Nonfiction Book Review: My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD

As my mom lay in the cardiac intensive care unit after her 5 way bypass, she suffered three strokes. They impaired her vision and affected her balance. Supporting herself as a graphic designer was no longer possible. Her life was turned completely upside down. And the effects rippled out to the rest of us.

As my brothers, sister, and I tried to support her and figure out what she needed – what we all needed – I spent a lot of time looking for books and articles online that could help. The stand out book I found was My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Talyor, PhD.

My family was in completely unknown territory. I was trying to provide support to Mom’s caregivers and my siblings by long distance. I wanted to immerse myself in information about stroke.

It was very easy to find scary, tragic, and terrifying stories about stroke. I needed to see other possibilities, to know what recovery could look like. So I looked for positive recovery stories. I found My Stroke of Insight as an audiobook at the library and would eagerly turn it on each evening as I made dinner. It gave me hope and encouragement before the nightly phoning and emailing when we all grappled with the new normal.

Jill Bolte Taylor was a brain scientist who worked at the Harvard Medical School. She knew all about the brain, had studied it for nearly twenty years and was a member of the National NAMI Board of Directors (NAMI = National Alliance on Mental Illness). In her late thirties, she had a hemorrhagic stroke one morning while getting ready to go to work. In the book, she details moment by moment both her experience and what was happening in her brain anatomically. The story is gripping.

Before getting into the day of her stroke in Chapter 4, Dr. Taylor very clearly explains basic brain science along with her reasons for becoming a brain scientist in the first place (related to the fact that her older brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was in college). You quickly see her passion for her work and the depth of her expertise on the brain.

And yet, as she explains in the book, while she awoke to terrible pain, it took her quite a while to realize exactly what was happening. Her ability to reason and make sense of the biological sensations was hampered by what was happening.

Four hours after she awoke, she did end up in the ER, no longer able to “walk, talk, read, write, or recall any aspects of my life.”

While within about 7 months, she was essentially back to living independently, working, driving, and traveling to speaking engagements, she felt that her brain continued to show significant improvements in it’s ability to learn and function for eight years. That’s how long it took her to recover all physical and mental functions.

At the time (1996), most doctors believed that stroke recovery only occurred in the first six months after stroke. They believed the brain and body were irreparably damaged by stroke. Dr. Taylor, though, knew about the plasticity of the brain. And she had her mother to see her through the first year of her recovery. Once the blood clot had been surgically removed and she was gaining back some of her faculties, she was able to direct much of her own rehabilitation based on her own knowledge of the brain.

She explains how her monkey brain, as many call it, that constant chatter going on inside of us at all times, was mostly silenced by the stroke. Her left hemisphere was damaged, so she had no self-criticism or self-judgment. As she puts it, “It wasn’t that I could not think anymore, I just didn’t think in the same way.” This is because of the damage done to the areas of her brain in charge of communication and sensory perception.

Because of her experience living with a left hemisphere knocked offline for a few months, Dr. Taylor came to realize the peace that can be found inside when we turn off the incessant chattering thoughts. As she puts it, “peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind.”

When I first read the book, the recovery process was interesting and even fascinating. After having been caregiver to a stroke survivor, I listened to the book for a second time. I wanted way more detail about her recovery. I wanted steps and instructions and goal posts. How did she and her mother know to do specific things they did? How did they know what to DO, especially when Dr. Taylor’s ability to communicate and to filter all of the sensory information assaulting her was so compromised?  I realize she had knowledge but still, it had to be hard to access after the stroke. And yet, she did recover.

I mentioned that I latched onto the book because I was looking for positive possibilities. It did show possibilities. Sadly, it also gave me a false picture of Mom’s physical reality. I can only see that in hindsight. While Dr. Taylor had a hemorrhagic stroke, my mom had an ischemic stroke. In the book Dr. Taylor states that 83% of all strokes are ischemic.

And even if Mom had experienced the same type of stroke, no two strokes are the same and the effects of each stroke affect each person uniquely. After Mom’s initial inabilities were revealed, it still took months for us to understand the extent of the damage that had occurred and to understand what Mom was truly capable of.

When I first read My Stroke of Insight, I was less sensitive to the right brain aspect of life that Dr. Taylor presents so vividly. Her account *is* inspiring. And possibly exceptional.

I was super focused on learning about stroke and recovery tools for my family. It’s not that kind of book. Instead, it is one person’s account of what she experienced and the hope she was left with. And I needed hope.

The surprise of the book is that not only did Dr. Taylor experience the horror of incapacitation and the loss of her abilities, but she experienced a oneness with the universe and an all-encompassing inner peace. With her faculties stripped, she was left with only the present moment. When she regained her faculties, she wanted to hold onto that inner peace and presence. And she could because she knew what it felt like. That was the gift.

As a result of reading My Stroke of Insight, in which Dr. Taylor enthusiastically and vividly describes the cellular connections not just inside of us, but all around us, I began to picture the cells of trees as I walked by them on my way to work. I became deeply aware that every leaf had life; that just a single tree was teeming with life. I began to really look at the Potomac as it shimmered beside the train tracks on my morning commute. I began to feel aliveness in nature, in the landscape, the grass of the lawn, the hedges by the walk. To sense the Life that is all around us if we open to it.

Dr. Taylor’s book is way more than a book about stroke. Or even a book about the brain. It is a book about her journey into a different kind of being in the world, a different consciousness about the self and the world. A journey that changed her perspective and gave her insight.

Very highly recommended.

• Find out more about Jill Bolte Taylor here: http://drjilltaylor.com/index.html
• See her Ted Talk on her experience here:
  https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_insight
• Find out about NAMI here: https://www.nami.org/

Book cover by carynwrites.com
Grass by Henryk Niestrój from Pixabay/filtered from original