Not Weakness: Navigating the Culture of Chronic Pain

(Paperback)

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After thyroid cancer, Crohns disease, and a slew of other autoimmune conditions ransacked her body in her twenties and thirties, Francesca was left feeling completely alone in her chronic pain. Constant, relentless, often indescribable, and always exhausting, it affected her whole lifeintimacy, motherhood, friendship, work, and mental health. Yet it was also fairly invisibleand because of that, Francesca felt entirely alone in the centrifuge of her own pain. But after twenty-plus years of living this way, isolated and depressed, she started to wonder: if she lived in pain, others must tooso why couldn't she name one person in her community who suffered like she did

On a whim, Francesca started asking women in her community if they had chronic painonly to find that she was surrounded by women also battling in silence. The more she spoke to people, the more she found common themes and experiences, proving that her stories of pain were not unique, and neither were her feelings of loneliness and seclusion. Liberated by this discovery, Francesca realized something: while she couldnt alleviate anyone's pain, maybe she could lift the shadows surrounding itbring these common stories into the light, with the goal of helping her fellow chronic pain sufferers feel a little less alone.

Imbued with a deep respect for the women who tell their stories in its pages, as well as a healthy skepticism of the healthcare world and how it can silence, shame, and ignore women in pain, Not Weakness is galvanizing memoir about living and loving with chronic pain.

Reviews

Intertwining her moving personal journey with the stories of other women living with chronic pain, Grossman sheds light on the stigma our culture places on pain and offers insight into the sense of connection, community, and, yes, hope, that may emerge when those who suffer share their storiesand are heard.
Meg Donohue, USA Today best-selling author of You, Me, and the Sea

Not Weaknessis a much needed examinationof a pressing and urgent problemthat faces not justmodern healthcare, but also every one of us. Womens pain is everybodys pain. Or should be. Francesca Grossman, and the brave stories shes collected, show us that its never too late to focus on what hurts us most and find a way through it to something entirely new.
Laurel S. Braitman,New York Timesbest-selling author ofAnimal Madness

A powerful and poignant account of the experience of living with chronic pain. Francesca neither looks for pity nor hides the raw truthsthis book will prove a comfort to anyone living with a condition others dont understand, and a must-read for anyone supporting someone who does. Simply put, this book is a gift.
Michelle Miller, best-selling author of The Underwriting and The Fairer Sex Collection

So much more than a personal memoir,Not Weaknessis a meditation on womanhood,endurance, and daring to exist in a culture nominally obsessed with wellness and hustle yet deeply uncomfortable with those whose bodily realities reveal the limits of those idealslimits which all of us, inevitably, will encounter. Francesca Grossman beautifully weaves together stories of chronic pain to illuminate how our embodied experiences are at once irreducibly unique, and universally, inescapable.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, historian and author ofFit Nation: The Gains and Pains of Americas Exercise Obsession

This is the book we all need; whether or not we suffer from chronic pain ourselves. Itll offer us a deeper understanding and lets be real: we all know people suffering with chronic pain. Francesca Kaplan Grossman writes beautifully. Its a pleasure to read every sentence, yes, even inside a book on pain. She brings love and beauty and deep empathy. Get this book for yourself and your people.
Jennifer Pastiloff, author ofOn Being Human

Author Bio

Francesca Louise Grossman is a writer and writing instructor. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Brain, Child Magazine, The Manifest Station, Ed Week, Drunken Boat, and Word Riot, among others. She runs writing retreats and workshops internationally and leads an annual intensive workshop at The Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has a BA and MA from Stanford University and a doctorate from Harvard University in education. Her acclaimed instructional manual Writing Workshop; How to Create a Culture of Useful Feedback is used in universities and workshops all over the world. Francesca lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children and is currently working on a memoir and a novel.