Curious, Healing » spirituality

“Alchemy of Illness” by Kat Duff

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:48:19 +0000

Subtitle: A woman explores the transforming – and, paradoxically, healing – experience of being ill

Recommended by: a client

Alchemists strive to turn lead into gold by heating it alone in a sealed container, a crucible. In the crucible of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Kat Duff turned inward and found healing in the stillness and isolation forced by her illness.

Weaving together symptoms, dreams, mythology, Jungian psychology, and alchemy along with anthropological research into illness and healing, Duff reveals new perspectives on illness. Instead of being an assault or a punishment, illness can be a natural consequence of our history as individuals and communities. She sees her illness as an agent of healing both for sexual abuse she suffered as an infant, and for the land theft her forebears committed against the Sioux tribe in Minnesota.

Duff is careful to avoid the painful idea that “sick people are personally responsible for creating their illnesses through some kind of wrong-thinking or wrong-doing.” Sickness isn’t bad. It just is.

She relates a story about Nan Shin, a Zen nun diagnosed with cancer and struggling with guilt and remorse.

Then an old friend, who was also a Zen student, visited. He threw his arm around her shoulders and wisecracked, “Good Karma, huh? Brings you close to the Way.” Shin wrote later, “The jolt I felt then showed me very clearly that I had been thinking, Bad Karma. Within a fraction of a second the molecules turned themselves round and reorganized. I am flatly grateful to him forever.”

Unfortunately, Duff conflates illness with disability, and occasionally uses phrases like “confined to a wheelchair.” People are not confined by wheelchairs any more than people are confined by bicycles, cars, or any other device that assists mobility.

I recommend this book for its kaleidoscope of new perspectives about illness.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Seeking Peace” by Mary Pipher

Sonia Connolly — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:01:22 +0000

Subtitle: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World

Recommended by: Bay Area Spirituality Bookgroup

Mary Pipher didn’t expect to become famous for writing “Reviving Ophelia” and she fell into despair after years of touring and speaking engagements. The book covers her despair, her parents, her childhood, and then her healing. She says she is the worst Buddhist in the world because she has trouble sitting still and paying attention.

In the introduction she apologizes at length for having a crisis as a happily married and successful career woman when other people have real problems and real traumas. Then she describes her childhood family’s real problems and real traumas. She did have a fairly ordinary college career and young adulthood, at which point I put the book aside in frustration at its circular approach to the initially-described crisis.

I did pick it up again and read quickly through her healing approach, which included slowing way down, spending a lot of time in nature, trying yoga and massage for the first time, and meditating. She notices her vicious self-critic who cares about whether she is helping others but not about whether she is happy. With time and attention the critic mellows and she comes to a place of more acceptance for herself as she is.

I wish she had noted in her introduction that comparing our crises and traumas to other people’s is a tool of self-criticism rather than compassion. Swallowing our pain because someone else has been hurt more helps no one.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“CrowHeart” by Keelin Anderson

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:18:52 +0000

CROWHEART: becoming unwounded, a memoir of transformation

Recommended by: Keelin Anderson

To tell her story of healing from incest and emotional abuse, Keelin Anderson weaves together daily narrative, fiction, quotes, tarot readings, and dreams, all in present tense.

As I read, I saw places where our paths have overlapped, and places where they have diverged. We have both struggled with finding respectful healers to help us, and have vowed to be respectful of our own clients and their individual processes.

She consciously decides to invite spirit guides into her process. I did that for a while, but found that not all spirit guides are trustworthy, and I was better off looking within for guidance. I think there are many ways of contacting Spirit and healing.

Available from Lulu.

“Leaving the Saints” by Martha Beck

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 04:40:12 +0000

Subtitle: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith

Recommended by: Reading Martha Beck’s older books

I first read this years ago and loved it. I came back to it while writing a (forthcoming) article about spiritual abuse and faith. Since I last read it, I read her newer book “Steering by Starlight” and saw that her latest book is about weight-loss, so I started re-reading with trepidation. I still like this one, though!

This book is honest about extreme sexual and spiritual abuse and its effects, side by side with humorous details about daily life. She talks about forgiveness without preaching (much). She talks about how crazymaking it is to have someone casually deny reality. She talks about how wrenching it is to lose family connections because she tells the truth.

She also talks about her personal search for faith, first as the seeking camel, then as the discerning lion, then as the innocent, playful child.

In her last act as a practicing Mormon, she spoke to a huge crowd about domestic violence. “If something I said feels right to you, believe it. If it feels wrong, disbelieve it. The choice to believe or disbelieve, that’s what makes you free.”

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Traveling Mercies” by Anne Lamott

Sonia Connolly — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:10:47 +0000

Subtitle: Some thoughts on faith

I stumbled across this book while looking for a quote about forgiveness. I usually find Anne Lamott’s books laugh-out-loud funny, reassuringly insightful, or disturbingly insightful. This book, a series of autobiographical essays about faith and religion, left me cold.

Maybe it was the large daily consumption of alcohol and other drugs she reports before she got sober. I can’t tell if she’s exaggerating or not!

Maybe it was the pretend conversion to Judaism in college, where one of the questions was “Do Jews camp?” The response was, “No, we should be at home where it’s comfortable.” She has to memorize a recipe for “Candle Salad” which includes an upright banana with a maraschino cherry on top. The vignette screeches right past funny into ugly stereotypes and cultural appropriation.

Maybe it was the later conversion to Christianity, where she describes Jesus following her everywhere like “a little cat running along at my heels.” I’m glad she found a spiritual home at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, and at the same time the description sounds a little too much like spiritual stalking to me.

Reading this book felt like having tea with a distraught, judgmental friend who is telling me every little detail of her troubles, including mean physical descriptions of the people involved, without pausing to ask how I’m doing.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Not So Big Life” by Sarah Susanka

Sonia Connolly — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 23:45:16 +0000

Subtitle: Making Room For What Really Matters

Sarah Susanka is a renowned architect, author of the “Not So Big House” series. This book is beautifully architected with parallels between life remodeling and house remodeling. For the target audience of people with plenty of money and a shortage of time, the book offers substantial, detailed advice on how to make satisfying life choices.

The topics include, among others, noticing inspiration, removing clutter, meditation, dream analysis, and maintenance of your newly remodeled life.

Susanka uses a Jungian approach to dreams where every element of the dream represents the dreamer in some way. She also espouses the Jungian belief that the external world is a perfect mirror of the internal world. I am wary of Jungian psychology since a session with a Jungian therapist whose only tool was to ask me how the abuse I received had benefited me.

I read this book because I have already chosen to lead a “not so big life” and I was looking for validation of my choices. Since I’m not in the target market for the book, I was left with the feeling that it is more valid to be wealthy, overwhelmed, and in need of life-downsizing than it is to have already chosen a less lucrative, more meditative path.

One thing I did get from the book is the idea that whatever I’m doing now is my life. I don’t have to keep looking around to check if I’m doing the right thing or not.

In summary, if you’re in the target audience of this book, I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

A typographical note: Since I’m designing my own book, I’ve been paying close attention to book typesetting. Oddly, this book is set in a sans serif font, Quadraat Sans. It grabs my attention every time I open the book (although I had to look at the colophon for the name of the font).

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman

Sonia Connolly — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:39:52 +0000

Subtitle: A Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures

Recommended by: Emily Ross

This is a beautifully written history of the Hmong people from Laos in the 20th century, interwoven with the story of one Hmong family who took refuge in Merced, California. Their daughter Lia Lee had her first epileptic seizure at age 4 months. Both the family and Lia’s doctors struggle with her illness and with the communication barriers between their cultures.

The Lees are frustrated because Lia continues to have seizures, and her prescribed medicines cause side-effects they don’t expect. The doctors are frustrated because the Lees don’t speak English and “aren’t compliant” with the medicine schedule. Also, the Lees have very little money.

Dr. Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist at Harvard Medical School, developed a set of eight questions to elicit a patient’s “explanatory model.” After getting to know the Lees, Anne Fadiman answers the eight questions from their perspective. The American doctors continue full-tilt in their own medical explanatory model, unable to consider a different model.

What do you call the problem?
Qaug dab peg. That means the spirit catches you and you fall down.

What do you think has caused the problem?
Soul loss.

Why do you think it started when it did?
Lia’s sister Yer slammed the door and Lia’s soul was frightened out of her body.

What do you think the sickness does? How does it work?
It makes Lia shake and fall down. It works because a spirit called a dab is catching her.

How severe is the sickness? Will it have a short or long course?
Why are you asking us those questions? If you are a good doctor, you should know the answers yourself.

What kind of treatment do you think the patient should receive? What are the most important results you hope she receives from this treatment?
You should give Lia medicine to take for a week but no longer. After she is well, she should stop taking the medicine. [...]

What are the chief problems the sickness has caused?
It has made us sad to see Lia hurt, and it has made us angry at Yer.

What do you fear most about the sickness?
That Lia’s soul will never return.

My only issue with the book is that chapters about Hmong history are inserted at cliff-hanger portions of Lia’s story, causing me to flip ahead and find out what happens to her. The history is worth reading in its own right and doesn’t need manufactured suspense to pull the reader through it.

Recommended to anyone who wants to learn about Hmong culture and history, medical communication at its worst and best, and the story of one much-loved child.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword” by Barry Deutsch

Sonia Connolly — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:10:34 +0000

Subtitle: Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl

Recommended by: Barry Deutsch’s Alas, A Blog

A graphic novel set in an Orthodox Jewish town called Hereville, in a blended family with many girls and one little brother. The facial expressions and other details in the drawings are captivating – I read the book twice and noticed a lot that I’d missed the first time. The characters are realistic even while engaged in unrealistic adventures.

The strict rules of Orthodox Judaism are included in the story, with only the occasional pictorial editorial comment, such as the bored expressions of the youth having “vibrant, passionate discussions” on Shabbat. Yiddish terms are translated in footnotes.

The fantastic elements of witch encounters and troll fights contrast oddly with the Orthodox background, sibling arguments about reputation, and a step-mother’s efforts to manage a large family. The ending is decidedly unexpected.

Mirka is portrayed as reaching for a knife, sword, or tree-branch to violently solve her problems. She is also portrayed as being so immersed in Jewish culture that she didn’t recognize a pig when she saw one.

I’m not sure what to think of the book. It draws me in, and at the same time leaves me wondering if the author’s message is subtly derogatory toward Judaism. While I wouldn’t want to live in an Orthodox community myself, I don’t want to see one exposed to ridicule, either.

Barry Deutsch is a cartoonist in Portland, Oregon.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Mastering Life’s Energies” by Maria Nemeth, PhD

Sonia Connolly — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:11:21 +0000

Subtitle: Simple Steps to a Luminous Life at Work and Play

Recommended by: Aubrie De Clerck

Maria Nemeth offers step-by-step instructions on how to move from a fog of confusion to living with “clarity, focus, ease, and grace.”

I do want to live with clarity, focus, ease, and grace, but I didn’t start reading in a fog of confusion. I did find some useful insights in this book.

She distinguishes between unhelpful Monkey Mind and helpful voice of wisdom. She characterizes Monkey Mind as insistent, survival-oriented, tensing the body, carrying a sense of dread or impending doom, defensive, and humorless.

By contrast, the voice of wisdom tends to be compassionate toward self and others, spacious, the heart relaxes, contains gentle good humor, generosity of spirit, kindness, open-heartedness, and the sense that all is well.

She reminds us to see people as whole and complete in themselves, rather than in need of fixing or rescuing.

She asks how you see your body, and then how does your body see you? I had never thought about that. I paused to ask myself this question, and my body says it misses me when I’m not present to myself. She proposes that our bodies love us, and my experience agrees.

I also found parts of the book condescending or irrelevant. She sometimes seems to forget that her reader does not need fixing. Her strangely short list of Life Intentions reads more as her personal definition of How To Be A Good Person rather than as a generally applicable list. There is far too much talk about dieting, even when she notes that “weight loss” is not a positive goal. Repeated mentions of her “thousands of clients” did not strengthen the book’s message for me.

Recommended, with some skimming.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion” by Christopher K. Germer, PhD

Sonia Connolly — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:04:04 +0000

Subtitle: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions.

This “un-self-help” book by a clinical psychologist shows how to stop fighting uncomfortable emotions and accept them with self-compassion instead. Step by step, Germer shows how to be kind to ourselves, listen to our bodies, and bring in difficult emotions.

I liked his analysis of the stages of acceptance (as distinct from the stages of grief):

Stages of Acceptance:

Aversion – resistance, avoidance, rumination
Curiosity – turning toward discomfort with interest
Tolerance – safely enduring
Allowing – letting feelings come and go
Friendship – embracing, seeing hidden value

He carefully notes pitfalls along the path for trauma survivors. For example, it can be triggering to focus on the breath during meditation, so an external focus such as holding a stone or watching a candle could be more calming.

I was pleasantly surprised by his awareness of diversity and discrimination. Even a few mentions of those issues go a long way toward fostering my trust of a white male author as I read. For example, his stories contain some same-sex couples. On the subject of medication, he advocates deciding what’s most kind for yourself.

The second half of the book describes metta or loving-kindness meditation. Phrases like “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.” are directed first toward the self, then toward a loved one, then toward someone neutral, then to a difficult person or enemy.

He describes the backdraft which can occur with this meditation, a rush of feelings similar to the rush of flame from opening a door on a fire.

I had a hard time staying with this part of the book. Perhaps it was from a backdraft of feelings. Perhaps it was my reaction to the instructional tone. I’m having a strong response to being told what to think or how to feel lately, even when I’m reading a self-help book.

Overall, I recommend this book. It has much less fixing and more compassion than most self-help books. It’s a delight to see a psychologist advocating self-kindness and acceptance as a way toward healing.

Available at Powell’s Books.