Ten-year-old Maiya takes us into the world of childhood phobias, describing what it was like to live with overwhelming anxiety about sickness, and how she found help. Now she is creating a website of fear-reducing games to help other kids who suffer with anxiety.
illness
Life in the Early Stages with Bill Verrill
Bill Verrill, a former banker, now suffers from early Alzheimer’s disease. Bill describes his deep trust in his wife Shirley’s ability to take care of him—and his deepest fears about the toll his illness will take on her life. He remembers letting go of his driver’s license and learning to be more dependent while striving …read more »
Illness Stories with Art Frank
Author Art Frank describes his own experience with an early heart attack and later cancer. He describes the way the medical world can be oblivious to the patient’s needs and subjective experience, and the importance of finding your own voice after your body has been colonized by treatment. He offered examples of the ways that …read more »
Parenting and Cancer with Susan Conley
Susan Conley is author of The Foremost Good Fortune and co-founder of The Telling Room in Portland, Maine. In this interview she talks about coping with breast cancer in China while parenting two young boys, and how writing helped her survive. Susan describes her decision to write as honestly as possible, exposing less-than-ideal parenting or …read more »
Hospice Chaplaincy with Ellie Mercer
An interview with hospice chaplain Ellie Mercer about caring for patients at the end of life. She describes her own childhood in a Christian Science family where illness and death were not talked about, or even treated medically, and the relief of working in hospice, where death can be acknowledged and fears can be addressed.
Cancer and the Tri for a Cure with Julie Marchese
Julie Marchese is the founder of the Tri-for-a Cure, the all women’s triathlon to raise money for women’s cancer. She describes her experiences taking care of her mother when she had cancer, and how that shaped her ability to take charge of her own treatment when she was diagnosed years later.
