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Writing and Healing: “The Best Therapy I’ve Had” (Sharon Lippincott's article about how a memoir writing class helped recovery from a brain injury, Women's Memoirs 6-26-11) • The Beneficial Effects of Life Story and Legacy Activities by Pat McNees (Journal of Geriatric Care Management, Spring 2009). Get PDF file of journal article here (61.9KB) Some books that may be helpful: • Aftel, Mandy. The Story of Your Life: Becoming the Author of Your Experience. Geared more to self-understanding than to memoir writing, this book is still useful for life writing. Focusing on what Aftel calls the three major life plots (love, mastery, and loss), she provokes reflection on things like How Money Complicates the Love Plot, How Children Complicate the Marriage Subplot, and How Escape Complicates the Mastery Plot. • Charon, Rita. Narrative Medicine. The idea behind the field of narrative medicine, which Charon helped create, is that the doctor's job is to listen and by hearing the patient's story to know the patient more fully than numbers on a chart can convey. You'll find more resources on narrative medicine here, including books by Arthur Kleinman, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, and Arthur Frank. • DeSalvo, Louise. Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives. Cautioning that writing is no substitute for medical care, DeSalvo (who wrote about her own pain, anxiety, and depression in Vertigo: A Memoir) recommends writing five pages a week, uncensored, in spare moments, reporting every detail, to speed healing -- and sharing with other empathetic writers, to sharpen narrative. She refers often to James W. Pennebaker's Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, based on his 10 years of clinical research. "Dr. Pennebaker has demonstrated that expressing emotions appears to protect the body against damaging internal stresses and seems to have long-term health benefit," wrote Daniel Goleman, in the NY Times. • McDonnell, Jane Taylor. Living to Tell the Tale: A Guide to Writing Memoir. In this little book, McDonnell focuses on how to write "crisis memoirs," finding "our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment." In addition to teaching a related college course ("Witness Narratives: Memoirs of Survival"), she has written about life with her autistic son and about her own problems with alcoholism. • Myers, Linda Joy. The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story Step-by-step memoir writing, with healing from emotional pain as a goal; full of interesting psychological insights. • Raab, Diana M. Healing With Words: A writer's cancer journey. Foreword by Melvin J. Silverstein, MD. • Silverman, Sue Williams. Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. In addition to covering traditional writing topics well, Silverman encourages writers to transform their life story into words that matter. She advocates finding the courage to speak truth about issues on which others might prefer silence. Her own confessional memoirs are about incest (Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You) and sexual addiction (Love Sick). • Stone, Richard. The Healing Art of Storytelling. This classic and insight-provoking guide to finding coherent narratives in our life experiences was out of print and is now available again. Not about memoir but about understanding the storylines of our lives. |
Partially sighted readers who want to listen to a title in audio should contact the National Library Service (NLS), which is part of the Library of Congress, or their state Library for the Blind.
• Alden, Paulette Bates. Crossing the Moon: A Journey Through Infertility.
• Anderson, Karen. The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness. Anderson's memoir of leaving the life of a Roman Catholic nun in 1969 to join the secular world, "a stunningly poignant account about the nature of spiritual growth" (complicated by years suffering from undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, which she does not dwell on).
• Angelou, Maya. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (childhood memories of growing up black when prejudice was intense)
• Ansay, A. Manette. Limbo: A Memoir (an undiagnosed muscle disorder cuts short her career as a concert pianist)
• Ascher, Barbara Lazear. Landscape Without Gravity (about her brother's death from AIDS).
• Barron, Judy and Sean. There’s a Boy in Here (life with autism, from both mother’s and son’s viewpoint)
• Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death (immobilized by a stroke, the narrator discovers the life of the unfettered imagination). Also a major movie.
• Beauvoir, Simone de. A Very Easy Death (about the death of her mother)
• Bernstein,Jane. Loving Rachel (about life with a blind daughter)
• Black, Kathryn. In the Shadow of Polio: A Personal and Social History (a memoir of Black's childhood experience of a mother in an iron lung, wrapped in the larger story of the search for a cure)
• Bragg, Bernard. Lessons in Laughter: The Autobiography of a Deaf Actor
• Breslin, Jimmy. I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me (on surviving a brain aneurysm).
• Brodkey, Harold. This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death (the story of his confrontation with AIDS)
• Brookes, Tim. Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores His Illness
• Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness (critical illness, in his case from cancer, as a spiritual journey)
• Burroughs, Augusten. Running with Scissors: A Memoir (the amusing, bizarre story of the author's life from 13 to 16, when his mentally ill mother has him move in with her eccentric psychiatrist) and A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father (the more sober account of his childhood attempts to elicit warmth from his cruel and unfeeling, alcoholic father). The broad details of his story are at least partly corroborated in his brother's memoir, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's.
• Casey, Nell, ed. Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression
• Casey, Nell, ed. An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring for Family (and some writers on being cared for). A wonderful book, highly recommended for caregivers.
• Cohen, Richard M. Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness, a Reluctant Memoir (living with multiple sclerosis and later colon cancer, and how his illness affected his wife, Meredith Vieira, and their three children)
• Cousins, Norman. Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (a classic take on how attitude, and especially laughter, affects health outcomes)
• DasGupta, Sayantani and Marsha Hurst, eds. Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies
• DeBaggio, Thomas. Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer’s (the early memories and the daily struggle of a man coming to terms with a progressively debilitating illness)
• DeVita, Elizabeth. The Empty Room: Surviving the loss of a brother or sister at any age (partly a memoir of surviving the loss of her brother Teddy to aplastic anemia)
• Dew, Robert Forman. The Family Heart: A Memoir of When Our Son Came Out
• Dubus, Andre. Meditations from a Movable Chair and the earlier collection of essays Broken Vessels (both written after a 1986 highway accident left him largely confined to a wheelchair, and only some essays deal with his response to the accident and his view of life from a wheelchair)
• Estess, Jenifer. Tales from the Bed: A Memoir. (Estess and her sisters founded Project A.L.S. after she contracted the fatal neuromuscular disease.)
• Finger, Anne. Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy, and Birth
• Fishman, Steve. A Bomb in the Brain: A Heroic Tale of Science, Surgery, and Survival (about surviving an aneurysm)
• Frank, Arthur W. At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness (explores what illness can teach us about life, drawing on his experience having a heart attack and cancer)
• Franzen, Jonathon, My Father's Brain (abstract of New Yorker story about his father and Alzheimer's disease, September 10, 2001)
• Fries, Kenny, Body, Remember (born with incompletely formed legs, a congenital birth defect, Fries explores what it's like to be different)
• Funderburg, Lise. Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home (a compelling and beautifully written memoir by a grown daughter—a white-looking mixed-race girl raised in an integrated Philadelphia neighborhood—who gets to know her dying father in a string of pilgrimages to his boyhood hometown in rural Georgia)
• Galli, Richard. Rescuing Jeffrey (an account of the gut-wrenching decisions Jeffrey’s parents face in the ten days after an accident leaves him paralyzed from the neck down)
• Gilbert, Sandra. Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy (about the death of her husband after entering the hospital for routine prostate surgery)
• Gordon, Barbara. I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can (on addiction to prescription drugs)
• Gordon, Mary. Circling My Mother (Gordon's memoir of her Irish Catholic mother, deformed by polio, eventually suffering dementia—and of their complex mother-daughter relationship)
• Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures (an adult with autism explains how it feels to her, and how she works as an expert in her field). Also of interest Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior
• Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face (about growing up with Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that severely disfigured her face)
• Greenberg, Michael. Hurry Down Sunshine (memoir of his daughter's first manic episode, at 15, and how her bipolar disorder affects the family)
• Greene, Valerie. Conquering Stroke: How I Fought My Way Back and How You Can Too
• Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (a work of fiction, not memoir, but it conveys insights from author's work with autistic children)
• Hammer, Signe. By Her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide's Daughter
• Handler, Evan. Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors (recounting with grim humor his battle with leukemia and his hellish journey through the land of the sick)
• Havemann, Joe. A Life Shaken:My Encounter with Parkinson's Disease
• Hill, Susan. Family (about the death of a premature child)
• Hillenbrand, Laura. A Sudden Illness—How My Life Changed (from The New Yorker--The impact of chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS, on the author of the bestselling book, Seabiscuit)
• Hockenberry, John. Moving Violations: Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence
• Hoffman,Richard. Half the House (about child abuse)
• Holzemer, Liz. Curveball: When Life Throws You a Brain Tumor (in her case, a baseball-sized meningioma--and remember, a brain tumor is different from brain cancer)
• Hood, Ann. Do Not Go Gentle: The Search for Miracles in a Cynical Time (her search for a miraculous cure for her father's inoperable lung cancer)
• Hull, John. Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (from sight problems at 13, gradually becoming blind)
• Israeloff, Roberta. In Confidence: Four Years of Therapy
• Jamison, Kay Redfield. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. A classic memoir about living with manic depression (including its positive aspects).
• Jezer, Marty. Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words. See Randy Holhut's obit for Jezer and Saying Goodbye to Marty Jezer (Joyce Marcel, Common Dreams)
• Johnson, Fenton. Geography of the Heart (about the death of a gay partner)
• Kamenentz, Rodger. Terra Infirma (a searing recollection of his mother's life and her death from cancer, his mother "yo-yoing between smothering affection and a fierce anger")
• Karr, Mary. The Liar's Club (about growing up with a mentally ill mother in a dysfunctional family)
• Kaysen,Susanna. Girl, Interrupted (a young girl's experiences with mental illness)
• Kincaid, Jamaica. My Brother (account of her younger brother's death from AIDS)
• Kingsley, Jason, and Mitchell Levitz. Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome
• Kleege, Georgina. Sight Unseen (marginally sighted and legally blind at 11 from macular degeneration, Kleege explores the meaning and implications of blindness and sightedness, reminding us that only a fraction of blind people see nothing at all)
• Kupfer, Fern. Before and After Zachariah (about a brain-damaged child)
• Kusz, Natalie. Road Song (growing up in Alaska, being mauled by a sled-dog, undergoing reconstructive surgery)
• Kuusisto, Stephen. Planet of the Blind (blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other, at his mother’s urging he feigns sightedness until coming to terms with his condition) and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening (in this sequel to Planet of the Blind, the author learns to live by ear)
• Lachenmeyer, Nathaniel. The Outsider: A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness (in which the author tries to reconstruct his father's downward spiral from a promising career as a sociology professor to his death as a schizophrenic vagrant, eluding police)
• Lang, Jim. Learning Sickness: A Year with Crohn's Disease
• Latus, Janine. If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation
• Lear, Martha Weinman. Heart-Sounds: The Story of Love and Loss (heart disease)
• Lewis, Mindy. Life Inside (diagnosed as schizophrenic at 15, kept in a psychiatric hospital till 18, recovering for decades, believing she was never schizophrenic)
• Lord, Audre. The Cancer Journals (explores her breast cancer and mastectomy)
• Madoff, Roger. Leukemia for Chickens
• Mairs, Nancy. Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled (wheelchair-bound from advancing multiple sclerosis, she offers "a Baedeker for a country to which no one travels willingly"). Check out also Carnal Acts , and Remembering the Bone House
• Maurice, Catherine. Let Me Hear Your Voice: A Family's Triumph Over Autism
• McDonnell, Jane Taylor. News from the Border: A Mother's Memoir of Her Autistic Son
• McKee, Steve. My Father’s Heart: A Son’s Journey (a tender memoir about suburban life in York, PA and Buffalo, NY, in the 1960s -- in every sense a “family history,” shedding light on heart disease, especially as inherited in families). Check out Steve McKee’s blog , too.
• McLean, Richard. Recovered, Not Cured: A Journey Through Schizophrenia (a brief, readable memoir by a gay Australian artist whose drawings vividly illustrate the story he tells about his life and mind with schizophrenia)
• Monette, Paul. Borrowed Time, Becoming a Man, and Last Watch of the Night (a gay man battles AIDS)
• Morrison, Blake. When Did You Last See Your Father?: A Son's Memoir of Love and Loss
• Neugeboren, Jay. Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival: A Memoir (his brother's 30-year struggle with mental illness)
• Neugeboren, Jay. Open Heart: A Patient's Story of Life-Saving Medicine and Life-Giving Friendship
• Nyala, Hannah. Point Last Seen (fleeing an abusive marriage)
• Olson, Rosanne. This Is Who I Am: Our Beauty in All Our Shapes and Sizes (photos of women with all kinds of bodies)
• Park, Clara Claiborne. The Siege:A Family's Journey Into the World of an Autistic Child The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child's Life (by the mother)
• Patchett, Ann. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship (about her strange relationship with Lucy Grealy)
• Pelzer, David J. A Child Called “It”: One Child’s Courage to Survive (a memoir based on one of the worst recorded cases of child abuse in California history, involving an abusive mother and an alcoholic father), the first in an inspirational trilogy, followed by The Lost Boy: A Foster Child’s Search for the Love of a Family and A Man Named Dave: A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness
• Phillips, Jane. The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living with Multiple Personality Disorder
• Price, Reynolds. A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (spine cancer makes him paraplegic, but liberates his imagination)
• Ratushinskaya, Irina. Grey Is the Color of Hope (remembering four years in a Siberian labor camp)
• Rhett, Kathryn, ed. Survival Stories: Memoirs of Crisis
• Rice, Rebecca. A Time to Mourn: One Woman's Journey Through Widowhood
• Richmond, Lewis. Healing Lazarus: A Buddhist’s Journey from Near Death to New Life (viral encephalitis sends him into coma, and in recovery he experiences an acute neuropsychiatric complication from a therapeutic drug)
• Robinson, Jill. Past Forgetting: My Memory Lost and Found (a compelling account of severe memory loss as the result of a seizure, by a fine novelist who grew up in Hollywood , as daughter of writer and film executive Dore Schary)
• Robison, John Elder. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s (the well-told story of life as a technologically gifted savant with high-functioning autism, with the added twist of an unusual perspective on his brother, who, as Augusten Burroughs, wrote Running with Scissors--apparently the nutty family psychiatrist was no exaggeration). Also by John Elder: Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian with Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers
• Roth, Philip. Patrimony (about a father's illness and about the father-son relationship)
• Rothenberg, Laura. Breathing for a Living (making the most of life with cystic fibrosis that takes her life at 22)
• Saks, Elyn. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (a fascinating memoir of the internal chaos and external unfairness that have made a life with schizophrenia so difficult for this professor of law and psychiatry, and of the talk therapy—indeed, psychoanalysis—she felt was as important as medication in helping her live a high-functioning life as a professor of law and psychiatry)
• Sarton, May. After the Stroke (the poet’s journal about recovering from a mild stroke when she is in her seventies)
• Scheff, David. Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction (chronicling a precocious teenager's spiral downward from abuse of mind- and mood-altering drugs to meth addiction)
• Scheff, Nic. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (the son's story, companion book to Beautiful Boy)
• Schreber, Daniel Paul. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (memoirs of madness, as recalled a century ago during confinement In a German mental asylum)
• Serotte, Brenda. The Fortune Teller's Kiss (memoir of contracting polio just before she turned eight, in 1954 -- a funny and heartbreaking account of growing up a Sephardic Jew--a Spanish Jewish family from Turkey-- among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx)
• Shawn, Allen. Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life -- part memoir, part explanation, a beautifully written and fascinating account of Shawn's own anxiety and agoraphobia, and a fine summary of what is known about how we form and can learn to manage anxiety and phobias. Shawn is son of the New Yorker editor (who managed his fears by becoming boss and therefore controlling his environment) and brother of Wallace Shawn, the actor.
• Shields, David. The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (personal history melds with riveting biological info about the body at every stage of life — an "autobiography of the body")
• Shreve, Susan Richards. Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven (an "indelible portrait of the psychic fallout of childhood illness").
• Shulman, Alix Kates. To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed (love story of a husband and wife facing his traumatic brain injury and her transformation into caregiver)
• Sidransky, Ruth. In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World
• Sienkiewicz-Mercer, Ruth and Steven B. Kaplan. I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes. (Encephalitis at 5 weeks left Ruth, a healthy baby, paralyzed and unable to speak normally. Diagnosed an imbecile at 5 years, she was eventually institutionalized and severely mistreated at a school for the mentally and physically disabled until a staff turnover brought her help, including a method for communicating.)
• Skloot, Floyd. The Night-Side: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Illness Experience (an account of how this mysterious and life-altering illness stuck overnight, dramatically changing Skloot’s life, and how he dealt with it)
• Solomon, Andrew. Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
• Spradley, Thomas S. and James P. Deaf Like Me (parents of a child born deaf as the result of an epidemic of German measles, waste years avoiding sign language before learning how to communicate with their child)
• Steinem, Gloria. "Ruth's Song, Because She Could Not Sing It," in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (about childhood with a mentally ill mother)
• Styron, William. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (about his struggle with crippling depression)
• Sutcliff, Rosemary. Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection (the memoir of one of Britain’s best-loved historical novelists, crippled and badly disabled from the age of three by Still’s Disease, a form of juvenile arthritis)
• Tammet, Daniel. Born on a Blue Day (memoir of a life with synaesthesia and savant syndrome, a rare form of Asperger's syndrome)
• Taylor, Jill Bolte. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey (a story that provides hope for the brain-injured, not just those who have had a stroke, as this young brain scientist did)
• Taylor, Nick. A Necessary End (about death of parents)
• Vincent, Eleanor. Swimming with Maya: A Mother's Story (how the daughter's fall from a horse ended in organ donations--transforming a mother's grief)
• Wakefield, Darcy. I Remember Running: The Year I Got Everything I Ever Wanted-and ALS (another moving memoir of living and dying with ALS--and about her "fast-forward" life, "in which she applies for disability, leaves her job, and plans her own funeral as well as meets and moves in with her true love, buys a house, and gives birth to her first child."
• Walker, Lou Ann. A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family (what it was like growing up hearing as the oldest child of deaf parents)
• Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle (growing up in a decidedly eccentric, often homeless, family)
• Waxman, Robert and Linda. Losing Jonathan (losing a beloved child to drugs)
• Wexler, Alice. Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research (on Huntington's Disease)
• Witchell, Alex. All Gone: A Memoir of My Mother's Dementia. With Refreshments . At just past 70, her mother started showing unmistakable signs of dementia; Witchell responded by cooking family recipes to "come to terms with her predicament, the growing phenomenon of 'ambiguous loss'— loss of a beloved one who lives on."
• Wiesel, Elie. Night (powerful account of surviving the nightmare world of the Nazi death camps)
• Wilensky, Amy S. Passing for Normal (a moving account of life with a long-delayed diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder—and an “exploration of the larger themes of difference and the need to belong”)
• Willey, Liane Holliday. Pretending to Be Normal: Living with Asperger’s Syndrome (a mother’s account of her own and her daughter’s life with Asperger’s syndrome).
• Williams, Donna. Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic (after 25 years, the daughter of abusive parents begins to emerge from a hallucinatory world—a view of autism totally different from others here)
• Williams, Marjorie. The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate (the last third is about her losing battle with cancer)
• Wittman, Juliet . Breast Cancer Journal: A Century of Petals
• Wolff, Geoffrey. The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father (about his con-man father)
• Wolff, Tobias. This Boy's Life (about escaping from his stepfather's abuse). Geoffrey and Tobias are brothers.
• Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America (atypical depression and bouts with drugs)
• Young, Joan. Wish by Spirit: A journey of recovery and healing from an autoimmune blood disease
Narrative Medicine
and Medical Narrative
Medical practitioners: Consider attending a Narrative Medicine workshop. The idea: narrative training with stories of illness "enables practitioners to comprehend patients’ experiences and to understand what they themselves undergo as clinicians." Check out this pageful of links to podcasts of Narrative Medicine Rounds, lectures or readings presented by scholars, clinicians, or writers engaged in work at the interface between narrative and health care. Rounds are held on the first Wednesday of each month from 5 to 6:30 pm in the Columbia University Medical Center Faculty Club, followed by a reception. Rounds are free and open to the public. Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner of Oral History Productions took and recommended an excellent intensive four-day workshop on Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, which I took and found interesting, though it was probably less helpful to me than it was to medical practitioners.
Here are some useful links:
• Narrative Medicine blog (an extension of the work, discourse, teaching and learning that takes place in the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University -- "Practicing clinical care with the ability to recognize, absorb, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness")
• The Story Doc: How Storytelling is Changing The Way Doctors Treat Illness (Abigail Rasminsky, Oprah Magazine, July 2012). A simple, ancient philosophy that could transform the practice of medicine. This is particularly helpful: "Sayantani Dasgupta, MD, who teaches narrative medicine at Columbia University, says the key to sharing your health history is thinking of it as a story: Choose the turning points that you want to highlight—the ups and downs you've experienced over time. Who are the main characters? A supportive partner? An unsupportive boss? Mention the dramatic tensions. You might be concerned about meeting work deadlines, or caring for a sick parent. These details will help your doctor treat your illness in the context of your life. Finally, spill your fears. Maybe your mother died of a brain tumor and you're afraid you will, too. Your worries offer insight into your hesitancies and motivations."
• Literature, Arts, and Medicine database (NYU hosts)
• Pulse—voices from the heart of medicine (excellent Web-only journal)
• Pulse: Voices From the Heart of Medicine - The First Year, anthology edited by Paul Gross and Diane Guernsey
• Stories in Medicine: Doctors-in-Training Record a Different Type of Patient History (Margot Adler, NPR, 10-28-03)
• Annals of Family Medicine (features "Reflections" -- a reflective essay)
• Family Medicine (official journal of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine; check out its feature “Lessons From Our Learners." Often publishes personal essays, 55-word stories and poems.
• Poetry and Prose Rounds (Washington University, which provided the following links)
• Fifty-five Word Stories: “Small Jewels” for Personal Reflection and Teaching by Colleen T. Fogarty (Family Medicine, June 2010), PDF
• Narrative Medicine Heals Bodies and Souls (Lorrie Klosterman's interview with Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Utne Reader, Sept-Oct 2009)
• Teaching Psychiatric Patients Writing, and Hope (Samuel G. Freedman, NY Times 8-26-11). The Rev. Bonnie McDougall Olson leads a writing workshop at Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital.
• What to do with stories: The sciences of narrative medicine (Rita Charon, Canadian Family Physician Vol. 53, No. 8, August 2007, pp.1265 - 1267)
• Illness as More Than Metaphor (by David Rieff, Susan Sontag's son, NY Times Magazine, 12-4-05)
• How to Do a Close Reading (Patricia Kain, Harvard University Writing Center)
• Close Reading of a Narrative Passage (K. Wheeler, Carson-Newman College)
• Wounded Storytellers: Narratives of Illness in Literature (Johanna Shapiro's syllabus for a course at the University of California at Irvine's Dept of Family Medicine; an excellent reading list)
• Explorations: An E-Journal of Narrative Practice. See for example: Re-membering Pets: Documenting the meaning of people’s relationships with these family members by narrative therapist Barbara Baumgartner
And here are some books on the subject (there are many more!):
• The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition by Arthur Kleinman
• Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness by Rita Charon
• Narrative Medicine: The Use of History and Story in the Healing Process by Lewis Mehl-Medrona author of Coyote Wisdom: Healing Power in Native American Stories
• Narrative Medicine: Learning to Listen (Gina Kolata, NY Times, 12-29-09, about Rita Charon's program at Columbia)
• Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine, ed. Peter L. Rudnytsky and Rita Charon
• Theft of the Spirit: A Journey to Spiritual Healing by Carl Hammerschlag
• The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics by Arthur Frank ("for academic medical collections"). Frank writes about restitution narratives (in which the narrator, expecting to get well again, is focused on the technology of cure), chaos narratives (in which the narrator sees illness lasting forever, with no respite), and quest narratives (in which illness is transformative, as the storyteller gains insights and becomes someone new). Frank is also the author of At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness
"Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness....Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new."~from Amazon review of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics by Arthur W. Frank
Organizations that Assist Artists with Disabilities
(resources described by the National Endowment for the Arts--check that link for more information about the organizations listed below)• Access to the Arts (Louisville, KY)
• Accessible Arts (VSA, Kansas's state organization on arts and disabilities)
• Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts (formerly Non-Traditional Casting Project)
• American Federation of Musicians (provides grants to musicians with disabilities)
• Axis Dance Company (strives to integrate contemporary dance and disability culture)
• Coalition for Disabled Musicians, Inc.(CDM)
• Culture! Disability! Talent! (works to correct disability stereotypes by providing access and opportunities for performers and media-makers with disabilities)
• The Dancing Wheels Company & School (one of America's first integrated dance companies, comprising professional dancers with and without disabilities)
• DeafMedia
• Infinity Dance Theater
• International Center on Deafness and the Arts
• , exploring the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts (United Disability Services)
• National Arts & Disability Center (promotes the full inclusion of audiences and artists with disabilities into all facets of the arts)
• National Federation of the Blind (voice of the nation's blind)
• National Institute of Art and Disabilities
• New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). NYFA’s online searchable database provides listings of sponsors, art grants, and fellowship programs for the disability community. It also provides a hotline to help artists navigate NYFA’s programs and database (1.800.232.2789).
• SignStage (a division of the Community Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Department, within the Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center)
• Theater Breaking Through Barriers (advances the careers of artists with disabilities in New York City)
• VSA Arts, the International Organization on Arts & Disability (based at the Kennedy Center, formerly Very Special Arts, and before that the National Committee - Arts for the Handicapped)
• VSA Arts Registry.
Again, see fuller descriptions, addresses, and so on, on the NEA webpage, Organizations that Assist Artists with Disabilities
My Words Are Gonna Linger: The Art of Personal History , ed. Paula Stallings Yost and Pat McNees, with a foreword by Rick Bragg (Personal History Press, $19.95). Read excerpts here. Read a review here.
"At last, a collection that shows the "why, what, and how" behind memoir as legacy. Spanning more than a century, these intriguing reflections of personal as well as global social and political history are told in the unique voice and viewpoint of each storyteller."
~ Susan Wittig Albert, author, Writing from Life, founder, Story Circle Network
“This anthology sings with Walt Whitman’s spirit of democracy, a celebration of our diversity. Each selection is a song of self; some have perfect pitch, some the waver of authenticity. All demonstrate the power of the word to salvage from the onrush of life, nuggets worth saving.”
~ Tristine Rainer, author of Your Life as Story and Writing the New Autobiography
“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, in the novel The Thirteenth Tale
― Diane Setterfield, in the novel The Thirteenth Tale
****The Life Report,. First "fascinating and addictive" life stories in response to David Brooks's request on the NY Times Op Ed page (10-27-11): If you are over 70... I’d like you to write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not so well and what you learned along the way." The first life reports were followed by Life Reports II (11-28-11).
The Beneficial Effects of Life Story and Legacy Activities by Pat McNees (Journal of Geriatric Care Management, Spring 2009). Get PDF file of journal article here (61.9KB)
"It's four little words. Tell me a story. And that's all we do....Even the people who wrote the Bible were smart enough to know, tell them a story. The issue was evil in the world. The story was Noah. Now, the Bible knew that."
~ Don Hewitt, creator of television's 60 Minutes, in a documentary on his career
~ Don Hewitt, creator of television's 60 Minutes, in a documentary on his career
"Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down."
~ Alex Haley
~ Alex Haley
"Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new."~from amazon review of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics by Arthur W. Frank
“Engaging in the storytelling process helped to return identity, stability, and hope. It also encouraged mothers to expand their vision. One mother said, ‘You go through all this stuff, [and] you’re just another person with cancer. You turn into cancer, you lose your identity, but, goddamn it, you have a whole story. [Reviewing my life] put it into perspective in a really good way. It gave me a chance to feel cancer has been a hard part of my life—but only a part. I’m not just cancer. I’m this person.’”
~ from Another Morning: Voices of Truth and Hope from Mothers with Cancer by Linda Blachman
~ from Another Morning: Voices of Truth and Hope from Mothers with Cancer by Linda Blachman
“Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.”
~ Harlan Ellison, Paladin of the Lost Hour
~ Harlan Ellison, Paladin of the Lost Hour
“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
~ Susan Sontag, from the preface, Illness As Metaphor
"...illness is terrible but, with some luck, it can also be full of wonders. The terrors assault us at once; the wonders take longer to become visible. Stories help us gain some distance from the terrors and learn to perceive the wonders, but storytelling is a skill, and like all skills, it takes practice to be most effective. Stories offer witness to all that is badly wrong and needs to be changed, and stories offer imaginations of a more generous life that can be. In telling all kinds of stories, we find healing."
~ Arthur Frank, Stories and Healing
the message of fred clifton
i rise up from the dead before you
a nimbus of dark light
to say that the only mercy is memory,
to say that the only hell
is regret.
~Lucille Clifton
"Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations."
~ Faith Baldwin
"You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality."
~ Florida Scott-Maxwell
"This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage."
~ Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe
"The real family legacy is the stories, not the sterling."
~ Andrea Gross
"In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness."
~ Alex Haley, Roots
~ Alex Haley, Roots