I was telling everyone about this book before I finished reading it. From friends to the swim teacher at my kid’s school. I was endorsing it left and right (brain).
‘Broken Brains’ Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland, the book I refer to inspired me to rabbit on because it’s rare to have complex conversations about health outside an appointment or catastrophe. Good health is a privilege which is sometimes taken for granted. ‘Broken Brains’ talks about it. We all get sick. Some of us get better, some live with change and for others it’s the end.
At first, I picked up ‘Broken Brains’ because of a personal interest in chronic health conditions. Another draw-card was that I enjoyed both Rizvi and Waterland’s memoirs ‘Not Just Lucky’ and ‘The Anti-Cool Girl’, completed before either turned 30 – riffing on the big early lives of ambitious and accomplished women. I loved how they wrote with intelligence, humour, and candour. This book carries that forward with aplomb.
‘Broken Brains’ details the journey of each author. As a new Mum, wife and flooring it career-wise Rizvi is diagnosed out of the blue with craniopharyngioma, a brain tumour. As a rising star in media, Waterland was living with multiple debilitating (at times) symptoms stemming from both nature and trauma, across different diagnoses impacting her mental and physical health since childhood.
The pair are so generous and vulnerable in sharing their experiences. They readily get into the nitty gritty of very different conditions. It probably sounds a little odd to be enthusiastic about this serious subject, but this book feels like a unicorn.
Being sick or caring for someone that is unwell is not one-dimensional or linear. Rizvi and Waterland cleverly and carefully express this. We turn to doctors and the internet(!) when something is amiss. ‘Broken Brains’ is another tool for your self-care kit.
Rizvi and Waterland’s nuanced and deeply personal accounts explore how being unwell affects relationships, self-worth and identity, career, how people treat you, family dynamics, making plans and finance. Nothing in life happens in isolation. That is both great and frustrating.
Told in dialogue, each author pens a chapter. It’s a great tempo with very different voices and ways of story-telling. We enjoy a contrast of an exacting fact-oriented tone mixed in with emotional transparency. We see two sides of the coin in the re-telling of how society treats you when faced with an urgent health event versus ongoing trauma that leads to invisible, but no less urgent, illness. The chapters are peppered with case studies and moments where they confide in us. The authors prompt us to see how mental and physical health can be perceived as separate but are connected. With two authors and two stories and two different conditions, duality was always going to be a big current in the book.
Feeling like something is broken in you is complex, similar to how you might picture brokenness itself. A single impact (or multiple at once) splinter out to a web of interconnected feelings, dead ends, events, wins, help, mistreatment, love, facts and the unknown.
Many people could and will benefit from this special book. Perhaps you know or are someone with puzzling neurological symptoms, we all likely have a friend battling ongoing invisible illness or you may know or be the partners, family or friend of those with ill-health. As the book cover simply displays this is a story “for anyone who’s ever been sick or loved someone who was”.
‘Broken Brains’ is a chance to broaden your understanding and empathy. I believe it’s a text from which others will feel seen and heard. Get yourself or a loved one a copy of this thoughtful, funny, reassuring, provocative and informative book.