THE BODY ALONE

An acute examination of pain.

Lohman, founder and publisher of the literary journal Brink, makes a moving book debut with a lyrical meditation on the “land of in-between,” an invisible kingdom between sickness and wellness, that she has inhabited since 2007. “I was healthy,” she writes, “until, quite suddenly, one day I was not.” She was a 27-year-old graduate student in theology, drawn to the field because of her interest in stories, when she suffered the first of the intense, debilitating headaches that persist to this day. Consultations with medical doctors, therapists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, and alternative medicine practitioners; multiple scans and lumbar punctures; a visit to the famed Mayo Clinic—nothing revealed a cause. “The unknown,” she reflects, “elicits fear by projecting worst-case scenarios onto life’s blank spaces.” The author took a cornucopia of medications, from ibuprofen to antipsychotics, rubbed herself with peppermint oil, and tried to sink into “the deepest realm of relaxation” through yoga and massage, but got only transient relief. Understandably, frustration led to anger: “When the anger comes, words like deserve, words like fault, punishment, consequence, commit, words like always crowd my mouth. Blame.” Searching for a name for her illness, for a narrative that would give her experiences coherence, or for a place in a community of fellow sufferers, she was dismayed when she was finally diagnosed with chronic daily headaches: “less a diagnosis,” she admits, “than a description of what I already know to be true.” All facets of her identity—wife and mother, friend and co-worker—have been changed by her pain. If theologians see pain as “a portal to the divine,” Lohman has come to see it as complex and contradictory, with the potential to incite creativity—and, as her elegant prose attests, even beauty.

A graceful memoir of suffering and coping.