The Healing Power of Storytelling

Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss

By: Annie Brewster MD, Rachel Zimmerman - contributor, Rushika Fernandopulle MD - foreword, Robin Young - afterword

Narrated by: Annie Brewster MD

Reframe your story—and reclaim your life—through writing and storytelling in this “invaluable guide” (Danielle Ofri, MD, PHD, author of What Doctors Feel).

A Harvard-trained doctor draws on narrative therapy and her own multiple sclerosis diagnosis to offer chronic illness patients a way through anxiety, confusion, and trauma.

When Harvard-trained physician Dr. Annie Brewster was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001, she realized firsthand that the medical system to which she’d devoted her entire career was failing patients. The experience was dehumanizing. Her doctors weren’t listening. And the confusion, fear, and shame she felt around her diagnosis was preventing her from truly healing, claiming her story, and living her fullest, richest life.

Here, Dr. Brewster and journalist Rachel Zimmerman each share their own personal stories, acting as expert guides as you move forward on your healing journey. With exercises, reflections, writing prompts, and stories from other real patients, Dr. Brewster and Zimmerman show how you can:

• Process the difficult emotions that come with life-changing diagnosis

• Move beyond being the hero of your own story to become the author of your own story

• Craft your narrative and share it in whatever medium speaks to you

• Integrate a traumatic health event into a new and evolving identity

• Use applied storytelling techniques to strengthen connections with loved ones and care providers

• Cultivate resilience to move forward amid uncertainty and fear

The fact is, doctors can give you a life-changing diagnosis, but they’re not equipped to help you deal with the inner fallout: the confusion, anxiety, trauma, and dread that comes after “I have some bad news.” Dr. Brewster shows how writing your own unique healing story can help you process what comes next—to come to terms, create new ways to thrive, and even reclaim your personal power amid fear, change, and uncertainty.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Annie Brewster (P)2024 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

“In these pages, Dr. Annie Brewster quotes philosopher Daniel Dennett, who said 'words are potent elements of our environment,' and shows us the agency we have to shape our narratives—the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves—to bolster our sense of self and, above all, meaning. Through her own struggles, the stories of patients and participants in Healing Story Sessions, a dive into research on narrative identity, and a practical framework for storytelling, Dr. Brewster gives us an important guide for moving forward amidst struggle, using the power—the surprising, moving, mighty power—of words.”—Lucy Kalanithi, MD, FACP, clinical associate professor of medicine, Stanford University, and widow of Dr. Paul Kalanithi, author of When Breath Becomes Air

“Annie Brewster’s new book is revelatory. With the authority that comes from being a patient and a doctor simultaneously, Brewster is able to excavate the deep power of storytelling. The stories and journeys she shares—her own and others’—are riveting. The Healing Power of Storytelling is an invaluable guide for patients, families, medical professionals, and all of us ordinary mortals grappling with life.”—Danielle Ofri, MD, PHD, author of What Doctors Feel

“A beautifully written and compassionate work that highlights how deeply storytelling—by patients and doctors—helps recovery, health, and, ultimately, healing.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies