Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: A Stitch of Time
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WEBSITE: http://astitchoftime.com/
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LC control no.: n 2016033787
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016033787
HEADING: Marks, Lauren
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PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, graduate; The Graduate Center at City University of New York, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Actress, director, and dramaturg.
AWARDS:Recipient of grants from Bread Loaf Writing Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VCCA France, Ragdale, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yaddo.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to Brain World, Fresh Yarn, and Huffington Post.
SIDELIGHTS
At age twenty-seven, actress, director, and dramaturg Lauren Marks suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm leaving her with the language disorder, aphasia. She has written about her ordeal in various publications, including Brain World, Fresh Yarn, and Huffington Post. Her 2017 memoir, A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life, chronicles her illness and recovery. She also works in the United Kingdom with the International Communication Project and at Connect, a London charity for people with language disorders. A Los Angeles native, Marks is a New York University, Tisch School of the Arts graduate and was pursuing a Ph.D. at The Graduate Center at City University of New York. Before her illness, she spent a decade in professional theater.
In 2017 A Stitch of Time, Marks recounts her story recovering from brain injury and her work with other victims. Visiting Scotland to perform at an international fringe festival in Edinburgh, she suffered an aneurysm in her brain and woke up in a hospital with aphasia, which causes reading, speaking, and writing disabilities. She started a journal to record the results of her brain injury and how it changed the way she perceived her environment and herself. She needed to review and revive her entire identity crafted around language and performance. In addition, her book includes information on clinical research about aphasia and linguistics, and charities for people with similar illnesses.
Her injury allowed Marks to create “the quiet” in her mind and to ponder the meaning of identity. In an interview with Karina Gallego online at The Joyful Approach, Marks explained: “It’s nice to think of the self as a unified whole” but it’s not true. She added: “I’m prone to occasionally having that sort of process but something said, I know part of that is the illusion of self the brain can create. It is working on so many disparate abilities and operations and as soon as some of those change, it loses the self.”
“This is an intimate chronicle of a surprisingly common condition, aphasia, the loss of language,” noted Booklist contributor Karen Springen. A Kirkus Reviews writer commented: “The book’s self-exploration of its patient’s inner voice, frightening surgical interventions, and delicate recovery is captivating, but the ups and downs of her personal life are less so.” In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer said: “Marks gives an inside account of a brain in the act of healing” which includes the good, the bad, complications, hope, and information for others suffering from aphasia.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2017, Karen Springen, review of A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life, p. 9.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2017, review of A Stitch of Time.
Publishers Weekly, November 28, 2016, review of A Stitch of Time, p. 57.
ONLINE
Joyful Approach, http://thejoyfulapproach.com/ (September 1, 2017), Karina Gallego, author interview.
Lauren Marks Website, http://astitchoftime.com (September 1, 2017), author profile.*
BIO
BIOGRAPHY
Lauren Marks is a Los Angeles native and a New York University, Tisch School of the Arts graduate. In the United States, she spent a decade in professional theater and pursued a PhD at The Graduate Center at City University of New York. Lauren was an Emerging Voices Fellow for PEN Center USA. She has been awarded grants from the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), VCCA France, Ragdale, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yaddo.
In the UK, she became involved in the International Communication Project, and worked as a peer leader at Connect, the premiere London charity serving people with acquired language disorders. She helped forge several collaborations between artistic and disabled communities, including the massive interdisciplinary project "Stroke Odysseys."
Storytelling events include Second Story (Chicago, IL), The Moth (Los Angeles), the West Hollywood Book Fair, Silverlake Jubilee, Hotel Café, The Hammer Museum, and the L.A. Book Fair. Speaking engagements include California State University Northridge (Department of Speech and Language Disorders), UC San Diego (Brain and Cognition Lab-director VS Ramachandran), Royal College of Art in London (Visual Art), and University College London (Psychology and Language Sciences). Among her several publishing credits are the Chicago Tribune, Seymour Magazine, and Nautilus Magazine.
Lauren remains an active advocate for those who live with language disorders like aphasia. A STITCH OF TIME is her first book.
Lauren Marks is a Los Angeles native and a New York University, Tisch School of the Arts graduate. She spent a decade in professional theater and pursued a PhD at The Graduate Center at City University of New York. When she was twenty-seven, she suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm and documented her recovery through journals and writing. Her work has appeared in Brain World, Fresh Yarn, and the Huffington Post. She has been awarded grants from the Bread Loaf Writing Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VCCA France, Ragdale, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yaddo. In London, she has been an active advocate for those who live with language disorders like aphasia. A Stitch of Time is her first book.
News Opinion Commentary
Commentary: How our health care system falls short compared with those in other countries
Massachussetts To Enact Mandatory Health Insurance Law
A doctor reads a blood pressure gauge during an examination of a patient at the Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester, Mass. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
Lauren Marks
I was four months pregnant, living in London, when American friends began to openly express their concern about why I wasn't moving back home to Los Angeles before the birth. "Doesn't it worry you to be so far away from your community?" one asked. "Don't you want to have an American baby?" asked another. I can't be sure what motivated these questions, but I suspect their fears were less about the emotional impact of giving birth overseas, as opposed to an unspoken anxiety about my baby's safety and my own under socialized medicine.
However, my decision to have the child in England was entirely deliberate. My husband was born in Lebanon; I was born in the United States. As far as the "American baby" issue was concerned, I assured those who asked, "The baby can be American because I am American." Beyond that, I thoroughly trusted the United Kingdom's National Health Service. After all, it wouldn't be the first time the NHS had my life in its hands.
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In August 2007, I was an actor/director working in Scotland. On a night off, while doing karaoke with friends, I collapsed onstage. An aneurysm had ruptured in my brain, and when I woke from my emergency neurosurgery, I was diagnosed with a condition called aphasia. I was 27 and had largely lost my abilities to speak, read and write. It was not yet clear what level of recovery I could expect at that point, or how long that might take.
With a brain aneurysm there are two equally valid approaches to intervention — "coiling" or "clipping." The biggest distinction between them is that one requires open brain surgery, the other addresses the injury without breaking into the skull. In Scotland, the medical team decided to coil, the less invasive of the procedures. If I had been in the United States, the treatment options would've been the same. But, my post-op experience would have been radically different. The NHS not only saved my life; it didn't plunge me into an ocean of debt.
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According to the Healthcare BlueBook, any kind of brain aneurysm repair in the U.S. costs roughly $64,952, though the price could be five times as much depending on the hospital. Citizens in the U.K. receive that same care for free. As an American traveling abroad, I was required to pay for my services, but even after two ambulances took me to two hospitals, where I received a neuro-operation and round the clock care for weeks, my bill was $4,000. In total.
When I returned to the states, I was unable to continue living on my own, and moved back into my parents' house while I began speech and language therapy. Unfortunately, within seven months of my arrival, I needed another neurosurgery. This time, doctors opted for the direct craniotomy approach in an attempt to clip the aneurysm. But aneurysms aren't foreign bodies and cannot be removed like tumors; they are weaknesses in the arteries themselves — like potholes on roads — yet still part of the circulatory system that keeps us alive. At the time of my second operation, Barack Obama was not yet president, and though I had private insurance then, every day leading up to the surgery my family and I fretted that my insurance would drop me, or refuse to pay my claims. Being so high risk would've made shopping for another company impossible. At some point though, my injury did opt me into Medicare early, long before either of my parents.
Complications from aneurysms do have high fatality rates, but an aneurysm in your brain isn't a death sentence. Still, it requires a lifetime of observation, and sometimes intervention. An aneurysm becomes impossible to live with when affordable health care ceases to be readily available. The protection of Medicare was the promise my body would never bankrupt me.
My specific Medicare enrollment was provisional, directly linked to my level of disability. When physically able, I enlisted in a government program called Ticket to Work, partially designed to help people like me keep our Medicare until we are fully employed again. My path back to employment was somewhat atypical, since my first real paycheck came in the form of a book advance, to complete a memoir chronicling my injuries. And the project took longer than I expected — there are unique challenges writing about a language disorder while living with the affects of that language disorder. Without this program, I would've been in real trouble.
Over these years, I fell in love and married, and in 2013 my husband's work brought me back to the U.K. While living abroad, I kept my Medicare, paying monthly Medicare gap premiums for services rarely used. My general practitioner was in England, my neurosurgeon in California. I had annual brain scans while on holiday in Los Angeles, but filled my prescriptions in London. In the U.S., my Advair, a medication for my lifelong asthma, costs $300 to $400 per inhaler, while in the U.K., I'd fill two inhalers for approximately $10, a price fixed by the government, with no variance between pharmacies. Having somewhat regrettable neuroanatomy doesn't make me a health care system expert, but I will say the care in both countries was excellent. The only difference was the price tag.
While tracking changes in the American health care landscape, my focus gradually shifted from brains to babies. As my friends began getting pregnant, I watched their erratic medical bills tick into thousands of dollars (up to 10 times more if they required fertility treatments). I was shocked, especially because, despite a new tax instated during our time in England that required noncitizen residents to make an annual payment of nearly $800 into the NHS, all pregnancy-related doctors visits, from the first ultrasound to the delivery room, were free. About to embark on the journey to motherhood, this reliable, straightforward system put me much more at ease.
This past fall we were finally ready for a move back to the United States. My husband's green card was in order; our son's nationality was firmly established by his American passport. My parents even offered their back house to ease the transition. My Medicare was intact, and our flight was scheduled for Nov. 15, 2016.
Never predicting the outcome of the election, I did return "home," but watched a worrying baseline being established in the new health care debate. In the broadest of terms: Obamacare has provided assistance to those who have trouble paying, while proposed Republican plans provide help and support based on age (favoring the elderly), instead of need.
There are many things still subject to change, but this much is clear to me: Health care issues don't begin with retirement. My life altered dramatically as a result of a brain injury in my 20s — and a health care system that wasn't designed to profit from my illness is the reason I'm alive today.
My friends were right about one thing: Raising my child around my close community, in a place I love, is comforting. But only time will tell if I can afford to be an American again.
Lauren Marks, whose book, "A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life," is forthcoming in May by Simon & Schuster.
Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune
A version of this article appeared in print on April 24, 2017, in the News section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "The foreign body - How our health care system falls short compared with those in other countries" — Today's paper | Subscribe
An Interview with Lauren Marks; Author of A Stitch of Time – The Year A Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life
By Karina Gallego
Lauren Marks
Writer
Author of A Stitch of Time – The Year A Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life
What is your educational background? Training?
BFA in performance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Attended The Graduate Center at the City University of New York pursuing a PhD in Theatre, but my path veered dramatically when I had my brain injury.
Beginning
When Lauren was 27, she was touring a show for the international fringe festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. and while she was performing on stage she had a brain aneurysm rupture. After the emergency operation, she mainly lost her ability to speak, read and write. Her life as an actor, director and PhD student in New York ceased, and the course of her life radically changed direction. The book follows a year on her language recovery journey. As one might expect, there was a lot of changes in her family, romantic relationships, and living situation. It was “a lot of challenge and lot of joy”, Lauren said with a smile in her voice .
I read Lauren’s book and was completely blown away by her story. It’s a true reflection of her intelligence and resilience. While interviewing her, I could not believe that her voice belonged to the same woman I was reading about. After a few minutes into our conversation, I was struck with disbelief: Is this really the voice of Lauren who had such a tragic accident 10 years ago?!” It was a little surreal because I felt so connected to her after reading her story and to hear her expressing herself so beautifully brought me so much happiness. During our interview I didn’t want to just talk about her book, I wanted to get to know the woman who was able to accomplish so much.
Our conversation lasted more than an hour and I couldn’t get enough of her humor and her sincere laugh. Lauren is real and down to earth and she really reflected that in her book. However, Lauren is quite humble and modest with herself as well. She’s hesitant to give advice to others because she believes we’re “wired” differently. Lauren says, “neurologically, what drives us is so different. So i can only (give advice) to myself, really, and hope that people that does resonate with, they have petual. And for people that doesn’t resonate with, something to ignore…” (she chuckles).
People always dream or talk about writing a book about their life experiences but many just don’t find that spark that pushes them to do it. I wanted to know what tools or processes helped Lauren be successful in her project. Even though Lauren’s spoken language is at a very high level now, she still struggles with aspects of her language disorder. Lauren says these ongoing symptoms of her brain injury require, “ a lot of patience, but it’s become my new normal to use software and know that it’s going to take me longer than most other writers to do certain things”. This is a reminder that we cannot always accomplish projects from one day to the next. Like in yoga, we need to accept where we are and come to terms with it to allow ourselves the space and time to move forward. It took Lauren ten years to finish her book without a clear path of where her idea really would take her. We’re all so different and face different challenges in life. Lauren has learned ways to do things differently but I think that anyone with or without aphasia can also take note on how she gets things done!
Like many other people who have acquired aphasia, Lauren’s insurance only covered the first six months of speech therapy. Lauren said, “the book itself” as being “this incredibly long, personalized session of therapy. I was working through my injury while I was experiencing my injury”. She continued to add, “part of my injury meant that I didn’t always know my injury. The brain is the organ of perception but when there’s an injury to the brain there can be injury to your perception too.” Lauren couldn’t understand the scope of her language deficiencies until she had the ability to reflect on them later. It was a very humbling and very scary moment to realize how damaged her language was. Soon after her initial panic, her innate curiosity propelled her to a journey that would end up in a published book.
The book was written as a personal account to describe the process of learning language and how it occasionally involves an engine of delusion in order to get to the next step. She was interested in the topic of herself but focused on “how do we do these things?” kind of questions. Lauren explained that during the development in children they always think they’re at a fine level, “so as an adult it was pretty amazing to see that same engine, it was interesting to think that some things were fine when they were not fine. That’s something that got me interested in the topic of myself in a way that wasn’t completely self absorbed.” And in addition to her own curiosity, was the support of her family.
Even though Lauren did not receive an income from her writing most of the time, it was her job. And she dedicated her time in a concentrated way. After her speech and language therapies she would go home and dedicate six or seven hours to her writing “in whatever way that might manifest itself” and listening to music without words, like the flute music of Hariprasad Chaurasia or the piano pieces from The Rachels. She mentioned that a portion of her first draft was actually what got her her first writing residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Showing us that even though we may not think our work is perfect, it’s good enough for others to recognize its value. But the only way to get there is to find what helps you create content to propel your ideas forward.
Lauren also accepted the natural development and change that her piece was taking. At first she felt that she was just writing about her personal experience but after re-acquiring the comprehension skills to understand scientific texts,she incorporated research into her work using text-to- speech technology
because at this stage she was still struggling to read. For Lauren, aphasia affects her in ways that we may never understand but she explained, “It may seem like a small thing but I don’t always see the small bits of a sentence, it just sort of disappears on the page for me. But if you’re reading a scientific paper, the difference between ‘of’ and ‘for’ can be the difference between the cause and the effect”. Lauren needed to create a “toolbox” to become a different kind of writer to finish the book. Every developmental step within her recovery changed how her process worked. And being able to recognize that and adapt is what allowed Lauren’s project to progress. Many people tend to find themselves stuck in the middle of a project because they can’t figure out a way to move forward but Lauren quickly learned the importance of diversifying her talents.
In the book, Lauren talks about “the quiet”. It was one of the topics I found most interesting about her experience because she described it as an unintentional moment of pure meditation; a state of deep peace that occurs when the mind is silent. Her aphasia affected her ability to talk to herself. I remember this part that really resonated with me, which was her excitement for getting dressed in the morning because she was fascinated by the space and distance between her skin and her clothes. She also remembered how she would just stare out the window watching the trees blowing in the wind and transitioning throughout the day. I was mind blown by this idea because I never thought that an injury to your language center would affect one’s ability to talk and think to oneself, creating “the quiet” in the mind.
Lauren believes that “It’s nice to think of the self as a unified whole” but she knows it’s not true. “I’m prone to occasionally having that sort of process but something said, I know part of that is the illusion of self the brain can create. It is working on so many disperate abilities and operations and as soon as some of those change, it loses the self”, she explained.
I have always been interested in the topic of how identification with the self creates a greater level of consciousness within us. Meditation is the main technique used for millennia to achieve this higher level of consciousness. Throughout history, humans have always sought out a way to channel the self into our daily lives to live more mindfully. And to find a greater purpose to our being that our distorted perception does not allow us to connect with.
So it got me thinking about so many things. For example, the importance of meditation for the brain, especially when the brain is injured. Does it consciously tap into this state of meditation as a form of healing itself? Did “the quiet” have any effect to Lauren’s personality after she was able to regain her language ability? Lauren expressed that she really wants her book to have “a much more lasting effect in the therapeutic, medical and biological realm”. The questions of how language affects thought have not been answered yet. Lauren wants the dialogues between the patients and clinicians to further research and says, “even though the book is for lay readership, I do want these questions to be asked and I want them to be investigated in more thoughtful ways”. This is something new for people learning about aphasia because it’s always been considered as an elderly persons disorder. But to have the first-hand experience of a young, vibrant, intellectual woman has really allowed for more questions to be asked about the disorder. This is one of the reasons Laurens story so valuable.
Did you continue seeking a meditation practice?
I was always interested in religion. I’ve had a yoga practice since I was 15 and as a young religious studies student I had an initial distaste for the idea of doing yoga because I thought it was way too commercialized and it was totally misunderstood by the western yogi’s. And that remains to be true. Yoga is highly commercialized and to think that doing these postures is the essence of yoga when it’s the smallest element of it. That being said, I came around to say that yoga is much more resilient than what is trying to be sold from it. It is still absolutely beneficial. I never found anything that engages all parts of my body and mind as a very productive asana. It remains helpful.So in spite of my reservations about how our society builds it and embraces with a very limited understanding of it, it’s still more resilient than our approach to it. And as far as meditation, I think for several years “THE QUIET’ was readily accessible, now it is much more deliberate- my meditation practice. And I must admit, ever since my son was born I haven’t been much on the mat because every minute is the next emergency. But it is something that I did throughout my pregnancy too. Sitting through meditation is a deliberate practice now and it’s not just that I slip into quiet now the way that I used to. I think the only thing that I would say about that is, even though its deliberate, it’s not esoteric. Meaning that I think a lot of people meditate hoping to find something there and they ask themselves “was that it? Did I almost get it?” and for me I know it’s already there. Even if I can’t always tap that wave exactly, I have felt it, I know it exists. It’s not like a search in vein. The knowledge that is there is enough to make the practice valuable.
It’s clearly there and even if you don’t have a spiritual practice, I use the neuroanatomical lens as well saying that the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere are perceptual engines and they are equally valuable. And if our left hemisphere is the more verbal hemisphere, in silence we become much more aware of an egoless perseptual state.Where we all have the ability to feel part and parcel of the world and not of the narrator of the world. And quietly putting ourselves at the front of it all. But writing about a language disorder or writing about meditative practices or quiet is in many ways undoing the thing itself. I’m aware of it and it’s one of the reasons i’m not super interested in writing about myself again because there’s a trap to it. It’s a challenge to always balance to say “I am this” and “I did this” without being caught up in your own narration because time and time again neurological studies prove that the left hemisphere is a meaning making machine. Both parts of the hemisphere are but the storytelling machine will tell a story whether or not it’s true. They will put together the smallest information to create a story because that’s how we survive in the world and that is really in most ways beneficial and very beautiful. But when you start believing your own story, it has its own drawbacks.
When you first found out when you were pregnant, were you nervous about being a mother with a disability? And perhaps not having the support or community? What were your challenges as a new mother with a neurological injury?
My pregnancy was planned and it was a challenge for me because as a person who’s gone through neurological injury, my menstruations have never became normal. Through acupuncture or through herbs. I never pursued deep medications to try to reset my cycle because I still have a period, it’s just completely and utterly inconsistent. Like it can be 5 weeks in between cycles and I think in the book I mention that I didn’t have a period for two year.
So my husband and I knew that that was the work we were up to. That being said, I did have concerns about having a high risk pregnancy. I also continued to, I don’t want to say actively worry because I don’t let it become that but I wonder and certainly hope that my son did not inherit my neurobiology. I hope that he doesn’t have any aneurysm and i hope that he doesn’t the capacity even have them form. But i do know that aneurysms are more common in the brain that anyone may have anticipated. 1 out of 50th person a person have a brain aneurysm. And it doesn’t mean that they’re going to have any issue with it.
I have a very resilient partner who dealt with some of the biggest challenges of the world as a human rights researcher. I think between the two of us we’re very aware of the challenges of the world. My language disorder sometimes affects us. This has been something between a third and a fourth of my entire life now. It is hard to even think about living without it. It’s not something that i have to deal with in any active sense really. Yes, i’m working with it every day but i’ve worked with it so long that the work feels a little invisible.
“There can be a very thin line dividing the mistaken and the miraculous. There can be direction, even in the misstep.” I don’t want to come across as overly spiritual I don’t want to say that there’s not such thing as a mistake meaning like everything is intended, i’m not saying that. But there never has to be a mistake because it is what takes us to the next thing. It is what informs a much, it has at least the potential to take that lesson in a positive light and the potential to inform all the better decision we make from then on.
And sometimes the mistake and the non deliberate action will take you to your husband or your speech therapist or to a discovery.
I think we overly prize the deliberate actions and undervalue the unintentional discovery.
What’s going on in your life after tackling this great feat of finishing a book and now being a mother?
I work part-time, trying to stay as active in disability advocacy. In London I had a much more active role at a speech and language center for people who’ve acquired language disorders (aphasia, basically). In general, it’s not just people with disabilities I feel compelled to champion. Just any section of unheard voices is part of what my next steps are.
In Los Angeles there’s this organization called POPS which stands for Pain of the Prison System. I work as the communications director for them, in a part-time role because it’s a relatively new organization. It helps children at the high school level who are affected from the prison system, usually with a loved one who’s been incarcerated or is currently incarcerated. It’s because there’s such a need in this country, we have such a tremendous incarceration rate. The numbers are pretty hard to pin down with the most reliable figure seems to be 1 out of every 15th child who has experience of parental incarceration.
The fact is that children in our society are suffering with the shame and stigma and the unwillingness if not, the inability to express themselves. There’s a lot of things that force them to silence. Whether it be an actual language disorder or societal challenges, I do find myself really drawn to championing unheard voices. It also suits my life as a mother, for the role being part-time and being a Los Angeles based organization, however it’s also national, you can look them up at popstheclub.com. They are standing and I really hope that as my child is getting a little older, I hope that the organization becomes a more substantial part of my life. I certainly believe in their mission. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful work come out of these kids. Writing is the touchstone and there’s a lot of visual art. As the generation that started it 4 years ago, a lot of them just graduated from college and working in the community facility as self-advocates. They speak for themselves about how children are affected by prison and that’s the goal! To create people who can work on their own behalves so someone is not speaking for them. It’s a theme throughout my book, I felt anger or frustration when I had people talk about me like my father’s emails or my friend including me in her book. That doesn’t mean I don’t love them, gosh I couldn’t love them anymore but there’s a lot of frustration when someone translates you because there’s always going to be mistranslation. So the more people have opportunities to speak for themselves, even if that means in very limited way, like people with aphasia may only re-aquire 50 words in their vocabulary, but communication is a human right. So that’s going to be a lifetime goal for me to keep working in that direction.
What advice would you give someone on fear holding them back from pursuing something what they want to do? I told you that curiosity would come back and here it has. It is interesting that when i had more language abilities, when i was able to multitask, when i was more preinjury, quick witted, capable and could read incredibly quickly and write incredibly quickly. It’s fascinating that when I had that abundance of riches linguistically, that i felt most dispirited. And now that i have so much less I was able to value the very little I had. And i think that stuck with me, the fact that i had so much more, i felt paralyzed to move forward like “how am i going to write or how am i going to work as an actor” i was plagued a lot with self doubt. I think most people are. those things are kind of built into society unfortunately. And I know that delusions are part of the equations but i started to write and work on this, i kept thinking that i was almost done. But it calls for just a sense of your own mortality does factors in a little bit.
I treat my life just how everyone treats their life. I just do what i do and I try to value what I value. But somehow I can’t tell you if it was my deliberate practice or my delusions or my curiosity or a combination of all those things and more which is what probably is more likely the case. It was a little bit of everything and the joy of reliving everything. The joy of discovering my love of language again. I am just incredibly so much more generous to myself. It doesn’t mean that i don’t have moment of self doubt but I just don’t indulge in them. They happen but i think there is some value in looking at yourself critically.
Self criticism is not the problem. Its dwelling in it.
I just kind of get off the hamster wheel before it goes too far.
I wasn’t being sincere if i didn’t look at the deep darkest places.
Letting yourself off the hook, examining yourself. I hate to give prescribed advice because people go through different paths but for myself that was my advice. So whether or not people want to take that and i use it, i don’t know but i would say for myself, be driven by curiosity, allow self criticism, but do not dwell on it. The curiosity is much more valuable. Your intuition. Your creativity. Your empathy. Your openness, your alertness to what happens around you, all of these things are so valuable and the potential for self criticism to drown those things out… it’s serious. And in many ways indulgent.
In a societal level, you’re sort of encouraged to dwell on that. And what that means is that we’re not dwelling in other things that are really necessary; treating each other well, looking at what’s happening in the world. It is indulgent to keep looking only inward with disdain. I mean, that is a lot of work. That takes a lot of hours of the day. And there are other things you can be doing for each other.
What does the joyful approach mean to you? / How do you try to live joyfully?
Nurturing curiosity and purpose, in myself and those around me. Sharing this life with people who nourish and inspire me. Being a source of joy in others’ lives.
Conclusion?
The lessons that I’ve learned from her experience is something that I’m going to hold in my heart forever. I know that she may not know it but her story was more than just a glimpse at the effects of aphasia, it was a glimpse of human determination. How we’re capable of so much even in times when we feel we’ve lost all ability to be who we used to be or lost all ability to express ourselves. I feel like we get bogged down with thoughts that may paralyze us or our dreams. We don’t find the drive to pursue and successfully execute an idea. Writing this piece on Lauren was a challenge for me because I wanted to convey the beauty of this human’s soul through my words. However, I do not believe I’m a good enough writer to give her story any justice, you will just have to read her book yourselves. So in a way, her story has been very healing for me and I’ve learned great lessons from her shared wisdom.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
In the summer of 2007, I was a PhD student, an American actor/director, touring a show to the International Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Until the night of my collapse. When I woke up from my emergency surgery, I was told that an aneurysm had ruptured in my brain. I was diagnosed as having “aphasia”—I was 27 years old, and I had largely lost my abilities to speak, read, and write.
A STITCH OF TIME mainly follows the twelve months from September 2007 to August 2008, the year following the aneurysm’s rupture.
This memoir heavily relies on the use of raw materials in the telling of its story. The book operates with a narrative, but also interacts with documents produced during the most language-impaired periods—allowing readers to glimpse the intricate machinations of a mind in construction.
To learn more about brain aneurysms, please visit the Links page on this website or explore the Brain Aneurysm Foundation.
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Marks, Lauren: A STITCH OF TIME
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Marks, Lauren A STITCH OF TIME Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 5, 2 ISBN: 978-1-4516-9751-3
A young woman is forced to unpack her own mind after suffering a life-threatening brain aneurysm.For a book about a
woman whose brain nearly killed her and left her personality inexorably changed, there's a counterintuitively strong
sense of ego in this illuminating debut memoir by writer and activist Marks. On Aug. 23, 2007, the author, a theater
actress and director, was singing karaoke in a bar in Edinburgh when she collapsed onstage. She awoke to a
phenomenon she describes as "the Quiet," a changed sense of consciousness attributed to the massive aneurysm that
might have killed her. Her most profound symptom was not distress but aphasia, a critically compromised ability to
read, write, or speak. Much of the material is awkward yet strangely expressive--Marks shares copies of her first
abortive attempts to write--but it's also revelatory about the process of recovery. "In my journals, a discovered word
was a sacrament--a thing I could write," she remembers. "And if I could write the thing, I could read it. If I could read
the thing, I could often say it. The process indicated that there was much more to explore, a rapturous language life that
could be sought, and more importantly, found." The book's self-exploration of its patient's inner voice, frightening
surgical interventions, and delicate recovery is captivating, but the ups and downs of her personal life are less so. It's
uncomfortable to see Marks lash out at her father ("You cannot write about this. None of this. No more EMAILS. NO
BOOK. NOT EVER.") and equally so to experience the protracted death of her relationship with a boyfriend. Still,
while the book lacks the sweetness of Jessica Fechtor's Stir (2015) or the scientific detachment of Jill Bolte Taylor's
My Stroke of Insight (2008), readers will be compelled by the journey of a writer whose voice, however changed,
remains her own. A cerebral travelogue from a writer revealing how she got from there to here.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Marks, Lauren: A STITCH OF TIME." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487668410&it=r&asid=a8e652a17f9ca87af92d2c31f55101f6.
Accessed 6 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487668410
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A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury
Changed My Language and Life
Karen Springen
Booklist.
113.15 (Apr. 1, 2017): p9.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life.
By Lauren Marks.
May 2017. 368p. Simon & Schuster, $26 (9781451697513); e-book (9781451697612). 616.1.
Like Susannah Cahalans Brain on Fire (2012), Marks' memoir retraces a period during which she faced an unexpected
health challenge that changed her very identity. A pathogen invaded her body and jump-started brain inflammation,
paranoia, and seizures, making her walk and talk like a late-stage Alzheimer's patient. Marks also experienced a
hemorrhagic stroke that damaged tissues and cells in her brain and impaired her abilities to speak and write. Drawing
on the diary she started in the hospital and kept up in 2007 and 2008, Marks raises such significant questions as "What
kinds of thoughts are impossible without our full, natural language?" This is an intimate chronicle of a surprisingly
common condition, aphasia, the loss of language following brain injury. One in 250 people experience it, making it
more common than Parkinson's or multiple sclerosis. They and their families will undoubtedly identify with many of
the issues Marks addresses. Especially helpful is the concluding "Afterthoughts and suggested reading," which
provides an epilogue on Marks' condition and excellent resources.--Karen Springen
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Springen, Karen. "A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2017,
p. 9. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491487817&it=r&asid=a8f0d47e142e7dbcdd25915ed639cd4a.
Accessed 6 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491487817
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A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury
Changed My Language and Life
Publishers Weekly.
263.48 (Nov. 28, 2016): p57.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life
Lauren Marks. Simon & Schuster, $26, (256p) ISBN 978-1-4516-9751-3
On a trip to Scotland in 2007, Marks, who was then 27, suffered a brain aneurysm that left her unable comprehend the
written word and made it difficult for her to communicate verbally. In this engrossing memoir, she takes readers on a
journey of the ever-fascinating mind and her own long road to recovery. Through her journal entries and notes, she
describes what it's like to come back from debilitating brain injury. She explores how we understand language and why
it makes up so much of one's sense of self. The story is broken into four parts, with markers for each month of her first
year of recovery. Marks gives an inside account of a brain in the act of healing--including all the ups, downs, and
complications-- and also supplies useful information for those suffering from aphasia, including a detailed list of books
and studies by others. Marks provides a story of hope. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life." Publishers Weekly, 28 Nov. 2016, p. 57.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473149937&it=r&asid=78b82b9d113bf6d156f3400dcc14cb13.
Accessed 6 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473149937
Susan K Perry Ph.D.
Creating in Flow
What If Your Mind Lost Its Words?
A new memoir offers insight into relearning language after an aneurism ruptures.
Posted Jun 05, 2017
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Brenton Nicholls/FreeImages
Source: Brenton Nicholls/FreeImages
I try to imagine what it would be like if I could stop talking to myself inside my mind all day long. I suppose practiced meditators can do that for periods of time. But to live without words?
Aphasia affects one out of every 250 people. Living without language or with severely impaired communication abilities changes the way we think about who we are. Few people have been able to write first-person accounts like the one that has just come out: A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life by Lauren Marks.
Marks graduated from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and spent a decade pursuing a career in theater. She did some work toward a Ph.D. but had to stop when an aneurysm burst in her brain. She was patched up in time to be one of the few survivors of such an incident, though more surgery was to come.
In this, her first book, published a decade after she began recovering her mental faculties, she details the long journey from who she used to be to who she is now. Here's a paragraph about her homecoming (to her parents' home, not her apartment in New York):
As my grandmother joined me at the kitchen table, she surveyed the contents of the care packages that had amassed there: a stuffed elephant, a box of markers ... romantic comedies starring Sarah Jessica Parker. And there were so many letters, many from people I hardly knew, but all addressed to me. Gram patted my arm, her touch soft as a peach.
It's like Queen for a Day in here, she said. How does it feel to get so much attention, honey?
Feel? I didn't feel anything about it. Was I supposed to? I'd left most of the gifts unopened and the cards unread. They all said the same thing anyway: Get well soon. The whole concept was baffling to me.
Her story is not the downer you might suppose, as Marks has a level of resilience one can envy. She had to relearn so much, but saw those second-time "firsts" as gifts to be relished. She also had to re-negotiate her relationships: with her brother, her boyfriend, and her lifelong friends. And of course, with herself.
She interweaves clinical research about aphasia and linguistics throughout the narrative of her personal experience. She acknowledges a couple of editors for their help, leaving me to wonder how much help she actually got for this smoothly written memoir. She has come an almost incredibly long way, judging from the heartbreakingly simple journal entries she shares from a decade ago.
Immeasurable family support, a network of loving friends, the best medical care, tenacity, psychological insight, and intelligence all played a role in Lauren Marks' story. It makes for very good reading.
Copyright (c) 2017 by Susan K. Perry, author of Kylie’s Heel
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About the Author
Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.
Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., is a social psychologist and author. Her current focus is on the creative aspects of rationality and atheism.