Product Description

In the late 1980s Marguerite Guzman Bouvard began experiencing the puzzling symptoms of an illness that affects millions of women yet often takes years to diagnose, interstitial cystitis: an inflammation and deterioration of the bladder lining. It is often accompanied by related immune disorders such as fibromyalgia and vulvodynia that cause crushing fatigue and a host of allergies, conditions Bouvard developed. As her illnesses progressed, Bouvard, an active globe trotting scholar and writer, was forced to slow down and to reassess her priorities. This memoir tells the story of how she came to create a life that was rich and full despite debilitating physical conditions.

Bouvard addresses key issues such as the importance of speaking clearly to the broader society about illness, learning to deal with pain, and how to manage relations with physicians. She reveals how she learned to continue to be of use to the world by opening up a new area of working toward human rights and reorienting her life as a writer. The book has a strong spiritual dimension in revealing how the meditation and reflection she turned to because of her curtailed activities actually opened her up to a wider life. From these practices she learned to cultivate inner strength, flexibility, and adaptability. Thankful for small pleasures and grateful for what she has, Bouvard shows how true healing means not waiting for a cure, but maintaining a sense of possibility.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #716772 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
"While doctors search for ways to treat interstitial cystitis, patients are often at sea when it comes to living with this illness. With this memoir, Marguerite Bouvard has charted a route through those rough waters for us."--Vicki Ratner, MD, Founder and President, Interstitial Cystitis Association

"We all have problems that are difficult to confront, difficult to come to terms with. I wish to emphasize that this is a book that can change the lives of the healthy as well as those struggling with illness. I cannot recommend it highly enough."--Santa Cruz Metro Weekly

"Anyone suffering with illness, as well as friends and relatives and healthcare providers and professionals, would find spiritual resonance and inspiration in the connections Bouvard suggests between meditation, and treating the body/mind/spirit with respect and attention to accept and "soar beyond our circumstances to find ourselves."--Healing Ministry

"The most interesting aspects of the book are Bouvard's accounts of how her condition affects her day-to-day experiences and concerns and how this contrasts with the detached, often insensitive way in which she was treated by certain medical practitioners . . . the book is mostly engaging and interesting, and is eloquently written. It would be valuable reading for people who are themselves suffering from chronic illness, to show that it need not preclude them from finding fulfillment professionally and personally. And it would be valuable to the friends and relations of those suffering from chronic illness, to help them to understand what is important to their friend or relation and how they can best and most sympathetically engage with her." --Metapsychology Online Reviews

Review
"In a society so uncomfortable with physical vulnerability that it seeks to make the ill invisible, this book reveals the many dimensions of suffering. It creates a social discourse for the dignity, hard work, grief and illumination of illness. It is done with exquisite sensitivity, rich prose and riveting thoughts. Extremely informative for the reader who suffers from chronic illness; but must reading for the friends and relatives of the sufferer; and truly compulsory reading for the healthcare provider." (Dr. Isaac Schiff, Head of Vincent Memorial Obstetrics and Gynecology Service, Massachusetts General Hospital )

About the Author
MARGUERITE GUZMAN BOUVARD received her Ph.D. from Harvard and was for many years a professor of political science and creative writing at Regis College. She has authored books in the fields of politics, psychology, women's studies and poetry, among them the important The Path Through Grief: A Compassionate Guide and Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de mayo (1998).

Customer Reviews

This Book Can Change Your Life--Whether You're Healthy or Not
I can understand why it was many years before a woman as ambitious and accomplished as Marguerite Guzman Bouvard could stand before her colleagues and share with them her long-kept secret: "I am chronically ill." In her book Healing: A Life with Chronic Illness, Bouvard chronicles her own resistance to admitting her daunting physical limitations.

For decades, Bouvard had been absorbed in a busy and very public life of travel, research, teaching and writing--a life she loved, a life that gave her her sense of her successful self, and one she simply refused to surrender. She fought valiantly against the reality of her diminishing energies and capacities. She found her illness demeaning, an embarrassing weakness, a symbol of her failure both as a professional and as a person. As she became less active, less vocal, she felt her colleagues avoiding eye contact and avoiding her altogether. She began to feel invisible, "an unwanted outsider," no longer a part of the illustrious team of academicians that had been her life for so long. As her condition limited her more and more she lived "...in a turbulence of outrage, fear, and sorrow..." over her wildly changing circumstances.

When her illness at last became impossible to ignore, Bouvard spent years going from doctor to doctor, enduring painful procedures. Accurately diagnosed at last, she learned she had a chronic illness called interstitial cystitis, an inflammation and deterioration of the bladder lining that affects not just one area of the body but the body in its entirety. After a time, she would also develop fibromyalgia, again a miserable chronic illness involving muscle pain, severe fatigue and disturbed nightly sleep.

But in spite of her depleted stamina, Bouvard refused to cancel a previously planned arduous journey to Argentina to work with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, whose children had disappeared and/or suffered torture at the hands of the country's brutally suppressive government. From these exceptional and courageous women, Bouvard learned that they assuaged their grief over the loss of their children and the brutal tyranny they lived with daily by banding together, by sharing their stories, by actively rising up against their oppressors, by not keeping silent. In time, she realized that she too would find healing only by speaking the truth of her increasing physical frailty, her acute and unrelenting pain.

The Mothers, who possessed a profound sense of caring for one another and a dedication to righting the senseless and horrific injustices that endangered them daily, became Bouvard's teachers. Her essential values began to change. Things she once considered important lost their significance. She stopped rushing about, stopped feeling the familiar competitive drives she had known all her life. She learned from them how to listen, how to hear and see in depth what was going on around her; she learned to pay attention, to give herself time to take things in and reflect.

However, these changes happened only gradually. She admits that it took her a long time to come to terms with her chronic illness. She writes:

I didn't realize this was the beginning of learning a new culture or that I would have to create a new language that would reflect my reality. Nor was I aware of one of the sources of my deep discomfort: that to become ill in this society means having the body, spirit, and mind severed. How could I speak to the people around me about my fear and anxiety, how could I speak to the self that was changing, when I was unable to find the words and had no frame of reference?

Having found the language to speak her truth, Ms. Bouvard was faced with giving up the certainties of her old career. She needed to learn to navigate her life without the familiar maps and landscapes of previous years. She began to trust that ideas would come in new ways, that her career would follow a different but equally creative path. She wanted to write only about ideas that fired her soul; she wanted to write not with the objectivity of research but as though she was addressing each reader personally.

She became excited as she felt herself and her life changing drastically. She began to keep a journal and as it became filled with her writings, and with cards and messages from friends, she realized she was neither invisible nor alone...no longer "an outsider" but very much a thriving human being, more connected to God and to herself than she had ever been. "Chronic illness," she writes, "has given me the opportunity to reassess my life, to decide on how I will live, what I hope to accomplish and what is important to me."

We all have problems that are difficult to confront, difficult to come to terms with. This is a book that can change the lives of the healthy as well as those struggling with illness. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

by Duffie Bart
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

A much-needed read
Chronic illness is something that affects millions of people worldwide. And yet those in pain often feel alone, as if no one "gets" what they're going through. By writing this book, author Marguerite Bouvard has validated all of those who struggle with chronic illness year in, year out. This book can also serve as a learning tool for the families and friends of those who suffer from chronic illness. I highly recommend HEALING.

very enlightening and helpful
Having received HEALING only this morning, I have only skimmed it and found it very insightful, enlightening and encouraging. I am a vicitim of IC myself and have been discouraged with most of the urologists and urogynecologists I have seen over the past 16 month. It was encouraging to read what Marguerite Guzman Bouvard had to say on this very subject. I am ordering 5 books, one for each of my children, so they can get a better understanding of what IC is all about.