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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
A beautifully written heartbreaking memoir about a woman’s first and last days.
This quote from the book sums up why I found it so powerful:
“I vowed when I started this blog that I would endeavor to be brutally honest about who I am and what it is for me to battle cancer, that I would strive against my very human egoist tendencies to prop up some persona of myself as perpetually inspiring, strong or wise….I wanted them to see my real self, a self that, in addition to experiencing many moments of joy, gratitude and insight, was often tormented by fear, anger, hurt, despair and darkness….I wanted to detail and explore that darkness, to let others out there who I knew experienced a similar desolate and lonely darkness know that they were and are not alone. There is a natural intuitive fear of darkness; people who are gripped by it are ashamed to speak of it, while those who are free of it for however long wish to run from it as if it were a contagious plague. If the cost of my brutal honesty about my darkness is a highly unflattering picture of me that repels, so be it.”
“I vowed when I started this blog that I would endeavor to be brutally honest about who I am and what it is for me to battle cancer, that I would strive against my very human egoist tendencies to prop up some persona of myself as perpetually inspiring, strong or wise….I wanted them to see my real self, a self that, in addition to experiencing many moments of joy, gratitude and insight, was often tormented by fear, anger, hurt, despair and darkness….I wanted to detail and explore that darkness, to let others out there who I knew experienced a similar desolate and lonely darkness know that they were and are not alone. There is a natural intuitive fear of darkness; people who are gripped by it are ashamed to speak of it, while those who are free of it for however long wish to run from it as if it were a contagious plague. If the cost of my brutal honesty about my darkness is a highly unflattering picture of me that repels, so be it.”
I read this book as part of a book club that was started by a local independent bookstore, Curious Iguana and Frederick Health Hospice. The club is called "Bucket List" and the titles far ranging and different. We are meeting one Sunday a month to discuss the books and talk about end of life issues and perhaps unwinding the miracle a bit. This book by Julie Yip-Williams was the first book and it is heartbreakingly beautiful. I lost my father to bladder cancer 27 years ago and while it hurt to bring back some of the raw anger and frustration, the connection to the love and miracle of life was just what I needed. I echo what the author's husband says at the end. The terror of seeing someone you love in unremitting pain makes you want them to die. It is the finality of death that haunts.
I highly recommend this but be warned the author is unflinching with her anger and emotions. The story is real.
I highly recommend this but be warned the author is unflinching with her anger and emotions. The story is real.
Halfway in her memoir, Julie Yip-Williams arrives at the important truth that took her "two solid years of living with metastatic cancer (p.182), by accepting her prognosis she frees herself from paralysis.
Williams guides us through the journey of a life lived fully. The indignant anger toward the world for her poor circumstance, cataracts and cruel family, pushed her excel and live this brilliant miracle of a life. Two children, a loving husband, a meaningful, all by age 36. And with it the swift unfair medical prognosis of terminal cancer.
Julie's book is an honest testament that quality of life may not always been quantity of life. As she wrestles with the family hardships, she also explores the person who fought against the perceived obstacles. Exploring Antarctica, interning in a social cause in Africa, and taking on motherhood with great joy, Julie shares the spiritual growth during the distressful time. She also shares her fears and rationality of the future. Imagining the second wife that will take Julie's place. Imagining being forgotten, and her friends continuing to share merriment in new York restaurants. There's a deep sadness her, but great heart too.
Julie's will and heart are all across this book. What a beautiful memoir to leave your family. A treasure and testament to living meaningful while we can.
Williams guides us through the journey of a life lived fully. The indignant anger toward the world for her poor circumstance, cataracts and cruel family, pushed her excel and live this brilliant miracle of a life. Two children, a loving husband, a meaningful, all by age 36. And with it the swift unfair medical prognosis of terminal cancer.
Julie's book is an honest testament that quality of life may not always been quantity of life. As she wrestles with the family hardships, she also explores the person who fought against the perceived obstacles. Exploring Antarctica, interning in a social cause in Africa, and taking on motherhood with great joy, Julie shares the spiritual growth during the distressful time. She also shares her fears and rationality of the future. Imagining the second wife that will take Julie's place. Imagining being forgotten, and her friends continuing to share merriment in new York restaurants. There's a deep sadness her, but great heart too.
Julie's will and heart are all across this book. What a beautiful memoir to leave your family. A treasure and testament to living meaningful while we can.
Haunting
Reading words from someone who has passed is always a little risky, but this book resonates on a deeper level. I am grateful for the work and energy the author put into leaving her legacy.
Reading words from someone who has passed is always a little risky, but this book resonates on a deeper level. I am grateful for the work and energy the author put into leaving her legacy.
A sincere and heartfelt account of Julie's cancer experience which explores topics and opinions often considered to be taboo
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.
Julie Yip-Williams had a remarkable life. This memoir is mostly about her colon cancer diagnosis, how she and her family dealt with it, and her preparations for her death, but she also writes about her experiences as a migrant to America, having fled Vietnam with her family at a very age, and of her blindness from cataracts, a disability that nearly cost her life as a newborn. Some of these stories are told multiple times; perhaps, an editor could have removed/combined these passages, but the repetitiveness doesn't take away how wonderfully Julie writes and how remarkable these stories are. The chapters, almost journal-like entries or essays, that were written over 5 years, also demonstrate several contradictions in Julie's thinking, plus her dramatic shifts in her mood and outlook, from the time of her initial diagnosis and then at different stages of the disease's progression; she changes her mind and how she views her circumstances, her expectations on herself and others, constantly, as she tries to come terms with what is happening. For example, as Julie writes herself, only soon after chapters where she herself had used the "cancer=war" metaphor:
I hate the rhetoric of war that pervades the cancer world, even though I once used it liberally. With fighting and war, there is a winner and a loser. Will you judge me then a loser when I die because I succumbed to my disease? Will you judge me a loser if I simply choose to stop treatment and to stop actively "fighting"? If you do, so be it.Indeed, I think it would be totally unfair to judge anyone in this situation. This memoir is an honest, unfaltering insight into everything that comes with living with cancer. I think it could have done with a bit more editing, but this is a posthumous memoir I'll be thinking over for some quite some time.
This book was both compellingly readable and heartbreakingly difficult to read. Raw, powerful, sad and beautiful
(Review continuing to be edited as more reflection occurs)
An accomplishment of honestly conveying life, and the end of life, with cancer. I am grateful the author chose to write, and then to share her story with the world.
Also, read a recent article in a sort of ‘back to earth’ lifestyle magazine written by a woman who was a birth doula but was becoming a death doula, in part because of how the US does not have a good death process/culture and tries to hide it. And thinking that Julie ended up being her own death doula and how hard is that.
P 173-4 “But a beating heart alone does not make a life. ... Are they that afraid of death? Or do they love life that much? Or are they weighed down by the obligations of love that dictate they must live as long as possible under any circumstances for those who rely on them? What motivates them, fear or love, death or life? ... I suspect that the old man and X, like many people, are more afraid of death than they are in love with life, and that an animalistic fear overrides whatever rational intelligence they possess;I would guess that they fear the unknown of what Shakespeare called the “undiscovered country,” the probable nothingness they believe lies beyond this life despite their wavering belief in God; they fear having the fire of their existence extinguished as if they had never been; they fear being small and irrelevant and forgotten.”
P250 from /Paula/ by Allende (p23) “”The mind selects, enhances, and betrays; happenings fade from memory; people forget one another and, in the end, all that remains is the journey of the soul, those rare moments of spiritual revelation. What actually happened isn’t what matters, only the resulting scars and distinguishing marks.””
An accomplishment of honestly conveying life, and the end of life, with cancer. I am grateful the author chose to write, and then to share her story with the world.
Also, read a recent article in a sort of ‘back to earth’ lifestyle magazine written by a woman who was a birth doula but was becoming a death doula, in part because of how the US does not have a good death process/culture and tries to hide it. And thinking that Julie ended up being her own death doula and how hard is that.
P 173-4 “But a beating heart alone does not make a life. ... Are they that afraid of death? Or do they love life that much? Or are they weighed down by the obligations of love that dictate they must live as long as possible under any circumstances for those who rely on them? What motivates them, fear or love, death or life? ... I suspect that the old man and X, like many people, are more afraid of death than they are in love with life, and that an animalistic fear overrides whatever rational intelligence they possess;I would guess that they fear the unknown of what Shakespeare called the “undiscovered country,” the probable nothingness they believe lies beyond this life despite their wavering belief in God; they fear having the fire of their existence extinguished as if they had never been; they fear being small and irrelevant and forgotten.”
P250 from /Paula/ by Allende (p23) “”The mind selects, enhances, and betrays; happenings fade from memory; people forget one another and, in the end, all that remains is the journey of the soul, those rare moments of spiritual revelation. What actually happened isn’t what matters, only the resulting scars and distinguishing marks.””