The Healing Circle: Authors Writing of Recovery

Essays describe how a variety of writers coped with the reality of illness, found their way to recovery, and incorporated their experiences into their lives

The notion of "the stages of grief" having become part of general consciousness, editors Foster and Swander promote the idea that the process of recovery and healing has definable stages, too, that should be recognized by mass culture. Recovery from serious illness or accident does not mean the condition's disappearance, they argue, but a complex series of personal definitions and rediscoveries resulting from health changes. The personal essays they present illuminate things not much known about the path of recovery, such as that illness, particularly chronic, long-term conditions, can place sufferers into "private exile," a predicament in which they must set aside the concept of recovery as a return to a safer past and develop coping attitudes and techniques that may lead to inner healing. The particular attitudes and techniques presented in the essays emphasize that life can remain an adventure, even in the face of crippling injury or AIDS, and each attitude or technique is as unique as the writer who presents it. Whitney Scott