Intimate, firsthand accounts and in-depth yoga instruction that will offer comfort to cancer patients.
In this memoir and guidebook, a breast cancer survivor shares her struggle and discusses the role that yoga played in her recovery.
In the fall of 2006, when Kahn was 45, she received the diagnosis that few people are prepared for: “you have cancer.” She was an Army wife, a fitness instructor, and the mother of a boy in sixth grade and a girl in 10th—and now, she was afraid that she would become only “Cancer Cathleen.” Facing surgery, chemotherapy, and the loneliness of her diagnosis, she managed to find new strength through her ongoing practice of yoga, which also helped her to connect with other people. Kahn’s debut is also a self-help manual for readers with cancer who also hope to use yoga to support their health. As a trained yoga instructor and wellness expert, she offers readers poses and meditations for specific cancer-treatment side effects, such as nausea, constipation, sleeplessness, the mental fog known as “chemo brain,” and other ailments. She also provides positive affirmations to help battle stress, anxiety, and depression. She presents all of these instructions in a highly accessible manner, complete with clear illustrations by Coyle, leaving room for readers to make notes on their impressions and progress. She talks about her own experiences with breast cancer in an appealingly forthright manner, and her recollections are both heartfelt and informative throughout. Some address experiences that no one warned her about, such as the pain of a dye injection, the itchiness of wigs, and numerous awkward comments and questions from others. Although Kahn notes that she has an increased appreciation of the world and her health due to her greater focus on mindfulness, she also stresses that yoga isn’t a magic bullet and that close family relationships are also important for one’s personal health.
Intimate, firsthand accounts and in-depth yoga instruction that will offer comfort to cancer patients.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982216-32-0
Page Count: 282
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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