To Joey, With Love Review and GIVEAWAY!

Keep your tissue handy when you watch To Joey, With Love.  I finished my Christmas cards last night while watching it with tears streaming down my face.  To Joey, With Love is a beautiful movie filmed by Joey’s husband Rory.

Joey and Rory live on a farm in Tennessee and take a year off to work the farm and spend time with their newborn baby.  The film starts right before the birth of their baby and continues into the birth and aftermath of having a new child.  Everything seems fine at first during the natural birth at home with a midwife, but Joey is soon rushed to the hospital from complications.   After emergency surgery, she is okay, but they found out their new baby daughter has Down’s syndrome.  They name her Indiana and she is Joey’s pride and joy.  Shortly thereafter, they find out that Joey has cancer.  This movie takes a look into Joey’s battle with cancer, her role as a new Mother, and her ability to live each day to its fullest.  

To Joey, With Love is a love letter to Joey.  Rory had started filming footage to celebrate the birth of their child and it turned into so much more.  He has edited it into a beautiful movie celebrating what a wonderful woman Joey was.  I didn’t realize who the two of them were at the start of the movie, but about 30 minutes into the movie, Rory gave the background that the two of them were a Country music duo with multiple CDs out and a Grammy award.  It was a risk taking a year off at this point in their career, but they were excited about the birth of their child.  The movie had their music playing throughout and it was beautiful.  I love how Joey would sing all of the time to Indiana

The movie was both joyous and sad.  The raw footage that was taken showed the pure love that Joey had for her daughter and that Joey and Rory had for each other.  It also showed the pure faith that Joey had including when she was “ready to go home” at the end.  I admired how she got everything read for the future that Rory would have as a single father raising Indiana by himself.  

This movie hits some hard subjects, but it was appropriate to watch with your entire family.  My kids were doing other things while I was watching it, but kept being drawn to it, especially at the end.  My middle son Daniel seemed especially accepting of the fact that she was “going home” to heaven.  They also liked the music.  Penelope my six year old, loved baby Indiana as she grew up.

Overall To Joey With Love is a beautiful homage from a husband to his late wife, but it is also real life.  The movie was beautifully crafted from home video footage to show the trials of life when facing cancer and a wonderful child born with Down’s syndrome.  I have been thinking about this movie all day and have already purchased an album to listen to of their music from Amazon.  I was touched by their story.

Movie Source:  I received a link to review this movie from Icon Media Group.  This movie will be released on December 20^th.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/YmkEfRRJ02E

Film's website: http://tojoeywithlove.com
Rory's blog: http://www.thislifeilive.com

Giveaway

One lucky winner will receive a DVD copy of To Joey, with Love courtesy of Icon Media Group. If you would like to win any of these three great novels, please leave a comment on what interests you about this movie.

As part of your comment, you must include an email address. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner.

For an additional entry, blog about this giveaway or post it on your sidebar. Provide a link to this post in your comment.

I will be using random.org (or a Monte Carlo simulation in excel) to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is only open to addresses in the United States and Canada.

The deadline for entry is midnight on Friday December 30th!

Please make sure to check the week of January 1st to see if you are a winner. I send emails to the winner, but lately I've been put in their "junk mail" folder instead of their inbox.

Good luck!