General & Miscellaneous Religion, Medical Figures, Patient Narratives, Inspiration
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Overview
'Everybody is a story,' writes Dr. Remen in her introduction. 'When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering. Despite the awesome powers of technology many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to one another's stories again.' Loneliness is the hidden wound of our time, the price many have paid for embracing such frontier values as independence, self-reliance, and competence. Rachel Remen invites us to see below the surface and remember that we are connected and can become one another's healers. Dr. Remen's unique and intimate relationship with healing and the life force comes from her experience as a physician, a professor of medicine, a therapist, and a long-term survivor of chronic illness. Her stories, picked from the tree of life, are dedicated to the ordinary hero in all of us and stand witness to life's natural tendency to heal our wounds. In these remarkable parables, we discover that our goal in life might not be a precise destination, but the ability to travel together with humor and meaning, with purpose and quality companionship, with warmth and tenderness. "Kitchen Table Wisdom" shows us that a good story is like a compass for life's journey, and reminds us of the power and joy of being fully human.Synopsis
The founder of Commonweal discusses the problem of isolation and disconnection in American society and sets forth her vision of how life should be lived, drawing on her work and her own experience with a life-threatening disease.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Remen is one of a growing number of physicians exploring the spiritual dimension of the healing arts. "Coherent, elegant, mysterious, aesthetic," she writes. "When I first earned my degree in medicine I would not have described life in this way. But I was not on intimate terms with life then." Now Remen is awed by the vitality of the life force, which she witnesses through her work counseling cancer patients and their doctors at Commonweal, a cancer-help center in California, and through her keen eye for the depths of ordinary people. Remen tells of those who, having fallen ill, discovered previously untapped wells of fortitude and who, ironically, gained a peace of mind they had never known when well. She often turns common wisdom on its head. Discussing the meaning of suffering, she cites one woman who mourned the loss of her chest pains after corrective surgery. These pains had come whenever she had compromised her integrity; now her "inner advisor" was gone. Some of the most poignant stories here are of doctors whose professional code rejects overt displays of emotion. Both patients and doctors can come to care profoundly for one another, Remen believes. A heartfelt call for change as well as a display of compassionate and courageous thinking, this meditation will speak especially to those whose lives have been touched by illness. BOMC and One Spirit alternate selections; first serial rights to Family Circle and New Age Journal. (Aug.)Library Journal
Speaking as a counselor of 20 years for the chronically and critically ill patient, Remen (Univ. of California at San Francisco Medical Sch.) uses a classic metaphor for human communication, "across the kitchen table," to unfold life-affirming stories from her practice and her own personal experiences with Chron's disease. She writes inspirationally about a new vision of healing and living that incorporates the value of the soul. More than a manual on holistic medicine, this collection of case studies takes readers from the beginning of the "life force" through the judgment traps of modern life into an open-hearted mystery of embracing life at a friend's table. Acknowledging the individual's healing abilities in her advocacy of alternative therapies, Remen points out that healing occurs on many levels. Refreshingly, her instruction is based on a broader view of medicine that replaces disconnection with celebration of the joy of being a fully healed human.Rebecca Cress-Ingebo, Fordham Health Sciences Lib., Wright State Univ., Dayton, OhioBook Details
Published
September 28, 1996
Publisher
Audio Literature
Format
Audiobook
ISBN
9781574530636