Discussions of Other Kinds of Trauma

Diane Cole, After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges (New York: Summit Books, 1992).

Cole writes about how we survive the things we think we cannot survive. In particular, she deals with her boyfriend's cancer, her mother's death (when she was 22), and her infertility. Somehow, by story more than by theory, she has something useful to say about grief. But I found it hard to identify fully with her examples.

Margaret Diehl, The Boy on the Green Bicycle (New York: Soho Press, 1999).

This memoir tells of the author's growing up with alcoholic parents and the impact on her family of the death of her brother in an accident. It tells in vivid detail what she felt as a child. I didn't know it was possible to remember childhood insanity so clearly.

Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997)

This book focuses primarily on the experience of physical illness, but I found it tremendously exciting because it helped me think about what my own story means to me. Frank starts with a discussion of how our experience of illness has changed in the last 20 or 30 years. He uses postmodern theory, but he makes it understandable. He has a wonderful discussion of how some people get stuck in situations that are so overwhelming that they can't make sense of their experience or find a way out. He argues that illness is increasingly not something that we get over and put behind us, but something that we live with and learn from. He believes that telling our stories is the central act of learning from our experiences and using them for the benefit of others.

Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994, HarperPerennial, 1995).

This book tells the story of a girl who was diagnosed with severe cancer at age 9. She suffered very aggressive treatment and when it was over and she was cured her face was seriously deformed. She writes in this memoir about her feelings about treatment and her struggle to live with her new self. It is a moving story about the pleasures and pain of being different.

Carter Heyward, When Boundaries Betray Us: Beyond Illusions of What is Ethical in Therapy and Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).

Carter Heyward is an Episcopal priest and professor of theology. She writes of a bad therapy experience and how it led her to the view that healing in therapy must be based on a real mutual relationship between the therapist and the client.

I found this very affirming to my own sense of the healing power of the real relationship between me and my therapist. However, Heyward got stuck on the idea that it wasn't a real relationship unless her therapist was willing to be friends with her after therapy was over, and I think that is too narrow a definition of a real relationship.

One thing to be cautious of is that the book deals with several memories of abuse that she decided afterwards were not real but were somehow generated by the twisted relationship between her and her therapist. She is not, however, arguing that false memories are a common problem; and, in fact, she believes that somehow she was remembering someone else's memory. I recommend this book particularly to therapists as it has interesting things to say about how to live creatively with the tension between authority and mutuality.

Audre Lorde The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1992).

Audre Lorde was an African-American poet and lesbian-feminist activist. This book deals with the first few years of her struggle with breast cancer. She describes vividly her interactions with professionals, with her own feelings, and with her support system. She insists on gathering her own information and making her own decisions. She gets incredible flack from the medical establishment for refusing to wear a prosthesis. She struggles to feel that she is okay the way she is after her mastectomy and she wants to connect with other women who have gone through breast cancer instead of being invisible. If you have a radical outlook, this book has lots of inspiration for surviving any kind of trauma, not just breast cancer.

James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996).

This book doesn't fit especially well in this category, but it is a wonderful book. The mother's story includes childhood sexual abuse that led her to flee from the world of her childhood (as a Jew in a small southern town) to live almost entirely in the African-American world. The book is also valuable for what it has to say about family secrets and the process of penetrating those secrets.

Jay Neugeboren, Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness, and Survival (New York: Owl Books, 1997).

This is the author's story of childhood and his own process of growing into taking responsibility for his schizophrenic brother. One of its themes is that the biomedical model of mental illness has gone too far. Neugeboren sees his brother's illness as, at least, partially the result of a dysfunctional family. The book is also very critical of mental hospitals and the limited help available to the chronically mentally ill.

Clea Simon, Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings (New York: Doubleday, 1997).

This book is partly a memoir and partly an investigation of the experience of siblings of people with schizophrenia. The author has both an older brother and a younger sister with severe schizophrenia. I bought the book because I have a sister who is mentally retarded, and I thought I might find some common themes (particularly the pressure felt by the "normal" child to be perfect).

I found the book even more valuable than I expected because I recognized so many of the family patterns she talks about, some from my experience with my sister and some, also, from my abuse experiences. She does a wonderful job of showing the feelings behind such issues as family secrets and our tendency to repeat painful patterns of the past. While the author does not focus on abuse issues, she does mention some abuse by her older brother (and she suspects that there may be more that she does not remember). I think this book might be valuable to anyone who was abused by a sibling.

Leslie Simon and Jan Johnson Drantell, A Music I No Longer Heard: The Early Death of a Parent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).

This book collects the stories of people who lost a parent before they became adults. It tries to show through their words the process of loss and how feelings change over time but never go away. I think in the end, I like Maxine Harris's book (reviewed above) better, but this one is more personal.

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