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The Write Prescription: Telling Your Story to Live With and Beyond Illness
A hands-on, hearts-on guide to writing about illness. Using intimate prompts and personal stories, Judith Hannan takes the reader and emerging-writer on a journey through what it means to reckon with illness. Having gone through her daughter's cancer diagnosis and treatments, Hannan is an experienced, thoughtful, and caring guide for anyone wanting to find a way through the labyrinth of the illness experience.
- GenresWriting
320 pages, Paperback
First published October 13, 2015
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July 18, 2016
‘Stories are antibodies against illness and pain.’ - Anatole Broyard
New York author Judith Hassan has written widely about sickness and death and how to live with and beyond illness. Her initial book ‘Motherhood Exaggerated’ detailed her discovery and transformation during her daughter’s cancer treatment and her transition into survival. In addition has published essays in Woman’s Day, Opera News, The Huffington Post, The Healing Muse, ZYZZYVA, Twins Magazine, and The Martha’s Vineyard Gazette. At present she teaches writing about personal experience to homeless mothers and at-risk adolescents as well as to medical students. She is on multiple boards including three boards affiliated with the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York—the Adolescent Health Center (where she now serves as President of the Advisory Board), the Children’s Center Foundation, and Global Health.
In this book Judith teaches us how to use writing as a tool to survive illness at all levels – diagnosis, the illness, treatment, complications, etc. She is a warm writer who sits as our counselor and friend, sharing her own experiences and those of others with whom she has worked.
In her introductory comments she states, ‘I wrote my first book, Motherhood Exaggerated, as a route to personal transformation and as a mirror for others. But there is another reason. For the past several years, I have volunteered at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan helping homeless mothers write about personal experience. Some of their most profound work lets the reader into their lives during moments when no one can see them. It could be when a special interaction with a child confirms for them that they are good mothers, or when they have conquered a negative impulse or experienced a time of despair. It could paint a portrait of what happens in the middle of the night when darkness and the soul have a private conversation. “Look at me; I am here,” they say. As an author, I have come to realize I am not only a storyteller but also a story-receiver. Stories are brought to me at book readings or in classes like presents that, for so long, could find no one to open their wrappings and lift out the precious treasures. First the giver says thank you. Then he or she speaks. “My son had cancer. He didn’t make it. Now I’m writing. My other son has psychological problems. You understand.”“My son has a serious mental disorder. My stepdaughter had cancer and her mother wasn’t very much help.”…The purpose of this book is to help those dealing with illness to birth more stories— whether to share with others or just as a gift for themselves.’
This is a book of great tenderness and compassion but it is also a teaching manual to guide all of us through facing illness of all levels. A joy to read and an incomparably fine addition to the field of healing, Judith Hannan is bound to win not only accolades from her readers but also awards for her magisterial technique.
New York author Judith Hassan has written widely about sickness and death and how to live with and beyond illness. Her initial book ‘Motherhood Exaggerated’ detailed her discovery and transformation during her daughter’s cancer treatment and her transition into survival. In addition has published essays in Woman’s Day, Opera News, The Huffington Post, The Healing Muse, ZYZZYVA, Twins Magazine, and The Martha’s Vineyard Gazette. At present she teaches writing about personal experience to homeless mothers and at-risk adolescents as well as to medical students. She is on multiple boards including three boards affiliated with the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York—the Adolescent Health Center (where she now serves as President of the Advisory Board), the Children’s Center Foundation, and Global Health.
In this book Judith teaches us how to use writing as a tool to survive illness at all levels – diagnosis, the illness, treatment, complications, etc. She is a warm writer who sits as our counselor and friend, sharing her own experiences and those of others with whom she has worked.
In her introductory comments she states, ‘I wrote my first book, Motherhood Exaggerated, as a route to personal transformation and as a mirror for others. But there is another reason. For the past several years, I have volunteered at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan helping homeless mothers write about personal experience. Some of their most profound work lets the reader into their lives during moments when no one can see them. It could be when a special interaction with a child confirms for them that they are good mothers, or when they have conquered a negative impulse or experienced a time of despair. It could paint a portrait of what happens in the middle of the night when darkness and the soul have a private conversation. “Look at me; I am here,” they say. As an author, I have come to realize I am not only a storyteller but also a story-receiver. Stories are brought to me at book readings or in classes like presents that, for so long, could find no one to open their wrappings and lift out the precious treasures. First the giver says thank you. Then he or she speaks. “My son had cancer. He didn’t make it. Now I’m writing. My other son has psychological problems. You understand.”“My son has a serious mental disorder. My stepdaughter had cancer and her mother wasn’t very much help.”…The purpose of this book is to help those dealing with illness to birth more stories— whether to share with others or just as a gift for themselves.’
This is a book of great tenderness and compassion but it is also a teaching manual to guide all of us through facing illness of all levels. A joy to read and an incomparably fine addition to the field of healing, Judith Hannan is bound to win not only accolades from her readers but also awards for her magisterial technique.
Displaying 1 of 1 review