Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

memoir

“High Tide in Tucson” by Barbara Kingsolver

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Subtitle: Essays from Now or Never

Recommended to me by: Donna Smith

When I first read this book of essays years ago, I became so absorbed that I missed my transit stop. I continued reading on a high, windy platform as I waited to catch a train returning in the other direction. I picked it up again from a friend’s bookshelf while snow-bound in DC. It is still absorbing – I read it in afternoon.

Barbara Kingsolver writes about a hermit crab she accidentally brought home from a beach to Tucscon, and how it maintained rhythms of activity and hibernation far from any tides. The theme of rhythms weaves through the book, including not-knowing times in her life, desperation and despair, and finding her way out again.

I remembered her two-year old deliberately knocking over her glass of orange juice, to her harried dismay, and the resulting meditation on autonomy and the need for slow time. This time I noticed the clear acknowledgements of racism and sexism in our culture.

There is a lovely interlude about her stay in the Canary Islands. People there genuinely like children, rather than grudgingly tolerating them the way United States culture does. She also feels safe walking alone at night there.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Imperfect Harmony” by Stacy Horn

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Subtitle: Finding Happiness Singing with Others

This book answered exactly the question I had.  What is it about singing that is so compelling for me?  Do other people have the same experience?

Stacy Horn expertly blends personal experience, choir history, music history, and contemporary events into a compelling narrative about her membership in the all-volunteer Choral Society of Grace Church in New York. Each chapter focuses on a musical piece, which I thought would be dull, but she brings carefully researched music history to sparkling life, woven together with the other themes.

She forthrightly acknowledges sexism in choir membership and racism in the Chatham Street Chapel Riot, where a white choir chased out a Black assembly to celebrate Emancipation Day – and then four Black men were arrested. She doesn’t point out that all the composers she highlights are men (except Britlin Losee), and the choir leadership is all men, but she does include women’s voices talking about what singing means to them. Despite being affiliated with Grace Church and performing religious music for Christmas concerts, the choir members have a mix of religions and beliefs.

Singing brings connection. When we sing the same sounds, our brains are in sync. When people sing different parts near each other, their voices mingle in the air and reach warmly back to the singers. Interviewed singers repeatedly speak of choir membership as a balm for loneliness and a source of community. Singing enlivens the body and spirit with joy even with sorrowful songs

Highly recommended if you sing, or if you just want to learn a little more about singing, or music history, or the Grace Church Choral Society.

Book excerpt: Science says singing makes us happier

Book excerpt: What singing in a choir teaches us about teamwork

Youtube videos of all the musical pieces in the book

Available at bookshop.org.

“Waking” by Matthew Sanford

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Subtitle: A memoir of trauma and transcendence

Matt was paralyzed from the chest down at the age of 13 in a winter car crash that also killed his father and older sister. His book chronicles the numbness and dissociation that help him survive his first months and years of recovery, and his later reconnection with his body. The book includes the beautifully functional family relationships that helped sustain him.

The doctors tell him he cannot connect with his legs past his spinal injury. Even though the flesh is connected, with blood circulating in and out of the paralyzed areas, they tell him the energy he senses is just in his imagination, denial, wishful thinking.

He remembers his father doing yoga alone in the basement long before it became popularly accepted in the US. He finds a yoga teacher, Jo Zukovich, with the intuition and imagination to work with him and begins reconnecting with his body. Along the way he experiences the flashbacks and body memories of healing trauma.

He and Jo discover that “alignment and precision increase mind-body integration regardless of paralysis.” Matt writes,

“If I listen inwardly to my whole experience (both my mind’s and my body’s), my mind can feel into my legs. […] It is simply a matter of learning to listen to a different level of presence, to realizing that the silence within my paralysis is not loss. In fact, it is both awake and alive. […] The silence that helped me leave my body and protected me from pain in intensive care is the same silence that helps me energetically connect mind and body.”

Highly recommended for a clear, honest look at trauma, recovery, and living well with disabilities. Prepare to have your unconscious stereotypes about “poor, wheelchair-bound” paraplegics decisively shattered.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir” by Ellen Forney

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The story and drawings quickly engaged me, despite the author’s sometimes bizarre, sometimes heavy journey through mania, depression, and eventually, balance. She has the fantastic support of her mom, friends, and psychiatrist, but still struggles for years before finding a set of meds that works for her.

In depression, she can barely get out of bed to sit under a blanket on the couch. At the same time, she still swims several times a week, goes to yoga, and draws her weekly comic strip. In mania, she struggles to control her racing thoughts and impulses. Her commitment to self-care is woven through the book, along with disarming candor about her daily experience.

Highly recommended to learn about one woman’s experience with bipolar disorder and creativity.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Poppies on the Rubbish Heap” by Madge Bray

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Subtitle: Sexual Abuse, The Child’s Voice

Madge Bray shares her journey as a child advocate social worker, along with several abused children’s case histories. Woven through the book is the history of recognition and backlash around the sexual abuse of children. Madge Bray pioneered the use of toys and play therapy to elicit children’s stories and help them heal.

The toys include anatomically correct dolls, angry puppets, and a battery-operated rabbit that trembles silently. Madge Bray offers a neutral, welcoming space for the children to interact with the toys and find self-expression. She enters into their world rather than demanding that they communicate in adult ways.

The book is intense and riveting. It tells of catastrophic abuse from the wounded child’s perspective, as the child is heard and helped. It tells of victorious court battles as well as one story about a child whose parents withdrew him from therapy before he could tell his story.

Recommended as a look into social work with children in England, the realities of child sexual abuse, and the healing power of deep listening.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Horse Boy” by Rupert Isaacson

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Subtitle: A Father’s Quest to Heal His Son

Recommended to me by: Kristin Neff mentions her husband’s book about their journey to Mongolia in her book Self-Compassion.

Rupert Isaacson writes about how his intuition and determination (and privilege) bring him to Mongolia where horseback riding and shamans help his autistic son Rowan.

He describes both people and places by their degree of physical beauty. He does not acknowledge the privilege that makes his journey possible. His story about meeting his wife Kristin says a lot about how he relates to the world.

[T]he moment I saw her, stretched out in a beach chair by the pool of the Southern Star Hotel, all long-legged, tan, and languid, […] a voice in my head, accompanied by an almost physical pull of intuition under my diaphragm, said, clear as day, That’s your wife. [… She responded,] “I’m not available.”
Which of course for me was like a red rag to a bull.

I learned a lot about autism, horses, shamanism, and Mongolia. I’m glad their adventure went well and brought improvement for Rowan. I’m amazed and a little jealous of how Rupert’s intuition panned out and he got everything he wanted, including financial success.

Of course, it’s unlikely that a book about how someone followed their intuition and was led completely astray would see print.

Available at bookshop.org.