Showing results for "Pain Studies" in Biographies & Memoirs

In this extended lyric essay, a poet mines her lifelong experience with migraines to deliver a marvelously idiosyncratic cultural history of pain - how we experience, treat, and mistreat it. Her sources range from the trial of Joan of Arc to the essays of Virginia Woolf and Elaine Scarry to Hugh Laurie’s portrayal of Gregory House on House M.D. As she engages with science, philosophy, visual art, rock lyrics, and field notes from her own medical adventures (both mainstream and alternative), she finds a way to express the often-indescribable experience of living with pain.

Terrie had made it: She had launched her own public relations company with such clients as Eddie Murphy and Johnnie Cochran. Yet she was in constant pain, waking up in terror, overeating in search of relief. For 30 years she kept on her game face of success, exhausting herself daily to satisfy her clients' needs while neglecting her own. When she finally collapsed, she had no clue what was wrong or if there was a way out.

In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman's strong dancer's body dropped 40 pounds, and gray hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics.

When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.

This is my memoir - a story of hope, strength, and life in all its sad, hopeless reality. However, no sadness remains, and so I write this as a message to all the women. It doesn't matter if you're from a broken home, in a broken marriage, or empathetic toward anyone who is in these circumstances - you will survive. I also write this to the sons and daughters who have forgotten peace in their own homes. Remember, there will be peace; you must never give up.

R. Allen Stigger is a native Chicagoan who currently resides in the western suburbs and is father to three amazing daughters. He is an army veteran who enjoys writing about the human experience and his personal life childhood experiences.