Nancy Mairs (1943–2016)

We disagree on so much. The connection between mind & body (she is her body; I am not, and that’s a religious statement as much as a statement of current physical realitites). She doesn’t speak for me — and she doesn’t claim to! She says, specifically, she only writes about herself!

... but we’re held together under the same rickety, tattered umbrella of “disabled” (or “crippled”, if you prefer). So it doesn’t matter that we’re different; we’re the same in the ways it show more matters.

Her description of cripples as dealing more or less courageously to their lives, with a minimum or lack of self-pity, is ... not true to my personal experience. to put it mildly. Is this because my disabilities are invisible? undiagnosed (i’m still trying)? because i’m routinely told i’m making things up? Hmm.

Suicide (euthanasia) is, she says, kinda rude. Why would someone “not want to be a burden” when caring for others is such a joyful act? You’re basically giving your family a gift!!

Well.

There is a definite preference for the cheerfully disabled, the ones who don’t complain and whine but “just get on with it”, as she says, “because you have to.”

Of course you don’t have to. There is always a choice, sometimes even more than one. And though she calls suicide to be a failure to consider the options (have you tried -not- being chronically ill?), she’s wrong: it’s okay to choose something bad for you. It’s okay to eat nothing but chocolate for the rest of your life. It’s okay to date the wrong men. It is okay to decide that you’re sick of the whole goddamn thing and you want to end it. The choice is what matters. show less

This was one of the books Martine Leavitt mentioned in a VCFA lecture on Voice. I found it interesting and, in some parts, incisive and painfully accurate. She straddles writing and academe in familiar ways, so I was sort of depressed about this also, since a lot is familiar: the hollowness of most academic writing and thought, the artificial distinctions between "real" inquiry and story-writing, etc. It was also a bit disheartening, though predictable, to see that some of the problems I show more think I face alone are really shared -- the quest to unify a life, navigate gender prisons, etc are largely structural (disheartening because they won't relent in my lifetime, I guess). Those insights are won my the fact that Mairs knows her theory, but also brings the passion of a writer determined to place her own life at the center of the writing, "keeping it real." show less

I appreciate Mairs' clear prose, socially just theology, and frank explorations of American culture. Why, then, did these essays not pop? My favorite is "Enough is Enough," a probing look at the beliefs behind our relationship to money. We need more people showing us how we work from attitudes of scarcity and teaching us to live from a sense of our tremendous abundance. Yet even this essay veered away from the conundrums presented by our attachment to material things into the less show more controversial topic of our relationship to people. I guess I wish Mairs would dig deeper into her subjects rather than skittering off to something new. show less

A different approach to the standard disabled biography. Nancy Mairs is very blunt, and at times shocking in her honesty. Her point of view is less that of a person with MS, and more from the approach of a women living life from a wheelchair. I appreciate her blunt appraisal and the various affects of an obvious disability while living life.