I have never been good with my hands. It’s the cerebral palsy. There is no middle ground, for me, between the over-hard, stress-red clench of a pen and a tentative, trembling touch. So that I do not shake, I type too loud, and draw too… Read More
This week, I shared a writing exercise with my writer’s group. It’s called “Starting from Solitude,” and it was developed by Richard Hoffman. It’s intended for memoir writing, and it’s unique in that it organically gets the writer back into her own head at a… Read More
(IMAGE CREDIT: Marco Michelini via FREEIMAGES.COM) At a red light, once upon an icy evening, Mom and I watched as a woman on a motorcycle tipped over. The immediate fear, of course, was that she was hurt – if not from the bike falling on… Read More
By Briana McGuckin Divorce divided my childhood Into two Christmases, two Easters, two birthdays and, later, When I’d moved out of my mom’s, two phone calls To catch both parents up on what my father termed “what’s new, what’s hip, what’s happenin’”
On Wednesday, I started reading The Fall by Diogo Mainardi, a memoir about fathering a boy who falls down a lot because he has cerebral palsy. I have cerebral palsy, too. That’s why it’s on my reading list. On that same Wednesday, I fell. And… Read More
Keeping My Balance is a unique memoir, because Stephanie Torreno’s life flies in the face of our stereotypical assumptions about disability. Torreno’s cerebral palsy is so severe that she cannot write without someone taping down the paper, cannot type except with a single thumb, cannot walk… Read More
I have had cerebral palsy for all the thirty years I’ve been alive. I’ve been through physical therapy, and surgeries. Yet, up until this week, I had never read a book advising treatment and rearing for those with cerebral palsy. I thought it would be… Read More
Reading Autobiography of a Face was much different than reading Karen, and not just because Lucy Grealy (its writer) dealt with Ewing’s sarcoma (cancer of the jaw) instead of cerebral palsy. As I read I focused on the opposite trajectory and mood of the narratives. Karen takes place… Read More
Step one in writing about my own childhood with spastic cerebral palsy has been to read Karen, by Marie Killilea – a book about another cerebral palsied kiddo, written by her mother. I thought it’d be smart to get a parent’s perspective. What I didn’t… Read More
I didn’t want to bother my mother—that’s what I remember most. I was choking on a lemon drop in the back seat of her Dodge Spirit, but she was driving and I didn’t want to bother her.
Briana Una McGuckin 