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Places I've Taken My Body: Essays
In seventeen intimate essays, poet Molly McCully Brown explores living within and beyond the limits of a body—in her case, one shaped since birth by cerebral palsy, a permanent and often painful movement disorder. In spite of—indeed, in response to—physical constraints, Brown leads a peripatetic life: the essays comprise a vivid travelogue set throughout the United States and Europe, ranging from the rural American South of her childhood to the cobblestoned streets of Bologna, Italy. Moving between these locales and others, Brown constellates the subjects that define her inside and out: a disabled and conspicuous body, a religious conversion, a missing twin, a life in poetry. As she does, she depicts vividly for us not only her own life but a striking array of sites and topics, among them Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the world’s oldest anatomical theater, the American Eugenics movement, and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Throughout, Brown offers us the gift of her exquisite sentences, woven together in consideration, always, of what it means to be human—flawed, potent, feeling.
215 pages, Hardcover
First published June 2, 2020
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January 1, 2020
"I want to press this book into the hands of everyone I know. Writing from the locus of her own constantly changing, often intractable body, Molly McCully Brown captures the fullness of the human experience — desire, loss, flesh, faith, poetry, place, memory — with lyric compression and expansive grace. Reading these exquisite essays made me want to get out and do something with my own body — kneel at an altar and recite the Hail Mary, stub out a cigarette in Bologna, stand on a hilltop and shout expletives at the Trump administration. Which is to say, these are urgent, compelling essays that remind us how to be fully alive inside our own bodies, wherever we take them.”
October 28, 2023
Beautifully written essays, as you might expect given that Molly McCully Brown is a poet. She explores time, the life of the mind, faith (she is a Catholic convert who grew up near an evangelical university), grief (her twin died at birth), and coming of age and living with disability (cerebral palsy), a body that frustrates her, and pain that distracts her.
Gosh, people often say or do terrible things to people with disabilities even if inadvertently, from the boy telling a table of people in the college dining hall that while Molly was very nice, he felt sorry for her because she was going to die a virgin, to the Italians in Bologna where she was living on a fellowship who crossed themselves when they saw her. It’s sometimes funny and frequently thought-provoking. Best read over time with pauses, particularly as the essays are repetitive: a number of them were previously published separately and she is working through the same experiences from slightly different angles. 3.5.
Gosh, people often say or do terrible things to people with disabilities even if inadvertently, from the boy telling a table of people in the college dining hall that while Molly was very nice, he felt sorry for her because she was going to die a virgin, to the Italians in Bologna where she was living on a fellowship who crossed themselves when they saw her. It’s sometimes funny and frequently thought-provoking. Best read over time with pauses, particularly as the essays are repetitive: a number of them were previously published separately and she is working through the same experiences from slightly different angles. 3.5.
August 7, 2020
Sometimes there are books that feel as if they are completely meant for specific readers. That was Places Where I’ve Taken My Body for me. I’m afraid I cannot even pretend or try to be objective in my review. This is a book I read and related to from a deeply personal place inside myself and one that speaks to things that I don’t think are so uncommon at all, but they damn sure are in the publishing world.
Molly McCully Brown is a year younger than me, (so 29), and a poet loving with cerebral palsy. She loves to travel, read, write, and religion is deeply important to her. She knows first hand the rage of living in a body that compels others to ask “What’s wrong with you?” She was also born a twin though her sister died shortly after their early birth. All of these things could basically be said about me as well, though my disability (disabilities plural, I suppose but hard to say where one ends and the next begins) is different and I was not born early. I was born with a partially developed twin (although mine was probably not identical like Molly’s. I’m an IVF baby so it may have been that our egg split but I’ve always figured it was one of the other embryos implanted with the one that became me) and I’ve often contemplated many of the same things Molly writes in the book about loneliness, about missing that part of herself. My parents also lost another child a year and a half after I was born. This one is buried in a cemetery, and I used to go and visit and contemplate all the weirdness that I should be alive and why me. I’ve never really read the work of anyone else dealing with such thoughts. They seem a little melodramatic perhaps, as even Molly mentions, yet to grow up with the shadow of this, it’s a thing and one I wasn’t expecting to find reflected here.
I really liked the way Molly writes about religion and about how traditional religion would seem to conflict with her liberal political and social views or or life experiences yet she’s so deeply drawn to and cares for it. For Molly, it is Catholicism. I also nearly became Catholic in my mid-teens. I grew up in a rather Catholic area, with a Catholic K-12 school down the street as well as a small convent and a pair of Franciscan Friars who worked at the church and school and wore their brown robes. It absolutely fascinated me as a child. I liked the adornments of Catholicism and as a tween at a fancy fine arts school, fell in love with Renaissance and Medieval art and architecture and all the religious symbolism and allegory. Eventually I found myself back home where I started, as a Jew, and to this day all who know me talk about the way I light up when I talk about Judaism (and Israel and Middle East Politics and policy). So I loved reading about Molly’s experiences. It occurs to me I don’t know if many people my age who write or even discuss religion like this, especially those who like Molly and I, were the rare birds to not be raised particularly religious but to come to with a deep hunger at an early age.
Molly also writes extensively about living in her body. About the experimental surgeries she had as a child to loosen her contracted muscles, the trauma of her first memory being surgery, the absurdity of how others respond to her body. There’s a chapter I adored about sexuality and disability and about how when your body has been so medicalized and touched and controlled by doctors what it’s like to finally realize oh, I’m not just a patient but a human, a woman, and there are other ways I want to be touched as well. My heart squeezes just typing that because boy do I relate. There’s so much here about body and self and all the disconnects.
I deeply loved this collection. Essays are one of my favorite things, something I long to write myself. I have so many quotes I saved and I think the best I can do at this point is simply to share a few. I feel like this is a book that will draw to it those who need it most but I have no idea what others who live in fully functional bodies and don’t have these experiences might think or feel upon reading it. It’s so special to me I would not necessarily recommend reading it just for disability rep. No. You’ve got to want to gain more than that and I don’t know. I don’t think I care whether others like this one or don’t. It was a book I needed and will cherish and have a zillion tabs in to return to on my shelf.
A few of my favorite quotes-
“You need a lot of grit, a little rage to wrestle pain.”
“I’m the wildest combination of young and old. I don’t want fifty more years running on rage.”
“There is so much in the world I want to see and do, and already so much of it is unreachable to me.”
“Whatever ontological unease I feel, however ethereal my thoughts become, the truth of my body is literal and absolute, like an anchor pulling me back to the world.”
“Everything about the repetition, discipline, and slowness that my life required made me furious. I wanted to run, to leap, to burst out of my own body and then beat it to a pulp.”
“I was so occupied with pain and with being a patient, perpetually hamstrung between being taken apart and put back together, that it would take me years to really look at myself and realize, Oh, I’m also a person. A woman. There’s a whole other way I can want to be touched.”
“Above all, though, I blame my body for the fact that, after all these years, I’m still grieving a plain stupid grief that I can’t hide. I blame it for being itself, for existing to be ruined and repaired.”
And my very favorite passage, one that I think works even as a thesis statement for this book and one I personally so deeply relate to as someone who has found herself so full of words since becoming sick, as someone who has also found her own words to be life itself-
“To help realize the world I want, I have to write, I have to talk. Language is my medium. It is the thing that has borne me up and out of every valley, the thing that has tied me to other people and made my life large. Often, it’s the only thing I really believe in.”
Molly McCully Brown is a year younger than me, (so 29), and a poet loving with cerebral palsy. She loves to travel, read, write, and religion is deeply important to her. She knows first hand the rage of living in a body that compels others to ask “What’s wrong with you?” She was also born a twin though her sister died shortly after their early birth. All of these things could basically be said about me as well, though my disability (disabilities plural, I suppose but hard to say where one ends and the next begins) is different and I was not born early. I was born with a partially developed twin (although mine was probably not identical like Molly’s. I’m an IVF baby so it may have been that our egg split but I’ve always figured it was one of the other embryos implanted with the one that became me) and I’ve often contemplated many of the same things Molly writes in the book about loneliness, about missing that part of herself. My parents also lost another child a year and a half after I was born. This one is buried in a cemetery, and I used to go and visit and contemplate all the weirdness that I should be alive and why me. I’ve never really read the work of anyone else dealing with such thoughts. They seem a little melodramatic perhaps, as even Molly mentions, yet to grow up with the shadow of this, it’s a thing and one I wasn’t expecting to find reflected here.
I really liked the way Molly writes about religion and about how traditional religion would seem to conflict with her liberal political and social views or or life experiences yet she’s so deeply drawn to and cares for it. For Molly, it is Catholicism. I also nearly became Catholic in my mid-teens. I grew up in a rather Catholic area, with a Catholic K-12 school down the street as well as a small convent and a pair of Franciscan Friars who worked at the church and school and wore their brown robes. It absolutely fascinated me as a child. I liked the adornments of Catholicism and as a tween at a fancy fine arts school, fell in love with Renaissance and Medieval art and architecture and all the religious symbolism and allegory. Eventually I found myself back home where I started, as a Jew, and to this day all who know me talk about the way I light up when I talk about Judaism (and Israel and Middle East Politics and policy). So I loved reading about Molly’s experiences. It occurs to me I don’t know if many people my age who write or even discuss religion like this, especially those who like Molly and I, were the rare birds to not be raised particularly religious but to come to with a deep hunger at an early age.
Molly also writes extensively about living in her body. About the experimental surgeries she had as a child to loosen her contracted muscles, the trauma of her first memory being surgery, the absurdity of how others respond to her body. There’s a chapter I adored about sexuality and disability and about how when your body has been so medicalized and touched and controlled by doctors what it’s like to finally realize oh, I’m not just a patient but a human, a woman, and there are other ways I want to be touched as well. My heart squeezes just typing that because boy do I relate. There’s so much here about body and self and all the disconnects.
I deeply loved this collection. Essays are one of my favorite things, something I long to write myself. I have so many quotes I saved and I think the best I can do at this point is simply to share a few. I feel like this is a book that will draw to it those who need it most but I have no idea what others who live in fully functional bodies and don’t have these experiences might think or feel upon reading it. It’s so special to me I would not necessarily recommend reading it just for disability rep. No. You’ve got to want to gain more than that and I don’t know. I don’t think I care whether others like this one or don’t. It was a book I needed and will cherish and have a zillion tabs in to return to on my shelf.
A few of my favorite quotes-
“You need a lot of grit, a little rage to wrestle pain.”
“I’m the wildest combination of young and old. I don’t want fifty more years running on rage.”
“There is so much in the world I want to see and do, and already so much of it is unreachable to me.”
“Whatever ontological unease I feel, however ethereal my thoughts become, the truth of my body is literal and absolute, like an anchor pulling me back to the world.”
“Everything about the repetition, discipline, and slowness that my life required made me furious. I wanted to run, to leap, to burst out of my own body and then beat it to a pulp.”
“I was so occupied with pain and with being a patient, perpetually hamstrung between being taken apart and put back together, that it would take me years to really look at myself and realize, Oh, I’m also a person. A woman. There’s a whole other way I can want to be touched.”
“Above all, though, I blame my body for the fact that, after all these years, I’m still grieving a plain stupid grief that I can’t hide. I blame it for being itself, for existing to be ruined and repaired.”
And my very favorite passage, one that I think works even as a thesis statement for this book and one I personally so deeply relate to as someone who has found herself so full of words since becoming sick, as someone who has also found her own words to be life itself-
“To help realize the world I want, I have to write, I have to talk. Language is my medium. It is the thing that has borne me up and out of every valley, the thing that has tied me to other people and made my life large. Often, it’s the only thing I really believe in.”
October 28, 2025
I overall really liked this collection. Brown's writing is really gorgeous on a sentence level. Accessible and also stylized and heightened (but not to an obnoxious level). I think like most personal essay collections some of the essays start to run together, or could've been combined or edited down. The essay on Frankenstein I appreciated a lot as well as the one on forgetting.
March 3, 2024
The title signals right away how these linked autobiographical essays split the ‘I’ from the body – Brown resents the fact that disability limits her experience. Oxygen deprivation at their premature birth led to her twin sister’s death and left her with cerebral palsy severe enough that she generally uses a wheelchair. In Bologna for a travel fellowship, she writes, “There are so many places that I want to be, but I can’t take my body anywhere. But I must take my body everywhere.” A medieval city is particularly unfriendly to those with mobility challenges, but chronic pain and others’ misconceptions (e.g. she overheard a guy on her college campus lamenting that she’d die a virgin) follow her everywhere.
A poet, Brown earned minor fame for her first collection, which was about historical policies of enforced sterilization for the disabled and mentally ill in her home state of Virginia. She is also a Catholic convert. I appreciated her exploration of poetry and faith as ways of knowing: “both … a matter of attending to the world: of slowing my pace, and focusing my gaze, and quieting my impatient, indignant, protesting heart long enough for the hard shell of the ordinary to break open and reveal the stranger, subtler singing underneath.” This is part of a terrific run of three pieces, the others about sex as a disabled person and the odious conservatism of the founders of Liberty University. Also notable: “Fragments, Never Sent,” letters to her twin; and “Frankenstein Abroad,” about rereading a novel of ostracism at its 200th anniversary.
My only disappointment was the repetition across the essays (reiterating basic info about her disability, her dead twin, etc.), which could have been solved by reordering them or an editor cutting the repeated explanations.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
A poet, Brown earned minor fame for her first collection, which was about historical policies of enforced sterilization for the disabled and mentally ill in her home state of Virginia. She is also a Catholic convert. I appreciated her exploration of poetry and faith as ways of knowing: “both … a matter of attending to the world: of slowing my pace, and focusing my gaze, and quieting my impatient, indignant, protesting heart long enough for the hard shell of the ordinary to break open and reveal the stranger, subtler singing underneath.” This is part of a terrific run of three pieces, the others about sex as a disabled person and the odious conservatism of the founders of Liberty University. Also notable: “Fragments, Never Sent,” letters to her twin; and “Frankenstein Abroad,” about rereading a novel of ostracism at its 200th anniversary.
My only disappointment was the repetition across the essays (reiterating basic info about her disability, her dead twin, etc.), which could have been solved by reordering them or an editor cutting the repeated explanations.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
April 8, 2021
By far one of the best essay collections I have ever read. Brown unpacks so much and these essays knit together to make a wonderful whole.
There are also some personal strains to this since my mother suffered from MS. Obviously, not the same as Brown's own struggles, but it feels as if I have come to understand my own mother's spasms/rage/grief.
Brown writes with such a clear poetic voice and does not hide her intentions but puts them in honest and sincere lighting. It was a pleasure to read and I will more than likely read anything and everything she has written/will write.
There are also some personal strains to this since my mother suffered from MS. Obviously, not the same as Brown's own struggles, but it feels as if I have come to understand my own mother's spasms/rage/grief.
Brown writes with such a clear poetic voice and does not hide her intentions but puts them in honest and sincere lighting. It was a pleasure to read and I will more than likely read anything and everything she has written/will write.
June 4, 2021
this book contains powerful essays by molly mccully brown who examines her life with cerebral palsy; how it has affected who she is and how she has lived fully anyway.
i first heard about molly mccully brown when i came across her first book of poetry called the virginia state colony for epileptics and feebleminded – which i absolutely love btw!! i also love her other poetry book called in the field between us in collaboration with another disabled writer, susannah nevison. so to be able to read her essays in this book, is really a new experience and reminded me of how shes such a great essayist/poet in the first place. ugh so so good. underrated too, i wish more people know more about her works.
this feels quite memoir-ish as its really an unblinking personal journey that takes us to places we all need to know and understand better. its a bit repetitive in some parts but in no doubt that it still makes me feel and think about a lot of things. we may not share the disability that have shaped molly but at some level, we will all face the limitations of our physicality. so glad that this book exists to offer hope for what many of us experience but do not always face.
i first heard about molly mccully brown when i came across her first book of poetry called the virginia state colony for epileptics and feebleminded – which i absolutely love btw!! i also love her other poetry book called in the field between us in collaboration with another disabled writer, susannah nevison. so to be able to read her essays in this book, is really a new experience and reminded me of how shes such a great essayist/poet in the first place. ugh so so good. underrated too, i wish more people know more about her works.
this feels quite memoir-ish as its really an unblinking personal journey that takes us to places we all need to know and understand better. its a bit repetitive in some parts but in no doubt that it still makes me feel and think about a lot of things. we may not share the disability that have shaped molly but at some level, we will all face the limitations of our physicality. so glad that this book exists to offer hope for what many of us experience but do not always face.
March 13, 2023
With the personal essays in Places I've Taken My Body, Molly McCully Brown explores the frustrations, griefs, triumphs, and insights she's experienced as a result of living with cerebral palsy. The collection centers around the year of a writing fellowship in Europe, a blessing made complicated by increasing limitations in her mobility. However, Brown's reflections radiate out from there, touching on her teenage and college life, her Catholic faith, and the sister-sized emptiness she frequently feels, having lost her identical twin at birth. My favorites in the book were the early essay, "What We Are," and the final one, "Frankenstein Abroad." But the whole book sings. These are clearly a poet's essays, intricate in their delivery, with flashes of breathtaking language.
March 18, 2023
4.5 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 💖
a great collection of essays 😃
not so much a review atm, but a collection of notes, quotes and/or reactions...
"my life is built to flex unconsciously around new pain... "
"I haven't seen a doctor because..."
brilliant sequence 🌟
SO MUCH I relate to!
not remembering before...
"constant motion camouflages the extent to which I'm alien, even from myself"
MUCH LATER...
"I'm tired of...[ ] ... feeling like leaving my house in the morning is a political act"
I like the way it's structured... chapters about specific aspects of being, experience, identity...
autobiographical and political.
body, identity, travel, family, sexuality, faith, politics (including the politics around being Christian in the Southern states of USA with a strong Trump support)...
part of the global history of eugenics enacted on their doorstep in Virginia.
***
"...forgetting as a means of survival"
how ignoring and forgetting are different things. (essay 15)
**
16. dear F (Francis, twin)... letters, bereavement, 💔
17. body, Frankenstein,
rage. disability and monstrosity. 🖤
**
a great collection of essays 😃
not so much a review atm, but a collection of notes, quotes and/or reactions...
"my life is built to flex unconsciously around new pain... "
"I haven't seen a doctor because..."
brilliant sequence 🌟
SO MUCH I relate to!
not remembering before...
"constant motion camouflages the extent to which I'm alien, even from myself"
MUCH LATER...
"I'm tired of...[ ] ... feeling like leaving my house in the morning is a political act"
I like the way it's structured... chapters about specific aspects of being, experience, identity...
autobiographical and political.
body, identity, travel, family, sexuality, faith, politics (including the politics around being Christian in the Southern states of USA with a strong Trump support)...
part of the global history of eugenics enacted on their doorstep in Virginia.
***
"...forgetting as a means of survival"
how ignoring and forgetting are different things. (essay 15)
**
16. dear F (Francis, twin)... letters, bereavement, 💔
17. body, Frankenstein,
rage. disability and monstrosity. 🖤
**
January 19, 2021
I slowed my pace for reading these essays so that I could take notes and type them up! Absolutely beautiful insights to what it means to be human and to explore what it means to be embodied--for good and for bad.
What drew me to this book initially was a friend's recommendation, when I asked about contemporary life writing about women with disabilities. Then, I was mesmerized by other topics of ongoing interest to me -- travel, travel to Italy, and being a writer!
Of course, there's a huge age difference between myself and this author, but her reflections on family life in Virginia, her time in the shadow of Jerry Falwell's university, her father's large family, and her short time in Little Rock are just a few of the additional overlaps between her life and mine that kept me reading.
Above all, Molly McCully Brown's descriptions of her life with cerebral palsy set her apart from me and so many women. While she exposes us to pictures of the challenges she lives with as she moves, travels and writes, she educates readers and raises awareness. The needs many of us have, she also has, but deeply, widely intensified. In these pages she expresses them not simply as raw emotions but as ideas that have been held, turned every direction, massaged and reconsidered.
No regrets in the moments I devoted to this slim volume--only sorry when I came to the last pages because there were no more to turn.
What drew me to this book initially was a friend's recommendation, when I asked about contemporary life writing about women with disabilities. Then, I was mesmerized by other topics of ongoing interest to me -- travel, travel to Italy, and being a writer!
Of course, there's a huge age difference between myself and this author, but her reflections on family life in Virginia, her time in the shadow of Jerry Falwell's university, her father's large family, and her short time in Little Rock are just a few of the additional overlaps between her life and mine that kept me reading.
Above all, Molly McCully Brown's descriptions of her life with cerebral palsy set her apart from me and so many women. While she exposes us to pictures of the challenges she lives with as she moves, travels and writes, she educates readers and raises awareness. The needs many of us have, she also has, but deeply, widely intensified. In these pages she expresses them not simply as raw emotions but as ideas that have been held, turned every direction, massaged and reconsidered.
No regrets in the moments I devoted to this slim volume--only sorry when I came to the last pages because there were no more to turn.
February 3, 2023
Thought provoking and beautiful - essays about many things I thought I had thought of before but clearly I had no idea. Molly McCully Brown's writing is so powerful and her insights so keen and sharp. Highly recommend. (I listened to the audio - read by author - very good!)
July 27, 2020
I had a friend who was born with cerebral palsy (CP). She may have moved a bit slower but she had tons of heart and determination. She used crutches when she was younger but now as an adult; she no longer has them. That is what Molly's message is with her essays. Just because someone may be born with a disability does not mean they are not capable of great things.
I enjoyed reading the different short essays/stories that Molly shared. Although, there were some I liked and just engaged with better. A couple like when Molly was a little girl and she was drawing. The therapist went to help guide Molly's hand as she drawled. Molly was not having any of this and promptly grabbed a new marker and handed it over to the therapist, while pushing her hand away. Another essay that really stuck with me was towards the end of the book about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If you are a fan of essays or poems, you will want to check out this book.
I enjoyed reading the different short essays/stories that Molly shared. Although, there were some I liked and just engaged with better. A couple like when Molly was a little girl and she was drawing. The therapist went to help guide Molly's hand as she drawled. Molly was not having any of this and promptly grabbed a new marker and handed it over to the therapist, while pushing her hand away. Another essay that really stuck with me was towards the end of the book about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If you are a fan of essays or poems, you will want to check out this book.
February 1, 2022
RATING: 4 STARS
I heard about Molly McCully Brown from a poet friend, so went looking for her poetry collection The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded: Poems. As I was searching the library catalogue, I found that Brown recently also wrote a collection of essay. So, I put a hold on both. I started this cute smaller book and wow, Brown is definitely a poet. Her language in this book is delicious with imagery. Brown discusses many topics in this book, but her advocacy on disabilities is high among them. With her imagery she is able to give her readers more than just a little look into her life. I do not have a "disability" but have been really advocating on my own behalf regarding my mental health. There were aspects of Brown's journey that comforted me in knowing I am not alone with thoughts of loneliness. If poetry is not your thing, but you enjoy memoirs, creative nonfiction or essays you might want to slip this in your TBR list.
I heard about Molly McCully Brown from a poet friend, so went looking for her poetry collection The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded: Poems. As I was searching the library catalogue, I found that Brown recently also wrote a collection of essay. So, I put a hold on both. I started this cute smaller book and wow, Brown is definitely a poet. Her language in this book is delicious with imagery. Brown discusses many topics in this book, but her advocacy on disabilities is high among them. With her imagery she is able to give her readers more than just a little look into her life. I do not have a "disability" but have been really advocating on my own behalf regarding my mental health. There were aspects of Brown's journey that comforted me in knowing I am not alone with thoughts of loneliness. If poetry is not your thing, but you enjoy memoirs, creative nonfiction or essays you might want to slip this in your TBR list.
December 9, 2021
Not only does Brown write candidly and beautifully about her life in her body, but about her tentative spiritual journey and becoming a Catholic, not only because of her father's New Orleans roots but her own longing for mystery and transcendence.
September 10, 2022
Reflections and lessons learned:
“Be grateful you are small and brief and breathing. Be careful you are small and brief and breathing”
Heart on sleeve style extended diary entries, trying to work out life through discussion, experience and literature. An important life lesson inspiration for anyone that has ever judged themselves by a simple ring of shame style body change, as something that can hold them back in life… everything is relative but some battles show the resilience that life can often demand
“Be grateful you are small and brief and breathing. Be careful you are small and brief and breathing”
Heart on sleeve style extended diary entries, trying to work out life through discussion, experience and literature. An important life lesson inspiration for anyone that has ever judged themselves by a simple ring of shame style body change, as something that can hold them back in life… everything is relative but some battles show the resilience that life can often demand
June 8, 2022
Really incredible collection of essays on disability, grief, faith, family, and creativity. I read this in two sittings and cried three times.
February 22, 2022
Amazing collection of personal essays by Brown, whose work I first came across listening to the "Poetry Unbound" podcast. I've used her poems in my creative writing classes, but this is my first encounter with her prose, which is luminous. Brown, who has cerebral palsy, uses these essays to explore the nature of physical identity--not just her body but also that body in relation to the spaces she moves through. Taken separately, the essays are powerful and poetic glimpses into an extraordinary life; taken together, they are majestic.
September 10, 2024
so absurdly good
February 15, 2025
There are books that whisper, and books that roar.
This one does both.
Molly McCully Brown writes like someone who has lived in the space between pain and wonder, between restraint and hunger. She does not merely tell you about her body—she places you inside it. She folds you into the ache of muscles that will not listen, the sharp edges of a world built for different bodies, the quiet grief of movement that must always be measured.
Her prose is a pulse, a breath, a hymn to the places she has carried herself—to convents steeped in silence, to hospital beds humming with fluorescent light, to cobblestone streets that demand too much from fragile legs, to the boundless landscapes of her mind where she moves without hesitation.
She writes about faith, not as certainty, but as a question that lingers on the tongue. She writes about desire—not just for love, but for agency, for flight, for the kind of freedom most people never think to crave. And in doing so, she makes you feel the weight of your own body, the privilege of unthinking movement, the miracle of space that does not resist you.
Her words are not meant to comfort you. They are meant to remind you.
That a body is a battlefield and a home.
That suffering and joy are not opposites, but echoes of the same song.
That some lives are lived not in grand gestures, but in the quiet defiance of persistence.
This book does not end when you close it. It lingers in the way you carry yourself afterward, in the way you step through the world more aware of gravity, of limitation, of the gift of motion. It is not a story of triumph. It is not a story of tragedy. It is simply a story of being; told with the kind of honesty that leaves you gasping.
Molly McCully Brown does not ask you to pity her. She does not even ask you to understand. She only asks that you listen. And once you do, you will never hear the world the same way again.
This one does both.
Molly McCully Brown writes like someone who has lived in the space between pain and wonder, between restraint and hunger. She does not merely tell you about her body—she places you inside it. She folds you into the ache of muscles that will not listen, the sharp edges of a world built for different bodies, the quiet grief of movement that must always be measured.
Her prose is a pulse, a breath, a hymn to the places she has carried herself—to convents steeped in silence, to hospital beds humming with fluorescent light, to cobblestone streets that demand too much from fragile legs, to the boundless landscapes of her mind where she moves without hesitation.
She writes about faith, not as certainty, but as a question that lingers on the tongue. She writes about desire—not just for love, but for agency, for flight, for the kind of freedom most people never think to crave. And in doing so, she makes you feel the weight of your own body, the privilege of unthinking movement, the miracle of space that does not resist you.
Her words are not meant to comfort you. They are meant to remind you.
That a body is a battlefield and a home.
That suffering and joy are not opposites, but echoes of the same song.
That some lives are lived not in grand gestures, but in the quiet defiance of persistence.
This book does not end when you close it. It lingers in the way you carry yourself afterward, in the way you step through the world more aware of gravity, of limitation, of the gift of motion. It is not a story of triumph. It is not a story of tragedy. It is simply a story of being; told with the kind of honesty that leaves you gasping.
Molly McCully Brown does not ask you to pity her. She does not even ask you to understand. She only asks that you listen. And once you do, you will never hear the world the same way again.
January 17, 2024
One of my reading intentions for 2024 is read more widely. I found this book on Libby last year and decided it would be a good time to now. I am so happy I stubbled across this book because I devoured it and it slightly broken me in ways a good book does. Molly is raw and open when she writes about her experience of being physical disable with cerebral palsy and how it effects her relationships with parents, lovers, travel, grief and her body. Her writing is so good in the way she describes a specific perspective. But the emotional heartbeat transcends to universal feelings that left me needing a crying break between essays.
It is clear that the essays are a collection from other publications as there is repeated themes and topics, but she explored so many ideas each time.
It is clear that the essays are a collection from other publications as there is repeated themes and topics, but she explored so many ideas each time.
I blame [my body] for making me feel selfish all the time, because my attention is turned so thoroughly inward, attending to its needs. I blame it for my fear that my writing will always be narrow, hemmed in by its hurt and relentlessness. I blame it for screwing with my plans, for always demanding revision to fit its stringent reality. I blame it for the fact that I'm alone here, though I chose it... Above all, though, I blame my body for the fact that, after all these years, I'm still grieving a plain stupid grief that I can't hide. I blame it for being itself, for existing to be ruined and repaired.
April 7, 2022
These essays cover a ton of ground: Brown's time in Italy, where buildings and tourist attractions were overwhelmingly inaccessible to her. Her childhood, and how she constantly misses her identical twin who died soon after birth. Her love for poetry and travel, her experiences with religion and desire and rage, and all the ways these things intersect with her disability.
I was once again struck, as I always am, by the power of the written word. Brown says:
"To help realize the world I want, I have to write, I have to talk. Language is my medium. It is the thing that has borne me up and out of every valley, the thing that has tied me to other people and made my life large. Often, it's the only thing I really believe in."
And this is evident in the way she lays herself bare on the page, writing with such emotion, honesty, and sincerity. How writing brings her clarity, helps to make sense of things to both herself and others.
It is an absolute privilege to be let into someone's head, to learn about all their insecurities, pain, and internal conflict. I think about this every time I pick up a memoir/essay collection, both in awe at the author's willingness to be so openly vulnerable, and moved by the way writing is such a balm to so many of us.
So, so good.
I was once again struck, as I always am, by the power of the written word. Brown says:
"To help realize the world I want, I have to write, I have to talk. Language is my medium. It is the thing that has borne me up and out of every valley, the thing that has tied me to other people and made my life large. Often, it's the only thing I really believe in."
And this is evident in the way she lays herself bare on the page, writing with such emotion, honesty, and sincerity. How writing brings her clarity, helps to make sense of things to both herself and others.
It is an absolute privilege to be let into someone's head, to learn about all their insecurities, pain, and internal conflict. I think about this every time I pick up a memoir/essay collection, both in awe at the author's willingness to be so openly vulnerable, and moved by the way writing is such a balm to so many of us.
So, so good.
August 23, 2023
in this collection of essays, brown writes more than once about representation, about the profound experience of seeing herself in the writing of others, and the importance of writing the kind of thing other disabled people can recognize themselves in.
i read her essay “calling long distance,” included in this collection, in my dorm room in the spring of 2019. i was in a raw time of my life — for the first time, it was occurring to me that the sunk-in-my-bones feeling of what i now know as disability was shared by other people. i was nervous to use the word “disabled,” thinking maybe it didn’t apply to me. the way brown described being in pain at a party bit right at my heart. i could’ve written the words i was reading. it wasn’t the only data point i was working off of, but reading that essay pushed me over the edge towards knowing i was disabled, too.
similarly, this collection found me at a time in my life where i needed the author’s honest clarity about being alive in a different body. i have so much gratitude for her work, and i can’t wait to return to this again throughout my life.
i read her essay “calling long distance,” included in this collection, in my dorm room in the spring of 2019. i was in a raw time of my life — for the first time, it was occurring to me that the sunk-in-my-bones feeling of what i now know as disability was shared by other people. i was nervous to use the word “disabled,” thinking maybe it didn’t apply to me. the way brown described being in pain at a party bit right at my heart. i could’ve written the words i was reading. it wasn’t the only data point i was working off of, but reading that essay pushed me over the edge towards knowing i was disabled, too.
similarly, this collection found me at a time in my life where i needed the author’s honest clarity about being alive in a different body. i have so much gratitude for her work, and i can’t wait to return to this again throughout my life.
May 30, 2022
This book has a unique place in my heart. To me, it is about the tangle between the spirit and the body. The author has cerebral palsy, which many readers may not. However, there is something deeply universal in her struggle with physical limitations and in her hunger to overcome it. I believe McCully Brown uncovers the heart of what it is to be human -- our bodies are at the core of who we are and shape our life experiences, bring us joy and sorrow, give our lives meaning. And yet, they constantly let us down and are never enough. The way the author discusses religion is also dear to me, her reaching toward a God who knows so much and loves so much and offers something shining, in spite of all her misgivings. Read this book. It will give you what you need.
March 2, 2021
3.5 stars. This book kept breaking my heart. Molly McCully Brown gives a personal account of living with cerebral palsy. I loved her honesty and transparency when struggling with pain, 'I look at (my mother) and snarl, this is all your fault'. I appreciated getting a taste of the insurmountable challenges she's encountered and the ablism and discrimination she faced at every turn from childhood through adulthood. There is a lot of pain on the pages and I imagine that this can't have been easy to write.
However, my fear in reading this and speaking as someone who does not live with cerebral palsy, is what happens when we predominantly read about/see the pain? Can that lead us to pity and engage in ablism too? I would love to have read more about the authors thoughts on any resistance work in this area--demystifying the experience of cerebral palsy while holding systems/cultures accountable in the process.
However, my fear in reading this and speaking as someone who does not live with cerebral palsy, is what happens when we predominantly read about/see the pain? Can that lead us to pity and engage in ablism too? I would love to have read more about the authors thoughts on any resistance work in this area--demystifying the experience of cerebral palsy while holding systems/cultures accountable in the process.
October 16, 2022
i have no words for how incredible this book truly was. the first three essays were required reading for a writing course I’m taking and i was so struck by them that i had to read the whole book. brown has such an incredible talent for poetically capturing the nuance of her experiences and musings. her explorations of literature, family, religion, and disability were enlightening. almost every essay gave me chills, and many brought me to tears. i’m not sure i’ve ever felt so seen by a piece of writing. this book cut me to my core and i’m sure i will keep returning to it. grateful to have stumbled across it
January 18, 2021
This was a really eye-opening read. The way Brown writes about so many topics - her disability, her spirituality, her feelings on her twin sister who died in childbirth - was so compelling and interesting. Particularly, her perspective in living with a physical disability really made me appreciate so many things that I take for granted. Her writing is beautiful and she conceptualizes ideas in such a unique way - I have not been able to stop thinking about this book since I put it down.
March 19, 2021
I loved every bit of this book (minus the essay that reflects on Christian Evangelicalism and Catholicism). I highly recommend it for anyone who has a disability or enjoys poetic essays. It's a short book, but I read it so slowly just to soak it in. Some sentences I read three or more times, they were so poignant. She really captures the essence of living with a disabled body and chronic pain, and yet her story still remains her own. I'm sure I'll be rereading this again.
June 2, 2021
What a remarkable collection of essays! I loved every single one of them. Molly McCully Brown feels like she is the spiritual heir to Nancy Mairs, a Catholic writer who wrote about her disability (Mairs had MS), and yet Ms. Brown is original.
I'm excited to read her earlier volumes of poetry and will keep an eye out for other non-fiction she may write in the future.
I'm excited to read her earlier volumes of poetry and will keep an eye out for other non-fiction she may write in the future.
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June 15, 2024Molly came to Elon in 2023 and wrote in my book “best audience member!” when she signed it. We’re cool like that 😎
Really loved this collection, and it’s always cool to have listened to the author read their work aloud !!!! Made me want to drive through rural Virginia, go to Spain, embark on a research project.
Really loved this collection, and it’s always cool to have listened to the author read their work aloud !!!! Made me want to drive through rural Virginia, go to Spain, embark on a research project.
March 20, 2022
I cannot fathom how brilliant and stunning this collection of essays is. It shook me to the core. I found myself brought to tears at the authors honest descriptions and feelings. A type of memoir on love is what I would call this collection. A big recommendation to anyone and everyone.
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