A memoir of chronic pain

Courtesy of my good friend and colleague Dinah Bradley (Breathing Works), a new phenomenologically-inspired non-fiction work on the lived experience of chronic pain.

How Does It Hurt?, is a memoir of chronic pain––a condition which, despite advances in the science of pain and alleviation of acute or temporary pain, remains little understood and poorly communicated, while silently reaching epidemic proportions. The narrative aims to bring visibility and a measure of clarity to the lived experience of continuing physical pain. In particular, it confronts the paradox of writing about personal pain, notwithstanding pain’s resistance to verbal expression, and reflects on the ways in which other writers have lived with and written about pain; those writers include Polish poet and intellectual, Aleksander Wat, English novelist and social theorist, Harriet Martineau, and French novelist, Alphonse Daudet who believed that for victims of incurable pain, literature is ‘a solace and relief […] a mirror and a guide’.

For more on this new book, follow this link.