Dr. Ellen Schecter’s memoir, Fierce Joy, explores the physical, psychological, and spiritual circumstances she faced as a woman, wife, and the mother of two young children when two serious autoimmune diseases drastically pruned her back. When she lost her career in the glamorous world of TV and publishing, she never asked “Why me?” but searched for new meanings growing out of her illness – experiences to share with you.
With Ellen’s assistance, this discussion will help us understand that it’s possible to be sick without suffering. She learned how by dealing with her illness as a mature woman, rather than with a child’s fears. She re-visited her childhood memories of her father’s many illnesses and her misunderstandings about disease and death. As a child, Ellen was terrified of injections. But when she got sick, she needed them weekly, then daily. She couldn’t go to a doctor every day. When she learned to inject herself, she felt proud, liberated.
You don’t need to feel helpless when you get sick. You can’t control your body, but you can control your responses to it—and to what disease does to you. We always have a choice about how to behave—and that makes an enormous difference. We can educate ourselves; we can take medication; we can ask for and accept help; we can create cooperative relationships with our doctors; we can refuse to be squelched—we can decide how to live now—differently.
What is fierce joy? It’s not a tepid, easy, saccharine happiness, but joy that flames up out of harsh circumstances. It’s honey from the rock of loss and pain; delight born of small events and valuable people. It burns with a high flame despite grief and dread.
What to expect: This program will help you understand that it’s possible to be sick without suffering. The author hopes the discussion will help you find your own joy, fierce or quiet, through her process of learning as she wrote this memoir.
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