Being (Sick) Enough: Thoughts on Invisible Illness, Childhood Trauma, and Living Well When Surviving Is Hard

In this hit-or-miss memoir-in-essays, Graham (Good Sex) reflects on their complicated relationship with their body, former partners, and parents. “Trauma can seep deep into our DNA, twisting and contorting the genes that dictate how our bodies respond to stress and hardship,” Graham writes, tracing their alcoholism and PTSD to their father’s drinking, their mother’s physical abuse, and the sexual assault they experienced at the hands of various men throughout their life. Exploring how trauma influences chronic illness, Graham recounts how an “emotionally, physically, and spiritually devastating” long-term relationship triggered fibromyalgia and chronic gastritis flare-ups so severe they ended up in the hospital. The author contends that such traumas can be resolved, discussing how “mindfulness meditation gave me a way to move through suffering, instead of trying to escape from it.” For good and ill, the selections feel like sitting in on Graham’s therapy sessions, offering perceptive if clinical analyses of the author’s psychology, but yielding few insights about what it’s like to experience chronic illness and trauma. So intimate it veers on solipsistic, this falls short. (Jan.)