Storied Companions: Cancer, Trauma, and Discovering Guides for Living in Buddhist Narratives

"Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris-professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner-turned to books. Crashing into impermanence, "why me" is unhelpful, but "when" is crucial. Reading stories and putting herself into the stories turns these ancient Buddhist stories into companions-into guides for the parts of life that don't have guides. Interweaves her memoir with stories from the Buddhist canon-interweaves herself into those stories-to find ways to live with the notion that she won't live, ways to cope even though, as she puts it, she is crashing into impermanence honest, powerful, insightful, illuminating. Takes familiar stories and illuminates them, finding ways to make them immediate and real to her living experience. "With my diagnosis ofstage IV brain cancer, I no longer observe the truth of impermanence from a critical, analytical distance. I am crashing into it, or it into me"--
A professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner helps readers discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence. &;With my diagnosis of grade IV brain cancer, I no longer observe the truth of impermanence from a critical, analytical distance. I am crashing into it, or it into me.&; Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris&;professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner&;turned to books. By reading ancient Buddhist stories with new questions and a new purpose&;finding a way to live with her dying body&;she discovers new ways to make them immediate and real. For instance, reading with her terminal prognosis, she becomes one of the four omens (the four signs of impermanence and suffering) the young Siddhartha sees in his excursions from the palace. What would it mean for her to be in the crowd, straining to see the prince with her own sick and impermanent body&;to be pushed aside and out of sight by the palace minders, just as our society so often tries to brush aside anything uncomfortable, but to nonetheless be seen by the young bodhisattva? Or reading as a mother, maybe she shares something akin to what Queen Maya may have felt, knowing she was dying, giving her newborn son over to her sister&;s care? What will it mean for her own children to be motherless? She follows the knotted threads connecting Milarepa&;s angry, vengeful mother to Karen&;s own mother, who physically abused her throughout a traumatic childhood. By placing herself into these stories, she turns them from distant and static narratives into companions, and from companions into guides. Storied Companions interweaves Karen&;s memoir of her life of trauma and illness with stories from Buddhist literary traditions, sharing with the reader how she found ways to live with the reality that she won&;t live as long as she wants and needs to. Honest, powerful, and insightful, Storied Companions itself becomes an invaluable companion, guiding the reader to discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence.