To Exist As I Am: A Doctor's Notes on Recovery and Radical Acceptance

(Hardback, Main)

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What do you do when the life you planned is dramatically interrupted What does it mean to heal, when the world won't stop asking what's wrong with you At the age of 22, Grace Spence Green's spine was broken at the fourth thoracic vertebra. One day, she was in hospital supporting patients, the next she was fighting for her own life. To Exist As I Am chronicles her journey from idealistic medical student to spinal-injury patient, to doctor and disabled activist, finding her way back to the wards, and finding her tribe along the way. This life-affirming memoir reframes disability and questions the value we place on independence, in favour of interdependence; the rich networks of care that bind us together, and what love truly looks like. Rather than yearning to be 'fixed', Grace shows how we might fight for change while embracing a joyous life - exactly as we are.

Reviews

To Exist As I Am reflects on the boundaries between those who care, and those who receive care in an absolutely extraordinary way. Grace combines humour, warmth and grit to tell a story that would make anyone reflect on their own sense of self and the meaning of the relationships around them as well as on the nature of injury and healing. Essential reading -- Xand van Tulleken
A book of wisdom and love, trauma and acceptance, extraordinary resilience and justified anger, it'll change the way you think about disability. Stop whatever it is that you're reading and read Grace Spence Green instead -- Gavin Francis
A wonderfully intricate, heartfelt account of the blurred line between patient and doctor. This book explores the strength and the fragility of the human body and celebrates the depth and tenacity of the human spirit. Grace's story is immersive, inspiring and life-affirming -- Viv Groskop
Unputdownable, awe-inspiring, necessary. The best book I've read by a doctor in a very long time -- Gabriel Weston
Having also been through spinal cord injury, this is the best personal account of that trauma. I kept wanting to underline sentences because they are so true and so beautiful -- Tom Shakespeare
Astonishing, important, and truly radical. In picking apart so many of the tired binaries we use to think about love, care, trauma and healing, it is as if - at last - someone had switched the lights on. Lucid and hopeful but also fierce in its challenge to a world that so often gets disability all wrong, this book is completely transformative. -- Polly Morland
To Exist As I Am upends the familiar tropes of the rehab memoir, and gives us something perceptive and new ... Valuable, insightful and beautifully written -- James and Lucy Catchpole
Exquisitely written and compelling, this book tells the story of a remarkable doctor. By the end it will have upended the preconceptions many of us hold as to what it is to lead a rich, fulfilled life -- Caroline Elton
A deeply impactful and honest exploration of disability, healing, and identity. Grace Spence Green's story is an essential voice in the conversation on anti-ableism and true representation -- Shani Dhanda
A story of injury, loss and acceptance that asks us to consider what it truly means to recover. Grace Spence Green shows us how much we can gain when we stop trying to overcome disability and start embracing it as part of what makes us human. Her story is inspiring in the best possible ways as an activist call to arms and a testament to the joy that comes through finding your community -- David Turner

Author Bio

Grace Spence Green is a junior doctor working to challenge the narratives surrounding disability, medicine and identity. In 2018, aged 22 and a 4th year medical student, she sustained a spinal cord injury and is now a full-time wheelchair user. Since her life-changing injury, Grace has become a passionate advocate for the disabled community, writing regularly for the BMJ and Guardian and across TV and radio.