Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home: A Memoir

by Natalie Goldberg

A powerful memoir from Natalie Goldberg—the woman who changed the way writing is taught in this country—sharing her experience with cancer grounded in her practice of writing and Zen

Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home begins at the grave of Katagiri Roshi, Natalie’s Zen teacher, in Japan. Twenty years after Katagiri’s death and Natalie’s return to New Mexico, she is permanently settled in Santa Fe with her partner, Yukwan. Except that, as Buddhism teaches us, nothing is permanent. Natalie learns that she has CLL, a potentially fatal form of blood cancer.

For two years, Natalie dances with her cancer—visiting doctor after doctor, attempting treatment after treatment. Nothing helps; in fact, one of the treatments only feeds the cancer and encourages its growth. Then Natalie’s partner, Yukwan discovers that she, too, has cancer—breast cancer—as well as an off-the-charts oncotype score that requires her to have surgery immediately. The cancer twins, as Natalie calls herself and Yukwan, now must each navigate her own illness, carve out her own cancer territory. Each can provide only limited emotional and physical energy for the other. And, somehow, they both need to find a way to stay together, to stay in love—and to heal.

As the title expresses, Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home is so much more than a cancer memoir. Through a direct and grounded narrative, Natalie illuminates a path through that we need to be in love with the lives we have, to embrace the dark and the light in our lives. For Natalie, writing and painting represent the light, and her cancer takes her deeper into her art practices. Balanced with a Zen practice that helps to her face death, this book is a moving meditation on living life in full bloom.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Writing, Buddhism, Biography Memoir, Biography, Autobiography

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 5, 2018

About the author

Natalie Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for books and reading, and especially loved Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe , which she read in ninth grade. She thinks that single book led her eventually to put pen to paper when she was twenty-four years old. She received a BA in English literature from George Washington University and an MA in humanities from St. John's University.

Goldberg has painted for as long as she has written, and her paintings can be seen in Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World and Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings. They can also be viewed at the Ernesto Mayans Gallery on Canyon Road in Sante Fe.

A dedicated teacher, Goldberg has taught writing and literature for the last thirty-five years. She also leads national workshops and retreats, and her schedule can be accessed via her website: nataliegoldberg.com

In 2006, she completed with the filmmaker Mary Feidt a one-hour documentary, Tangled Up in Bob, about Bob Dylan's childhood on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota. The film can be obtained on Amazon or the website tangledupinbob.com.

Goldberg has been a serious Zen practitioner since 1974 and studied with Katagiri Roshi from 1978 to 1984.

Reviews

[Michelle Boone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to force myself not to read straight through this book in one sitting. It pulled me in from its first pages. Why? Because, in this book, Natalie Goldberg doesn’t hold anything back. In these pages, she looks death squarely in the face, suffers deeply, and never really gives up her fierce fight. Actually, I lie. There is a point, about two-thirds into the book, where she does want to end her life. After returning from a writing retreat in Limousin, France (a retreat I participated in), she learns that she is ‘lit-up’ with cancer (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) because the last four months of treatment have been unsuccessful and she considers not going on with her life. Thankfully, this is the only moment of true doubt on her path to recovery. Most of the memoir is full of her quest to live life to its fullest even while facing death head on.
I loved following her to the burial sites of her favorite authors and poets where she would place small stones of gratitude on their graves. In a non-Catholic cemetery in Rome, she left small stones on the graves of three poets: John Keats, Shelley, and Gregory Corso. When she couldn’t find the poet Richard Hugo’s grave in a cemetery in Missoula, Montana, she ended up going to a bar where he spent a lot of time instead. In Paris, she left an American penny on Simone de Beauvoir’s grave because there were no small stones available.
Even though the memoir delves into the grittiness of dealing with cancer, it is also filled with many moments of Natalie’s irresistible humor: how she refers to herself and her partner as the cancer twins when they are diagnosed within months of one another with very different cancers, how she still makes time to savor slowly two scoops of ice cream (butter pecan and coffee) at Mr. Frosty’s after a solitary swim in Abiquiu Lake or how she makes sure to get the twenty percent discount while dining with the friend who drove her to her PET scan.
Finally, Natalie’s lush descriptions of landscapes are always a delight to read. This is especially true when she describes New Mexico, an environment she bears witness to with such vividness that it is easy to see why they call this place the Land of Enchantment.

[Frank Ostaseski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took Natalie Goldberg's Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home with me (which her publisher kindly sent) on a long coastal walk along the bluffs and beaches near Sea Ranch this past weekend. Tried to savor it by reading small bits that I imagined I would digest slowly. But it was too compelling. I had to nestle into the hollow of a rocky cliff, out of the wind, and let her tell me the whole unvarnished story.

It was like sitting with her listening through the incalculable particulars of treatments, the panic, the stillness, the tenderhearted relationship, your idiosyncratic way, the insights and ordinariness. An honest, real and sometimes raw meeting with life and death without apology. Brilliant, Natalie.
It reminded me of a story Norman Fischer shared about a priests meeting at Green Gulch. One priest, then close to death from a long-term illness broke the quiet, polite exchange about zen practice shouting with a Lion’s Roar “I’M DYING!

So many unforgettable moments on the impossibility of daily life with life-threatening illness. Struggling with an iPad keyboard, life in hospitals, the well-meaning but unsolicited advice of friends, mastering medical language like “hypermetabolic activity”, talking to cancer cells, and wanting to die. Thank you also, Natalie, for being so real about your relationship. Writing about offering almond butter packs to Yu-kwan, about refusing her gift of turquoise earrings, and gradually finding a way back to each other. My heart attacks almost destroyed my relationship. I’ve never felt so narcissistic as when I was caught in the struggle to survive.

Loved the cemetery visits, a beautiful way to introduce the necessary conversations with the dead and to express Natalie's gratefulness. I was recently in the Cimitero Acattolico in Rome. It's adjacent to the Caio Cedtio pyramid a rather pretentious monument to a single (wealthy) individual. In the cemetery we found a gravestone for an unnamed baby. The inscription read “whose name is written on the water.”

Amazing and rare book from Natalie. All the way to the bottom. No part left out.

[Sheila · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m sorry to say that this Natalie Goldberg book did not fill me with her usual inspirational writing. Yes, this was her own personal cancer report; however, I kept thinking of all those readers who don’t have such medical connections and “friends in high places” for hope during a time of despair and confusion. This could have been just a personal essay.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a huge follower of Natalie Goldberg. I was lucky enough last fall to attend a (virtual) retreat with her and Joan Halifax focused on writing Haiku. I've read Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within several times and always find it inspiring. I also loved Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life, Old Friend from Far Away: How to Write a Memoir, Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft, and Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America.

This work is very different than her others. It's her very personal, typically authentic and searingly honest story of her struggle with a very lethal form of cancer. She describes the painful treatments, the anxiety of waiting for results, the severe fatigue as well as the love and support of her many friends. She and her partner Yu-Kwan are not able to be there for each other as her partner developed cancer shortly after Goldberg did and they both had their separate sufferings to endure.

The book is moving and totally engrossing. I could not put it down. I felt for her suffering and admired her willingness to share this painful and frightening--and also life-altering experience with us.

Thank you Natalie Goldberg.

[Allyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goldberg is a master writer and teacher. She touts "watching the way the writer's mind works" as the "way in" to any book a reader encounters.

Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home gives readers a beautiful incursion into Goldberg's mind: how she discovers that she has cancer, puts off treatment because she doesn't want cancer to get in the way of her life, how she moves through the different stages of loss and acceptance of the disease, and ultimately, how she survives.

Goldberg weaves her signature Zen approach into the pages, admitting that initially Zen fails her and she allows fear to take over. Who wouldn't? Her subsequent journey is a rich guide for anyone struggling--with disease or any circumstance beyond their control. Read it and keep it nearby for the next roadblock or insurmountable challenge that plants itself in your path.

Thank you Natalie, as always, for sharing your words and your stories with us.

[Paula Hagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a Natalie Goldberg fan for 30 years and have read everything she has written, starting with "Writing Down the Bones" which completely changed my [writing] life in the early 90's. And I have studied with her a few times too, and always enjoyed my time writing and doing walking meditation with her. Like Natalie, I am both a writer and an artist. While I always find something I love in all of her books, I did have the feeling that the last several books were just repeats and blendings of her earlier writings, with nothing overly unique or new for me. This memoir changed all that.

This is by far her most honest, deeply personal, and emotionally touching book yet. The wrenching emotional details of her discovery that cancer was raging throughout her body, and the physical details, decisions and dealings with the medical profession - chemical infusions, scans, drugs, etc. - are terrifying, and she brings it all right up there for all of us to share, and feel, in the simplest of language. Even a life lived with a zen mind does not overcome everything, and her terror and ponderings on death and dying are raw and tangible. This was not an easy book to read, for whom among us, whether we admit it out loud or not, does not have some innate fear of cancer? But her story is ultimately a rejoicing in the preciousness of life, and this topic arrived in my hands at a perfect time in my own life as I too find myself pondering how I want to live the last third or quarter of whatever time is left for me.

[Sabena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir by one of the most well-known, well-published writing teachers in the US is an intimate portrait of the author's journey from cancer diagnosis at age sixty-six through treatment and through her return to health. Along the way, she shares some surprising details about her relationships with others while living life with a devastating illness. I think I wanted this long-time Zen meditation practitioner to handle her health crisis with greater equanimity and show more kindness to those around her. Turns out, she's just as human as the rest of us.

[Sunflower · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great title. Each person's experience of their illness is different and this one is quite different, heavily influenced by her Zen training. The outcome is positive, but I actually enjoyed reading about her partner's story more than hers. And a few days later most of the book has faded from my memory. Sorry.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t remember the last time I was so captured by a book. I finished this memoir of Natalie Goldberg’s cancer journey in under 2 days, read it hour after hour; read it in awe, in fascination, in horror, and in hope. Just...Wow!
Goldberg, writing guru to thousands upon thousands, manages to illuminate death in life and life in death, for she has both known all along and comes to realize, that the two are inextricable. This is a powerfully disturbing story and a poignantly moving one. I need time to digest and reflect on the lessons it offers and the questions it poses for me.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great memoir about the author battling cancer and then her girlfriend finding out that she, too, has cancer! It was a really raw, truthful, relatively quick-to-read account.

[Sawnie Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished reading Natalie Goldberg’s Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home late last night. Who’d have ever thought a cancer memoir could be a page-turner? And one that brought me to tears, twice. This book is going to mean much to many. Aside from the story – Natalie Goldberg’s story – there is the clipped to-the-point writing itself and the organization of the book, which is brilliant. Seamlessly inserted midway through is a second story, that of Goldberg’s beloved Yu-Kwan. The elegance and care in Goldberg’s delivery of Yu-Kwan’s story speaks volumes – no drama – and gives the reader cause to care about and admire this person who is also suffering yet not at center stage. The balance between Yu-Kwan’s calm determination in the face of cancer, and Goldberg’s raging ferocity and determination in the face of her own could not be more perfect. The personalities are so complexly drawn – each “character” drawing on traits and tactics in wrestling with cancer that had served not only their survival as children and young adults, but their flourishing in their adult lives prior to the cancer. The pieces are woven together with the precision of a haiku that manages —because of its lightning focus – “no part left out.” It’s masterfully done. A tour de force. Human anguish and struggle, but no self-pity. Brava, Natalie Goldberg!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goldberg moved me with Writing Down the Bones and continues to make her mark on my emotional landscape with her writing in Tricycle, and of course her other books. I appreciated this book for its honesty and rawness. Thank you, Natalie, for continuing to deliver writing that exemplifies the teachings you hold dear.

[John Thorndike · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was growing up no one mentioned the word cancer. It was never spoken of at the dinner table and rarely named in newspapers as the cause of death. Clearly, there was something shameful about it. Now, as I grow to be a certain age—that is to say, old—people all around me are getting cancer, and many have died of it. Any one of us could be next, and with friends this has become a steady topic of conversation. To put it in the best light, it’s a fascination—and there could not be a more compelling book about it than Natalie Goldberg’s latest.

Of course she’s going to open up her heart when she tells us the story of her leukemia. She dismisses the shame by describing everything directly, in lucid prose, telling the hard truths and describing some small triumphs of consciousness. Zen is with us always in this book—and it has never been more needed. She writes: “In this moment, I use the truth of death to my advantage, as leverage, an edge into this delicious present.” That present moment is where Natalie always takes us, and why I read all her books.

[Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Natalie Goldberg, then I can recommend this book because you get more of her love letters to the West and her large group of contemporaries. Whoever wants to write will like this book because she briefly discusses writing and goes on, maybe too long, with allusions to other writers. She makes me want to hike and live in New Mexico. I’m not sure how she makes money besides teaching. She’s not strapped, but deals with some money issues in this memoir. Then, she takes hiking trips in the UK. Who knows? I think you get answers to Goldberg’s personal life in this memoir, but you also get it in BANANA ROSE, which is longer and more fun to read. I met Nat Goldberg in 2013, and felt like she was a little bitchy in real life. Turns out she was fighting cancer: “I couldn’t face my own sickness and death, and as a result I became scratcher, tighter, more agitated in some cellular unconscious way.” You never know what another person suffers in her life, so don’t take offense.

[Jillian Doherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first Goldberg book, which has encouraged me to go back and read your previous works; her writing well illustrate her thoughtfully emotional journey is much more than a memoir.
I loved the parallels of her Jewish upbringing compared to her Buddhist lifestyle. As well as her relationships, beautiful excursions to see where other writers lived, worked and does, and a tumultuous duel cancer battle.
She writes like the the quote referenced- how a writer lives their life twice, first in the act then reliving it in the written word.
The story is worth reading every chapter, as much as feeling the closure to her memories by the gorgeous sentient blessing at the end.

[Robin Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book in two days. I have breast cancer and am in the middle of cancer treatment. In fact, I started in the chemotherapy centre. So this book had a special relevance to me. However, I’ve been a huge fan of Natalie Goldberg since the early 90s. She always writes from her heart but there is a raw vulnerability in this one, such honesty, spirit, and poetry. It fed my spirit. I may need to start from the beginning and read it again.

[Ami Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, not great.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

She is who she is. I gave the one star for...well, cancer...and for WDTB.

[A.Y. Berthiaume · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeously written with rich prose and delicious word choice. Beautifully depicts life turned upside down by cancer without going too far into the medical weeds and losing the reader with jargon and data. We stay close to the humanness and complexity of Goldberg's experience. There was something both lullaby-ic and haunting.

[Sunil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overwhelmed

There's life in this book which talks of death in very page. In every word, sentence, inflection, tone, tenor there is this overarching need to find something beyond - a meaning, an epiphany, a purpose. To see that nothing goes waste. Natalie revisits the smells, tastes and sights of very food, flower, road and hospital ward she visited. This book is a Zen journey through the senses, even as they start to do - and why it is important to vigorously choose life, even as you let yourself loose on the river of inevitability.

[Yvonne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I used to really like Natalie Goldberg's work. I don't recall what turned me off to her, so when I saw a used copy of this memoir for $3, I thought it was worth reading. I was mistaken.
To me, Goldberg comes across as so entitled and privileged and emotionally closed, that I had a hard time feeling much sympathy for her even though the book is about how she and her girlfriend went through breast cancer treatment simultaneously.

Just one example of how I saw her as privileged: When she wanted to see a doctor who was doing an experimental treatment that she wanted to try, but she couldn't get an appointment, she contacted numerous people to see who might have an "in" with the doctor. Eventually, someone came through (Goldberg never found out who) and she got her appointment. In a country where soooo many people are uninsured, or under-insured, it rubbed me the wrong way that she felt entitled to do this. Then, after seeing the doc, she decided to not go forward with this particular treatment.

I plan to go back to some of her early work, and see if I still like who she was then.

[Thais Mather]

No

[Shahd Thani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read Natalie Goldberg since I was 14 when I made a concious decision to be a writer. I’ve reread her craft books so many times.
Reading this was so emotional for me. Natalie Goldberg was always larger than life. Immortal. To flip through pages and find her so vulnerable hit me hard. Throughout ths book, Natalie Goldberg pays her respects to the writers that shaped her and I wonder if she’ll ever know how much she shaped me. How her writing practice made me who I am and how much I think of her whenever I feel the words escape me.

[Christine Corrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in less than a day. It is exquisitely written and gives a profound insight into the suffering that is cancer and cancer treatment. I'm a two-time cancer survivor, and her words cut me to the bone because they were real, true and mirrored many of my own experiences. This book was a gift to read.

[Jennifer Louden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the way Natalie writes and this book is no exception. I adored the story about her girlfriend. However, her story as a whole didn't rise to the level of the universal for me. Still happy to read it and so glad she is cancer free.

[Cristie Underwood]

An amazing memoir that demonstrated how a positive attitude can have an impact on cancer. I love how the author used the title of this book throughout it.

[Kelly D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw, vulnerable, honest, poignant. A reminder of why we're alive.

[Kathie Giorgio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last summer, I experienced Grade 2 breast cancer. A year later, I'm still feeling its effects. When I heard that Natalie Goldberg wrote a book about her own experience with cancer, I was jarred. Goldberg is the writer's guru - I've taught her, quoted her, lived her, used her as an example. And now she had cancer too.

The book is a stunner. It's blunt and open and honest. The emotions are there, and when the emotions are shut down, that's there too. The questions, the doubts, the answers that seemed stable but then vanish in thin air - it's all there. I had to set down the book several times, take a deep breath, then go back in. So be warned if you are a cancer patient or a cancer survivor - this will dredge up those hard times.

To me, one of the most stunning moments was when Natalie, well known for meditation, for walking in circles, for being earthy, says, "My friendly attempts at relationship with cancer was absurd. Cancer cells won't leave on their own. Most every friend who had cancer and did only alternative medicine is now dead...I had to enter the strange industrial cancer world. The big machines, the sterile rooms, the multimillion-dollar research. I knew I had to do this. I wanted to survive. I wanted my best chance."

Coming from someone like Natalie Goldberg, that says so much. And I was right there with her.

There really was only one thing that disturbed me, and it really has nothing to do with the writing. The writing is stellar, conversational, friendly. But whenever Natalie asks who the best doctor is in the field that she needs, she's told, and then she's told she'll never get an appointment, he or she is booked so far in advance. Natalie says she's good at "focused action", and in the end, she gets these appointments within days. But she's not quite honest here. It's not done through "focused action". It's accomplished because she's Natalie Goldberg and she has connections and her connections have connections.

Most of us, just people on the street who get cancer, don't have those connections. We have to either make do with the lesser known doctors or we have to wait and wait and wait to get in to those doctors. Yet Natalie never acknowledges this. She is privileged. And the privileged get quality healthcare, at their demand.

If she would have acknowledged that privilege, I wouldn't be as put off. But I can't help but wonder who she displaced on the waiting list to see these doctors.

I still gave it 5 stars, as the writing is lovely. I don't rate according to my own personal reactions to things. The book is worth the read. But I did really have trouble looking past that point.

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

(This book is quite possibly my favorite find to-date in a random Little Library.)

Writer, teacher, and long-time Zen practitioner Natalie Goldberg took me on a journey that was both personal and collective as she details her experience with an aggressive cancer in this book. At turns humorous, euphoric, depressing, and hopeful, it is at its heart a celebration of life.

Goldberg unfolds a detailed map of her life in this season of cancer: drugs, denial, travel, friendships, romance, medical procedures, grief, and death. The undercurrent of suffering is riveting; we humans are intrigued by how we each navigate that unavoidable suffering.

My own writing mentor, Dr. Sandee McGlaun, a remarkably talented writer in her own right, died last year after a battle with cancer. We were not close in recent years, but I thought of her often and carry forever her teachings with me. She transformed the way I write, and I am certain many of her students would agree with that fact. I watched her memorial service online and wept when another of her former students—the daughter she had never had, I would venture to say, in spirit if not biologically—read a sestina she had written in tribute to this exceptional woman. The portions of the book where Goldberg shares vignettes about her writing students are some of the most poignant. I couldn’t help but draw parallels between my own lived experiences and the ones Goldberg shares. The intimate spaces shared with fellow writers are sacred.

I won’t spoil the ending for you. A quick Wiki search will give you Goldberg’s stats, but I encourage you to read this book and others in her repertoire. Five stars.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fairly quick read, but not at all shallow. I've read and liked several of Natalie Goldberg's books, and I have a blood cancer similar to hers, so I figured I could relate.

And I did relate. And didn't. She's obviously a good writer. But she's also SO privileged. She has apparently hundreds of close friends, enough to easily find a connection to get her in to see any doctor she wants, wherever in the country, way before any openings in their schedules. She can travel anywhere she wants, so apparently no financial problems, or at least enough people who are willing to pay to travel to, say, France for a workshop with her. Same with her girlfriend, who is diagnosed with breast cancer in the middle of Goldberg's leukemia journey. (My partner was luckier; I'm the one who got breast cancer in the middle of my blood cancer.)

I liked the book. I liked Natalie. She's way more high-powered than I am; I can barely imagine how that feels. As far as her Zen practice, which permeates the book as it does her life, I'm sure it's good to have a path and a commitment to it, but, well, I am maybe too suspicious about teachers and how people use spirituality/religion. Cancer took her on a rollercoaster ride, as it does with many of us. She's handled the ups and downs pretty well, similarly to people in my support groups. When I first was diagnosed, I thought I'd like to write about it, but it turned out that I'd rather ignore it as much as possible. She, on the other hand, wrote this sweet book. She knows how to let you right into her head, and it's an interesting place.