in West Michigan and from his room at night, running virtual events for people in other countries who could not find a room of their own either.What grew from it became International Friend Connection, a peer-led volunteer community that reached more than fifty chapters in over twenty countries.Six years into it, after his mother's death, he was diagnosed autistic. At forty-three, he finally had an explanation for the loneliness that had been the water he swam in since childhood, and for why he had spent his life reverse-engineering things other people seemed to receive for free. Two years after that, he was in the boardroom of one of the world's largest community platforms, telling them what he had built with it. The same path carried him to the United Nations.This book is the honest account of how that happened, including the parts most recovery stories leave out.What finally helped was not one thing. TMS, experimental psychedelic treatment, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy all mattered. So did a room full of people who were glad he showed up. He is not able to rank them.The research is only now catching up to how psychiatric medication behaves in autistic bodies, which nobody could have known at the time. Therapy, which he does not dismiss and which he credits with saving his life, was never built to give him the thing he needed most: somewhere to go after the fifty-minute hour ended.Read this if any of the following sounds like youYou were diagnosed autistic as an adult, and you are still re-reading your entire life through it.You are shy, socially anxious, or isolated, and you have run out of ideas for how to meet people.You have been counted out by chronic pain, by illness, or by a brain that stopped cooperating, and you need a way forward that isn't just "e;stay positive."e;You have lost everything, including hope.Bob Burg, coauthor of The Go-Giver, calls David one of his "e;real-life action heroes."e; David Siegel, former CEO of Meetup and Investopedia, chose him to represent hundreds of thousands of organizers worldwide. Perry Knoppert, founder of The Octopus Movement, puts it plainly: "e;He is not trying to fit into the old world. He is helping to create the next one."e; And Dr. Liliya Bakiyeva Wheatcraft, autistic psychiatrist and author of AUTISTIC First Principles, calls it "e;a no-stigma, psychologically safe ecosystem"e; and "e;a much needed resource."e;David Good is a Points of Light honoree and a recipient of multiple Presidential Service Awards for volunteer leadership.Nothing anyone said to him in that bedroom would have convinced him, so he is not going to try to convince you. He will only tell you this. That bedroom was not the last room he was in, and some of the rooms that came after were good.

Rooted in two vastly different cultures, a young man struggles to understand himself, find his place in the world, and reconnect with his mother—and her remote tribe in the deepest jungles of the Amazon rainforest—in this powerful memoir that combines adventure, history, and anthropology."My Yanomami family called me by name. Anyopo-we. What it means, I soon learned, is ''long way around'': I''d taken the long way around obstacles to be here among my people, back where I started. A twenty-year detour."For much of his young life, David Good was torn between two vastly different worlds. The son of an American anthropologist and a tribeswoman from a distant part of the Amazon, it took him twenty years to embrace his identity, reunite with the mother who left him when he was six, and claim his heritage.The Way Around is Good''s amazing chronicle of self-discovery. Moving from the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey and back, it is the story of his parents, his American scientist-father and his mother who could not fully adapt to the Western lifestyle. Good writes sympathetically about his mother''s abandonment and the deleterious effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression and drinking, and the near-fatal car accident that transformed him and gave him purpose to find a way back to his mother.A compelling tale of recovery and discovery, The Way Around is a poignant, fascinating exploration of what family really means, and the way that the strongest bonds endure, even across decades and worlds.

Eine bewegende Familiengeschichte am AmazonasDavid Goods Vater, ein Anthropologe, trifft Mitte der siebziger Jahre im Amazonas-Dschungel fernab der Zivilisation eine Yanomami-Frau, und zwischen den beiden entwickelt sich eine ungewöhnliche Liebesgeschichte. Bald kommt das erste Kind zur Welt, David, und die kleine Familie zieht in die USA. Für Yarima, Davids Mutter, ein Kulturschock. Sie passt sich an, doch nach fünf Jahren hält sie es nicht mehr aus: Von einem Besuch bei ihrem Stamm kehrt sie nicht mehr zurück, lässt David und seine beiden Geschwister beim Vater.Als junger Erwachsener gerät David durch Alkohol und Drogen aus der Bahn – bis ihm plötzlich klar wird, dass er zu seinen Wurzeln zurückkehren muss. Er macht sich auf die lange Reise zu seiner Mutter in den Dschungel; und er findet dort, wonach er all die Jahre so verzweifelt gesucht hat.«Das exotischste Familientreffen des Jahres.»(BILD)

Some mornings, the entire project for the day was making it fifteen feet to the bathroom.David Good spent most days of the week in bed. Migraines and neck pain that had not let up in months. A depression that medication after medication failed to touch. A twenty-year software career that was finished. He was thirty-seven years old, and by any reasonable projection, that was the end of the story.It wasn't.Eighteen sessions of electroconvulsive therapy did not touch the depression, and they took something with them. His memory became a library with missing books. He lost advanced math. He lost board games. He rebuilt anyway, from a boba tea shop in West Michigan and from his room at night, running virtual events for people in other countries who could not find a room of their own either.What grew from it became International Friend Connection, a peer-led volunteer community that reached more than fifty chapters in over twenty countries.Six years into it, after his mother's death, he was diagnosed autistic. At forty-three, he finally had an explanation for the loneliness that had been the water he swam in since childhood, and for why he had spent his life reverse-engineering things other people seemed to receive for free. Two years after that, he was in the boardroom of one of the world's largest community platforms, telling them what he had built with it. The same path carried him to the United Nations.This book is the honest account of how that happened, including the parts most recovery stories leave out.What finally helped was not one thing. TMS, experimental psychedelic treatment, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy all mattered. So did a room full of people who were glad he showed up. He is not able to rank them.The research is only now catching up to how psychiatric medication behaves in autistic bodies, which nobody could have known at the time. Therapy, which he does not dismiss and which he credits with saving his life, was never built to give him the thing he needed most: somewhere to go after the fifty-minute hour ended.Read this if any of the following sounds like youYou were diagnosed autistic as an adult, and you are still re-reading your entire life through it.You are shy, socially anxious, or isolated, and you have run out of ideas for how to meet people.You have been counted out by chronic pain, by illness, or by a brain that stopped cooperating, and you need a way forward that isn't just "e;stay positive."e;You have lost everything, including hope.Bob Burg, coauthor of The Go-Giver, calls David one of his "e;real-life action heroes."e; David Siegel, former CEO of Meetup and Investopedia, chose him to represent hundreds of thousands of organizers worldwide. Perry Knoppert, founder of The Octopus Movement, puts it plainly: "e;He is not trying to fit into the old world. He is helping to create the next one."e; And Dr. Liliya Bakiyeva Wheatcraft, autistic psychiatrist and author of AUTISTIC First Principles, calls it "e;a no-stigma, psychologically safe ecosystem"e; and "e;a much needed resource."e;David Good is a Points of Light honoree and a recipient of multiple Presidential Service Awards for volunteer leadership.Nothing anyone said to him in that bedroom would have convinced him, so he is not going to try to convince you. He will only tell you this. That bedroom was not the last room he was in, and some of the rooms that came after were good.