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240 reviews for:
Do ostatnich dni. Zapis życia, choroby i wszystkiego, co przychodzi później
Julie Yip-Williams
3.99 AVERAGE
240 reviews for:
Do ostatnich dni. Zapis życia, choroby i wszystkiego, co przychodzi później
Julie Yip-Williams
3.99 AVERAGE
This was my third audiobook for November. It was beautiful & eye opening. The author spends it telling her own story of her life and her battle with terminal cancer. It made me think and feel, especially about death, which is something I like to avoid. It’s honest and raw and ultimately something that I think everyone should read, especially those in medical professions. My only qualm with it is that it was a tad long, but I was also a little impatient to finish this before December 1st (achiever problems
This blog-style memoir of the author’s final years with metastatic colon cancer, as she tries to come to terms with what it means to die in her early forties with young children and a beautiful life was readable and insightful. I appreciated that Yip-Williams was so honest about her rage and her resentment and the awfulness of a young death. This book felt honest. I felt so much grief for her when she wrote about being told as an adult that her parents had taken her to a healer to be killed as an infant due to her blindness and her grandmother’s belief that her life, in post-war Vietnam, would not be worth living, but I was even more profoundly saddened by how much was denied to her by her family as a child in America. That she was not included in movies and on vacations, because it would be wasted on her or no one would want to look after her really disturbed me. And I felt that this trauma was apparent when she would talk about completely falling apart in front of her young children about her anger and fear about dying, screaming, crying, throwing things, and collapsing on the floor. I think that her own unresolved childhood pain, made this pain of a terminal diagnosis even more enormous, and took her back, at times, to a most primal place that I can only imagine was deeply upsetting for her children (this comes from a person who believes absolutely that you should talk to your children about your own health and about death in healthy and age appropriate ways). This was a huge lesson to me, and a reminder, to always work on growth and healing in your own life, so that you aren’t imparting your trauma on your loved ones. My heart broke for Yip-Williams when she would say that she knew she was dying, but still so clearly held onto some hope of it not happening, undergoing late stage radiation, multiple clinical trials, and often speaking of her likely death rather than her absolute one. The fact that the book was separated into years but smaller sections weren’t dated made the timeline hard to follow is my only complaint about the book.
Audio book. I first listened to the podcast for this book, and was drawn in by it. It’s very honest and real, both good and bad, and that kept me listening.
I wish I would have known this book was based off the author’s blog posts as the book felt very repetitive and long. I appreciated how raw and vulnerable she was about the diagnosis and how things were going to end. Maybe if I read it at a different time it would have hit differently but I just wasn’t as enthralled with her story as much as I wanted to be.
Stopped on page 67, chapter 11. Glanced through some future chapters.
I read this book because I am interested in how people process dying and death. While this is just one woman’s journey, I found it welcomely honest.
My thoughts:
- Julie fought stage IV colon cancer over 5 years. She describes the journey of treatments and procedures in excruciating detail. I’m not sure this is what a newly diagnosed person should read, as it may be overwhelming, but it’s a good book to read when you are healthy as you may internalize some of the messages and pull from them when you need to.
- Julie presents a very real and open experience. She is not of the “always believe you will win,” “fight-fight-fight” mentality often presented in cancer blogs and books. She states many times she is a pragmatist. And she was. So while her journey was unique to her, discerning readers can pick out the elements I believe are common to many people facing death. She wants control, she’s angry, she has fears, she is just tired. I appreciated the honesty.
- Many of the negative reviews focus on Julie’s use of “the slutty second wife” term. It’s as if people don’t want to hear or face a real person voicing their real anger and fears. And those people judge judge and then judge again. Julie is a real person, a relatively young person, with real issues that she never got to resolve or grow beyond. That is part of the sadness of her early death. I trust her husband will do a fine job helping his daughters translate the words and experiences of this time.
- More on the negative reviews. Somehow I feel defensive of Julie. It annoys me that readers want to judge the book based on Julie’s parenting decisions - like letting the girls watch plane disaster documentaries. I may not have done it Julie and Josh’s way, but I’m not going to judge their parenting anymore than I want others to judge mine. Same with the readers criticizing Julie for her food decisions - seriously? These are readers delusional that a vegan, supplement laden diet is somehow capable of curing stage IV colon cancer. I’m with Julie on this one. I think the negative reviews based on these features speak more to the fears and denials the readers are facing, than the merits of the memoir.
- I do have criticisms of the book. It doesn’t read very cohesively, and there are a lot of redundancies. This is common with blogs turned books, and more editing would have helped.
- Julie grew up poor, but perhaps not with a poor “mentality.” Her family was affluent in Vietnam - privileged. They were poor as refugees, but quickly regained their more familiar economic and academic edge. Julie is open about her privilege, but not humble. I hoped that she would acknowledge that the first horrible hospitalization she experienced was all many people could hope fore - and way beyond what those without wealth and insurance can access. This is a memoir of how a wealthy person can experience cancer. Julie missed an opportunity here to advocate for, or at list clearly point out healthcare disparities in this country. But that’s ok. Cancer pulls you inward and this was about her fight, not a political essay about healthcare in the US.
In short, Unwinding the Miracle adds to the body of literature about modern day dying. It’s not the best, nor is it the worst. As I said up above, I think it is good to read broadly across this literature because we all will die, and getting some seeds sown when you are younger and healthy will help you decide how to face your own mortality. Pick the bits that speak to you. For me the best book I’ve read on the subject is [b:Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End|20696006|Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End|Atul Gawande|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408324949l/20696006._SY75_.jpg|40015533].
Interestingly, my mother died 5 days after Julie died in 2018. I found it oddly comforting to think that as my own family was saying goodbye, so was hers. My mother had a good death, at home under hospice care, and having had time to say her goodbyes and make her wishes known. I was able to help her have a good death because I’ve read and learned from books such as Julie’s. A person’s death journey is as personal as their birth journey; there is no right way. I wish for everyone time to contemplate their end along with the time and resources to leave this world in peace.
My thoughts:
- Julie fought stage IV colon cancer over 5 years. She describes the journey of treatments and procedures in excruciating detail. I’m not sure this is what a newly diagnosed person should read, as it may be overwhelming, but it’s a good book to read when you are healthy as you may internalize some of the messages and pull from them when you need to.
- Julie presents a very real and open experience. She is not of the “always believe you will win,” “fight-fight-fight” mentality often presented in cancer blogs and books. She states many times she is a pragmatist. And she was. So while her journey was unique to her, discerning readers can pick out the elements I believe are common to many people facing death. She wants control, she’s angry, she has fears, she is just tired. I appreciated the honesty.
- Many of the negative reviews focus on Julie’s use of “the slutty second wife” term. It’s as if people don’t want to hear or face a real person voicing their real anger and fears. And those people judge judge and then judge again. Julie is a real person, a relatively young person, with real issues that she never got to resolve or grow beyond. That is part of the sadness of her early death. I trust her husband will do a fine job helping his daughters translate the words and experiences of this time.
- More on the negative reviews. Somehow I feel defensive of Julie. It annoys me that readers want to judge the book based on Julie’s parenting decisions - like letting the girls watch plane disaster documentaries. I may not have done it Julie and Josh’s way, but I’m not going to judge their parenting anymore than I want others to judge mine. Same with the readers criticizing Julie for her food decisions - seriously? These are readers delusional that a vegan, supplement laden diet is somehow capable of curing stage IV colon cancer. I’m with Julie on this one. I think the negative reviews based on these features speak more to the fears and denials the readers are facing, than the merits of the memoir.
- I do have criticisms of the book. It doesn’t read very cohesively, and there are a lot of redundancies. This is common with blogs turned books, and more editing would have helped.
- Julie grew up poor, but perhaps not with a poor “mentality.” Her family was affluent in Vietnam - privileged. They were poor as refugees, but quickly regained their more familiar economic and academic edge. Julie is open about her privilege, but not humble. I hoped that she would acknowledge that the first horrible hospitalization she experienced was all many people could hope fore - and way beyond what those without wealth and insurance can access. This is a memoir of how a wealthy person can experience cancer. Julie missed an opportunity here to advocate for, or at list clearly point out healthcare disparities in this country. But that’s ok. Cancer pulls you inward and this was about her fight, not a political essay about healthcare in the US.
In short, Unwinding the Miracle adds to the body of literature about modern day dying. It’s not the best, nor is it the worst. As I said up above, I think it is good to read broadly across this literature because we all will die, and getting some seeds sown when you are younger and healthy will help you decide how to face your own mortality. Pick the bits that speak to you. For me the best book I’ve read on the subject is [b:Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End|20696006|Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End|Atul Gawande|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408324949l/20696006._SY75_.jpg|40015533].
Interestingly, my mother died 5 days after Julie died in 2018. I found it oddly comforting to think that as my own family was saying goodbye, so was hers. My mother had a good death, at home under hospice care, and having had time to say her goodbyes and make her wishes known. I was able to help her have a good death because I’ve read and learned from books such as Julie’s. A person’s death journey is as personal as their birth journey; there is no right way. I wish for everyone time to contemplate their end along with the time and resources to leave this world in peace.
I did not care much for The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-WIlliams. The story was very repetitive. There was a hopelessness that pervaded the story and just dragged it down. The clinical and medical details were abundant and just laborious to get through. Overall, the story felt cold to me and I was happy when the story ended.
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
December 2022 is the month of reading about death for me! Julie Yip-Williams in a married woman with two young daughters when she finds out that she has stage 4 colon cancer. This novel documents what she was going through from when she found out until close to her death. There is a lot of ruminating on her life, especially when she was younger. I liked this death memoir and maybe a bit more so because it was written by the person experiencing having a terminal illness. I appreciated Julie's honesty with everything that she went through with having cancer and trying to get ride of it. I'm happy that her daughters have this book, so they will know more about their mother as they get older.
I love the title of this book - the author helps us appreciate the miracles of our own lives more fully as her life is winding down. She wrote compellingly and honestly about her years of fighting cancer. I have to admit I was crying through the last chapters. I really appreciate her hard won insights. I am grateful that her light will live on through her family and her words.
A few of my library holds came in recently so I am taking a much-needed break from the ARCs I’ve been working through in the hopes that I am able to finish the books before they are due back to the library. One book that I’ve been wanting to read since I heard of its publication earlier in the year is Julie Yip-Williams’s posthumously published memoir The Unwinding of the Miracle. Julie died a year ago, in March 2018, succumbing to metastatic colon cancer at the age of 42. Back when she was diagnosed in 2013, Julie tried to seek guidance through experiences that were already out there, but couldn’t find any that dealt with her unique situation, so she decided to write her own. She started a blog where she chronicled not only her battle with the cancer that she knew would eventually kill her, but also her life journey, one made even more harrowing by the fact that she was born blind back in the 1970s in war-torn Vietnam and because her grandmother felt there was no hope for her given the circumstances, she would’ve died at 2 months old if not for a kindly herbalist who spared her life. Julie’s life was defined by constantly beating the odds and proving to everyone time and time again that she would not let her disability hold her back — in addition to having traveled all 7 continents on her own by the time she reached 30 years old, she also graduated from Harvard, became a lawyer in a prestigious law firm in New York, married the man of her dreams, and gave birth to 2 beautiful girls.
Given the incredible odds she had to overcome, it’s no surprise that one of Julie’s first reactions to her diagnosis was anger. In the blog posts recording her “journey” post-diagnosis, Julie wrote candidly about her experiences, revealing her innermost thoughts and fears, her strengths and weaknesses, and most notably, the emotional roller coaster that she found herself on nearly every day. The narrative veers more toward despair than hope, though an incredible amount of love shines through as well. Ultimately, writing [this book] was what helped Julie release her anger and eventually find peace with the inevitable, which I feel is tremendously important.
Some of the other reviews of this book mention the repetitiveness of the narrative and writing that seemed, at times, to be all over the place. While these concerns were certainly valid, I personally was not bothered by them, especially given the context of how this book came to be (in an interview last month, Julie’s husband Josh Williams said that 80% of the book was from the blog she had started after the diagnosis and the remaining 20% was from an old manuscript she had written several years prior, before they had children, which was about Julie’s childhood and being born blind). What I appreciated the most about this book was the raw honesty with which Julie recounted everything that happened to her, including preparations for her own imminent death. In taking such a brutally honest approach, Julie oftentimes did not mince words, which, understandably, did make some of this book a little uncomfortable to read – but again, keeping in mind the fact that much of what was written originally there was no intention to commercialize (the book deal wasn’t solidified until late 2017 – several months before Julie’s death), I found it unfair to lay down any type of judgement whatsoever as it pertained to the writing and the content.
For me, this was an eye-opening yet heart-breaking read, but I am grateful that I got the chance to read it. In extending my deepest condolences to Josh Williams and the rest of the family for their loss, I do hope they are able to find comfort in the fact that, through this book, Julie’s story has the potential to touch many, many people.
Lastly, I wanted to provide a link to an interview that Julie’s husband Josh Williams did in February 2019, which I feel is a great companion piece to the book and is important in the additional context it provides: https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/josh-williams-on-his-wifes-posthumous-cancer-memoir.html
Given the incredible odds she had to overcome, it’s no surprise that one of Julie’s first reactions to her diagnosis was anger. In the blog posts recording her “journey” post-diagnosis, Julie wrote candidly about her experiences, revealing her innermost thoughts and fears, her strengths and weaknesses, and most notably, the emotional roller coaster that she found herself on nearly every day. The narrative veers more toward despair than hope, though an incredible amount of love shines through as well. Ultimately, writing [this book] was what helped Julie release her anger and eventually find peace with the inevitable, which I feel is tremendously important.
Some of the other reviews of this book mention the repetitiveness of the narrative and writing that seemed, at times, to be all over the place. While these concerns were certainly valid, I personally was not bothered by them, especially given the context of how this book came to be (in an interview last month, Julie’s husband Josh Williams said that 80% of the book was from the blog she had started after the diagnosis and the remaining 20% was from an old manuscript she had written several years prior, before they had children, which was about Julie’s childhood and being born blind). What I appreciated the most about this book was the raw honesty with which Julie recounted everything that happened to her, including preparations for her own imminent death. In taking such a brutally honest approach, Julie oftentimes did not mince words, which, understandably, did make some of this book a little uncomfortable to read – but again, keeping in mind the fact that much of what was written originally there was no intention to commercialize (the book deal wasn’t solidified until late 2017 – several months before Julie’s death), I found it unfair to lay down any type of judgement whatsoever as it pertained to the writing and the content.
For me, this was an eye-opening yet heart-breaking read, but I am grateful that I got the chance to read it. In extending my deepest condolences to Josh Williams and the rest of the family for their loss, I do hope they are able to find comfort in the fact that, through this book, Julie’s story has the potential to touch many, many people.
Lastly, I wanted to provide a link to an interview that Julie’s husband Josh Williams did in February 2019, which I feel is a great companion piece to the book and is important in the additional context it provides: https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/josh-williams-on-his-wifes-posthumous-cancer-memoir.html