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Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse
"Turbulently brilliant; tuneful and mournful, poignant and funny, heart-rending and mind-grabbing, skillfully improvisational, eloquent and compelling."—Gabor Maté, MD, author of
The Myth of Normal
From the award-winning author of Die Wise comes a raw and poignant account of the indiscriminate nature of illness—and what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a diagnosis.
Stephen Jenkinson is perhaps best known for his extensive work helping people navigate grief, death, and dying, both as the former director of palliative care at a major Canadian hospital and afterward, through his Orphan Wisdom School, which seeks to cultivate deep life skills in an age of cultural fragmentation and amnesia.
Now, the unimaginable has descended upon the “Griefwalker” himself. In Trembling, Still, Stephen takes to the page in the wake of his diagnosis with the degenerative neurological condition known as Parkinson’s disease—the Beast, as he comes to know it. “There’s a bit of breathing room that comes with seeing life’s lessons coming on from a distance, through the mediation of others,” Stephen writes. But this book is not an account of life’s lessons from a distance; it is the picture of what it is to be in the arms of the Beast oneself.
Written as a series of entries beginning January 3, 2024, and ending with an epilogue dated July 17, 2025, Trembling, Still is a lyrical and meditative journey of reckoning that will resonate with anyone who has experienced or witnessed decline. In illness, there is pain, confusion, grace, dissolution, joy, heart-wrenching grief, light. There’s sorrow. Then there’s the soul’s work.
"Never, once, does the book lose its mesmeric hold. This is not a domestic document. If you seek the unexpected, seek this."—Martin Shaw, author of Liturgies of the Wild
From the award-winning author of Die Wise comes a raw and poignant account of the indiscriminate nature of illness—and what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a diagnosis.
Stephen Jenkinson is perhaps best known for his extensive work helping people navigate grief, death, and dying, both as the former director of palliative care at a major Canadian hospital and afterward, through his Orphan Wisdom School, which seeks to cultivate deep life skills in an age of cultural fragmentation and amnesia.
Now, the unimaginable has descended upon the “Griefwalker” himself. In Trembling, Still, Stephen takes to the page in the wake of his diagnosis with the degenerative neurological condition known as Parkinson’s disease—the Beast, as he comes to know it. “There’s a bit of breathing room that comes with seeing life’s lessons coming on from a distance, through the mediation of others,” Stephen writes. But this book is not an account of life’s lessons from a distance; it is the picture of what it is to be in the arms of the Beast oneself.
Written as a series of entries beginning January 3, 2024, and ending with an epilogue dated July 17, 2025, Trembling, Still is a lyrical and meditative journey of reckoning that will resonate with anyone who has experienced or witnessed decline. In illness, there is pain, confusion, grace, dissolution, joy, heart-wrenching grief, light. There’s sorrow. Then there’s the soul’s work.
"Never, once, does the book lose its mesmeric hold. This is not a domestic document. If you seek the unexpected, seek this."—Martin Shaw, author of Liturgies of the Wild
240 pages, Hardcover
Published July 7, 2026
About the author
Stephen Jenkinson
12 books171 followersStephen is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house for the skills of deep living and making human culture. It is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, working for a time yet to come.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
July 21, 2026
Stephen Jenkinson's newest book, Trembling Still, is unlike any book I've encountered on illness. His linguistic brilliance, joined now by his own confrontation with Parkinson's disease, pulls back the curtain on what it means to live inside a body that is quietly, relentlessly changing. He gives language to what so many struggle to express: the upheaval of our carefully made plans, the changing relationship with our own body, the loss of freedom, the shock and grief of being challenged by Arno longer being able to do simple things, and the sorrow that accompanies each small surrender.
His reflections cracked my heart wide open.
For decades, Stephen has been a trusted guide to mortality, first through his work with the dying and later as one of our most original cultural philosophers. All his books have the same honest depth and linguistic genius. Stephen Jenkinson does not write for the hurried reader. His vocabulary is rich, his sentences intricate, and his thoughts ask to be lingered over rather than consumed. At first, I found myself having to build the stamina for his language, much as a runner trains for a marathon. But somewhere along the way, what first felt demanding became deeply rewarding. His cadence became familiar, his language opened, and reaching the end of a passage brought the same quiet satisfaction as crossing a finish line—not because it was difficult for difficulty's sake, but because it had carried me somewhere worth going.
Now he turns that same fearless attention toward himself. The result is not a memoir of disease as much as an act of astonishing generosity. He offers us not conclusions but companionship, allowing us to witness, without self-pity or sentimentality, what it is to live honestly in the presence of diminishment.
I chose to listen rather than read Trembling Still, and I'm grateful I did. His voice is part of the experience. It has the richness of caramel and the precision of someone who has spent a lifetime mastering an instrument. In his case, the instrument is language itself. His voice is truthful, gentle, audacious, and beautifully measured, carrying every sentence with quiet authority and deep humanity.
For those who have followed Stephen Jenkinson over the years, this book is both heartbreaking and essential. We have long asked him to accompany others through their final passages. Now he invites us to accompany him through his own. We owe him that witness.
Reading—or listening to—Trembling Still feels like taking the hand of someone who has guided countless others through the storm. It is a good hand: strong and purposeful. And like a child holding tightly to a trusted parent, you find you don't want to let go.
His reflections cracked my heart wide open.
For decades, Stephen has been a trusted guide to mortality, first through his work with the dying and later as one of our most original cultural philosophers. All his books have the same honest depth and linguistic genius. Stephen Jenkinson does not write for the hurried reader. His vocabulary is rich, his sentences intricate, and his thoughts ask to be lingered over rather than consumed. At first, I found myself having to build the stamina for his language, much as a runner trains for a marathon. But somewhere along the way, what first felt demanding became deeply rewarding. His cadence became familiar, his language opened, and reaching the end of a passage brought the same quiet satisfaction as crossing a finish line—not because it was difficult for difficulty's sake, but because it had carried me somewhere worth going.
Now he turns that same fearless attention toward himself. The result is not a memoir of disease as much as an act of astonishing generosity. He offers us not conclusions but companionship, allowing us to witness, without self-pity or sentimentality, what it is to live honestly in the presence of diminishment.
I chose to listen rather than read Trembling Still, and I'm grateful I did. His voice is part of the experience. It has the richness of caramel and the precision of someone who has spent a lifetime mastering an instrument. In his case, the instrument is language itself. His voice is truthful, gentle, audacious, and beautifully measured, carrying every sentence with quiet authority and deep humanity.
For those who have followed Stephen Jenkinson over the years, this book is both heartbreaking and essential. We have long asked him to accompany others through their final passages. Now he invites us to accompany him through his own. We owe him that witness.
Reading—or listening to—Trembling Still feels like taking the hand of someone who has guided countless others through the storm. It is a good hand: strong and purposeful. And like a child holding tightly to a trusted parent, you find you don't want to let go.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review