My online memoir is about to kick off
...and here's the serialization schedule, week by week
Dear Rx Nature friends,
Please indulge me one last reminder about my book, Good Eye, Bad Eye: A Memoir of Trauma and Truth. Its serialization starts next week, on my other Substack newsletter.
The book’s subject is unrelated to nature, except for one chapter where I explain how I got into the practice of earth-based therapy. So if you’re not interested in the book, I totally understand and you can stop reading right here. No hard feelings. 😄
But! If you’re looking for a good read—a tale of childhood injury and lifetime recovery, a deep look at trauma through the lens of a psychotherapist—I am excited to share my memoir with you. This will be much more than a book you’re going to read online. The multimedia package I’ve created also includes:
videos
live webinars
photos
audio.
A paid subscription unlocks it all for you. Each week in your inbox you’ll receive a buffet of savory stuff to digest. You can take your time with it and come back to it later, whenever you want.
HOW TO SIGN UP: Paid subscriptions to Good Eye, Bad Eye will open next Saturday, June 1—click here. If you already have a free subscription to Good Eye, Bad Eye, you’ll need to upgrade it to paid on or after June 1. Then you’ll be paying month-by-month for the months of June, July, August, and September. $5/month x 4 months = $20 total.
What will that 20 bucks buy you? Here’s a look at how it will unfold, week by week.
WEEK ONE: June 1, 2024
Author’s Note—I introduce myself as a psychotherapist who is familiar with trauma by working with my patients and listening to their stories. Stories are powerful. We all have stories—and I’m going to tell mine.
Prologue—The theme of a search for truth in the wake of trauma. Hints that the truth of what happened to me as a toddler was withheld from me for most of my life, and that later in the book I will discover the real story of my accident.
Chapter 1—You are My Sunshine: A gripping account of the accident that damaged my eye, as told in the voice of the 2-year-old who experienced it. Another theme is introduced: karma, and how it can alter the course of a life in one moment.
WEEK TWO: June 8, 2024
Chapter 2—Good Eye, Bad Eye: Emergency treatment and hospitalization, 1950s-style. Then returning home with one blind, disfigured eye. The first stirrings of shame due to my abnormal appearance.
WEEK THREE: June 15, 2024
Chapter 3—Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion: Bullying, self-loathing, and the yearning for normalcy. Getting my first artificial eye at age 10.
LIVE WEBINAR: Tuesday, June 18 @ 7-8 pm EDT: Renowned Southern author Janisse Ray on memoir and writing about family/childhood
WEEK FOUR: June 22, 2024
Chapter 4—Beautiful: Entering my teen years, marked by the longing for beauty and impossible dreams of an eye transplant or some other medical miracle.
WEEK FIVE: June 29, 2024
Chapter 5—Eyes That Will Not See: A doomed first love, which spurs mysterious dysfunction in my seeing eye, plus the compelling stories of others who've lost their sight due to emotional trauma. An explanation of conversion disorder. My dawning understanding of the effects of trauma on the mind-body system.
WEEK SIX: July 6, 2024
Chapter 6—Finding the Other: The difficulty of romantic relationships when shame is the shadowy third party. Marriage to my first husband, who was also disabled. Our discovery of Buddhism and establishing a meditation center. Divorce, then marriage to my second husband who is, finally, "the other."
LIVE WEBINAR: Author Q&A, Tuesday July 9 @ 7 to 8 pm EDT.
WEEK SEVEN: July 13, 2024
Chapter 7—The Brain’s Smoke Alarm: 3D movies that look flat to me, thoughtless comments from well-meaning people, gory film scenes—the unexpected challenges reminding me, over and over, that I'm not normal. A look at how the brain handles emotional "triggers" that send us into a trauma response. How I discovered somatic and earth-based therapies.
SHORT FILM: Nature Therapy Practices
WEEK EIGHT: July 20, 2024
Chapter 8—Blindsided: The worst 10 minutes of my life, during what should have been a mundane visit to the local DMV office. Self-identifying, for the first time, as a “disabled” person.
WEEK NINE: July 27, 2024
Chapter 9—An Eye for an I: The unique relationship between a half-blind person and their ocularist, the skilled clinician who makes them whole and normal, with two matching eyes.
LIVE WEBINAR: Tuesday, July 30 @ 7-8 pm EDT: Ocularist Emma Boyd on the art and science of making artificial eyes
WEEK TEN: August 3, 2024
Chapter 10—Face to Face: How I stumbled into two professions—journalism and psychotherapy—that would challenge me to face people, eye to eye. Starts with a scene in which I’m interviewing Emily Lyons, the Alabama nurse who gained national attention after nearly dying in an abortion clinic bombing.
WEEK ELEVEN: August 10, 2024
Chapter 11—Ten Thousand Joys, Ten Thousand Sorrows: Finding a spiritual path where my eyes are closed most of the time and which emphasizes "inner" sight vs. outer. My decades-long friendship with Venerable H. Gunaratana, the highest-ranking Theravada Buddhist monk in America, and writing his autobiography together.
LIVE WEBINAR: Tuesday, August 13 @ 7-8 pm EDT: Buddhist monk and scholar Bhante Saddhajeewa on the practice of mindfulness (including a guided meditation)
WEEK TWELVE: August 17, 2024
Chapter 12—Kyaswa Monastery: A month of silent meditation practice on the other side of the world at an ancient Buddhist center in Burma.
SHORT FILM: Home Buddhist Practice
WEEK THIRTEEN: August 24, 2024
Chapter 13—Noble Silence: Meditative nature walks called Silent Hikes, the value of silence in spiritual practice, and how hard it is to find true silence in our noisy world.
VIDEO: A brief silent walk through a mountain cove forest
WEEK FOURTEEN: August 31, 2024
Chapter 14—Kintsukuroi: The power of community to heal trauma (my own, and helping my psychotherapy clients discover this). The symbolism of the broken-and-repaired bowl.
LIVE WEBINAR: Wednesday, September 4, @ 7-8 pm EDT: Trauma therapist and author Martha Paradis on healing from trauma
WEEK FIFTEEN: September 7, 2024
Chapter 15—Meeting Awareness: The challenge of having my portrait painted by an artist friend. Discovering that I have my own brand of normal, even with only one eye.
VIDEO: Professional artist Susan Watson on painting the soul (pre-recorded from her art studio in Juneau, Alaska)
WEEK SIXTEEN: September 14, 2024
Chapter 16—The Eye of God: Viewing the splendor of a total solar eclipse alongside 50,000 other people, and realizing that being a monocular does not diminish my capacity for joy nor my ability to experience beauty.
LIVE WEBINAR: Wednesday, September 18 @ 7-8 pm EDT: Professional eclipse chaser Rick Brown and author Jim Melvin on the thrill of witnessing a total solar eclipse
WEEK SEVENTEEN: September 21, 2024
Chapter 17—Search for the Truth: Confronting my mother for the real story of my injury—two times, twenty years apart—until finally she could admit the truth. Then discovering that she left even more truth for me to find after her death … at last, a lie uncovered and the full story of my accident.
WEEK EIGHTEEN: September 28, 2024
Epilogue: An encounter with a kitchen knife, 65 years after the first time. Also, a brief meditation on karma and the Buddha’s teachings related to suffering and impermanence. Finding peace about what happened to me at age 2.
Acknowledgments
NOTE: Subscriptions to “Rx Nature” and “Good Eye, Bad Eye” are separate. Even if you’re currently a subscriber to “Rx Nature” (either free or paid), you’ll need to subscribe separately to “Good Eye, Bad Eye.” For one more week, all subscriptions to “Good Eye, Bad Eye” are free. If you subscribe now, you’ll have access to all the posts I made there throughout April and May. On June 1, when the first chapter of the book drops, I’ll open up the paid subscription option. At that time, if you upgrade your “Good Eye, Bad Eye” sub to paid, you’ll receive a new chapter each week. The serialization will span four months, June through September.
I am IN. I'll be subscribing first thing June 1. I want this book. When I first went off to college I was under a tremendous amount of stress and I got something called ocular herpes. It's a cold sore, basically, that migrates to the eye. For a long while I had to wear a bandage and an eye patch. There are so many emotions tied up in the loss of sight, even half-sight. Thank you for writing this.
Yay! I’m positive you’ll remind us again because I don’t want to miss it!