| Contents |
Twins -- Opening night -- Bed rest -- The itch -- Bell's palsy -- Sir Charles Bell and the Greeks -- The NICU -- A brief digression on my Catholic God -- The NICU, continued -- Home -- Smile! -- Actors and mothers -- The Duchenne -- Still face and the Tony Awards -- The Mona Lisa and illness as metaphor -- Three children under the age of five and three kinds of vomit -- All the crying Mashas and the concept of a good side -- Show me what you've got -- The observer and the observed -- Celiac disease, or I remember bagels -- Childhood illness and the symmetry of siblings -- Can you have postpartum depression two years after having babies? -- Refuge -- I can only imagine -- Lizard eye, or kill the ingenue -- Hermione, the frozen statue -- The neurosurgeon who liked Irishwomen -- The good doctor and gratitude -- Ding-dong, ding-dong, or grow accustomed to your face -- Mirror neurons and narcissus -- The fortune cookie -- A woman slowly gets better. |
| Abstract |
"Happily married and in the flush of hard-earned professional success, with her first play opening on Broadway, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high risk pregnancy and given birth to twins when she discovers the left side of her face entirely paralyzed. Bell's palsy. Ninety percent of Bell's palsy sufferers see spontaneous improvement and full recovery. Like Ruhl's mother. Like Angelina Jolie. But not like Sarah Ruhl. Sarah Ruhl is in the unlucky ten percent. Like Allen Ginsberg. But for a woman, a mother, a wife, and an artist working in the realm of theater, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior, brings significant and specific challenges. So Ruhl begins an intense decade-long search for a cure, while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face-one that, while recognizably her own-is incapable of accurately communicating feelings or intentions. In a series of searing, witty, and lucid meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey as a patient, mother, wife, and artist. She details the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain post-partum depression, the joys and trials of marriage and being a playwright and a mother to three tiny children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of difficulty." -- Provided by publisher. |
