“Addiction issues, mental illness, attempts at recovery, progress, setbacks: a mother tries to make sense of her son’s troubled life journey in light of her own history. Without sentimentality and from an unvarnished self-oriented perspective, Judy Sandler allows herself to explore how her son’s type II bipolar disorder has affected not only his life, but hers as well.”
Tag: caregiving
But who cares for the carer?
A few months ago, I offered a Graphic Medicine workshop at an event geared towards those who provide care to their loved ones impacted by cancer. The premise: for caregivers to use art, color, and words to reflect on their support systems and consider ways of broadening and deepening the connections which those systems comprise….
A Few Pages for a Life: Self-Portrait Through A Health Record Booklet
“It overflows with loose pages: medical prescriptions all mixed up, from my teenage to my adult years, from benign afflictions to serious troubles. All of those scattered fragments compose an anxious being. Rashes, panic attacks, chronic diarrhea. Nothing really changes, nothing really ever gets better. With slight variations, the same medication names come up again and again. 2005, 2013, 2021.”
A Bloom of Love? How Saffron Crocus Took Root in Japan
A new medicinal plant took root in foreign soil and became naturalized, but why? If you’ve spent generously on flowers—perhaps for this Valentine’s Day?—look no further than this essay for company.
In and On the Clinic
All of my previous trips to our nearby hospital have been marked by blood and bruises. As an especially clumsy individual, I’m used to squeezing paper towels tightly around gashed fingers or pressing ice compresses to a purpling forehead, blinking with the unfocused eyes of someone definitively concussed. Accompanied by my wonderful partner, I am…
Let’s Play a Game: Imagination in a Narrative Medicine Workshop
Avril Tynan // In 2010, Martha C. Nussbaum published Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, a manifesto on the importance of arts and humanities education for social and political life. The role of critical thinking in global education policies is being undermined, she argues, by an emphasis on rote learning and the promotion…