Toni Bernhard - How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers

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Table of Contents

more advance praise for How to Be Sick

This is a book for all of us.
SYLVIA BOORSTEIN,
author of Happiness Is an Inside Job

An immensely wise book. Health psychology has been poisoned by
the view that the best way to approach illness is through a muscular,
militant resistance. Toni Bernhard reveals how letting go,
surrendering, and putting the ego aside yield insights and
fulfillment even in the presence of illness. A major contribution.

LARRY DOSSEY, MD,
author of The Power of Premonitions and Healing Words

Everyone should read this bookanyone who is sick, anyone who loves someone who is sick, and anyone who has ever experienced things being other than theyd hoped they would be. Toni Bernhard open-heartedly shares the deep pain and equally deep joy of her experience in a way that allows us to validate the pain of our own circumstances, and still find joy and contentment within any context. She offers simple, deeply wise practices that reduce the suffering associated with grasping for things to be other than they are by allowing us to accept and enjoy things exactly as they are, including our own desire for something else. Her willingness to step fully into her life after its been dramatically narrowed by illness, and to share this process with us, inspires us each to live our own lives more fully, accepting the challenges that arise, and finding the joys inherent in each moment. Tonis writing feels like a good friend, helping us cultivate compassion for ourselves and those around us, as we make our way through whatever life presents to us. Her honesty in sharing her struggles and setbacks helps us be kinder to ourselves as we experience our own. I plan to buy a copy for everyone I love.

LIZABETH ROEMER, PHD,
co-author of The Mindful Way through Anxiety

A profound, compassionate, and intimate guide for living wisely.

GIL FRONSDAL, author of The Dhammapada:
A New Translation of a Buddhist Classic

When we lose our physical health, it can seem like weve lost our
life. Toni Bernhard, with unflinching realness and deep insight,
shows us how the fires of loss can clear the way for a new and
profound capacity for appreciation, love, and understanding.
This book can bring you more fully alive by healing your spirit.

TARA BRACH, author of Radical Acceptance

Told with relentless honesty and clarity.

STEPHEN BATCHELOR,
author of Confession of a Buddhist Atheist

An encouraging book that treats sickness as something to
welcome because, when you are sick, that is the obstacle that has
to be your gate. This book is full of compassion about how to sit
sweetly with your difficultieswhich means not making yourself
wrong for having difficulties.

JOHN TARRANT, author of Bring Me the Rhinoceros
and Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

Toni Bernhard offers a lifeline to those whose lives have been
devastated by illness, and shows us all how to transform suffering
into peace and even joy.

LYNN ROYSTER, director of the Chronic Illness
Initiative at DePaul University

A roadmap to finding grace and balance amid affliction.

CHRISTINA FELDMAN, author of Woman Awake

Practical, wise, and full of heart.

JAMES BARAZ, author of Awakening Joy

This warm and engaging book can help with
even the most difficult situation.

THOMAS BIEN, PhD, author of Mindful Therapy

How To Be Sick is a good friend to keep close by so that illness
doesnt become the enemy.

ED & DEB SHAPIRO, authors of Be the Change

Dont pass up this bookand dont be misled by the title. This
book isnt about being sick as much as it as about living right
now. This practical yet exceedingly graceful book is a love story
about life, the endurance of the human spirit, and the power of a
sustaining relationship.

ALIDA BRILL, author of Dancing at the Rivers Edge

Living a life of peace and contentment is not difficult when life is
cooperatingbut what happens when the reality of our lives is
suddenly turned upside down and shaken by hardship or
affliction? This book is an inspiring and instructive guide for
coping with a chronic condition or life-threatening illness but it is
much more than that. Each chapter is about unpacking the highest
truth in the lowest places of our lives.
The book is called How To Be Sick but its really about how to live.

JIM PALMER, author of Divine Nobodies

An intimate, gripping, profound, and eminently useful book about
being joyfully and wisely alive no matter what happens to you.

RICK HANSON, PHD, author of Buddhas Brain

Who would have thought that there is a how to for being sick?
But now there is! Deeply moving and impressive. I highly
recommend her book as a must-read for anyone who is ill or
caring for someone ill. Her gifts will transform you.

LEWIS RICHMOND, author of Healing Lazarus

A warm and compassionate guide for navigating illness on a
personal and practical level, a level physicians rarely see or discuss
with their patients. The greatest compliment I could give this book
is that I will be recommending it to all of my chronically ill
patients as a guide for remaining happy even in
the absence of good health.

DR. ALEX LICKERMAN, former director of
primary care at the University of Chicago

A unique and creative adaptation of spiritual practice to the
challenges of chronic illness. How to Be Sick is a wise,
compassionate book that will help all of us live well.

DOROTHY WALL, author of Encounters with the Invisible

Each of us finds our way to live with the challenges and
uncertainty of illness. Toni Bernhard found a path that led to
balance, wisdom, and love. She caringly points us to the possibility
of finding happiness even in the midst of difficult conditions.

That is a true gift.
FRANK OSTASESKI, founder of the Metta Institute

For Tony

In sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death do us part.

Foreword

YOU ARE GOING TO BE OKAY Words of reassurance are the first therapy offered to people who awaken after a surgery, or are revived after an accident, or just before the disclosure of a fearful diagnosis. You are going to be okay often goes along with the summary of what now needs to happen to make things better. Youll need to stay a few more days in the hospital and then you can go home and finish recuperating there. Or, Were on the way to the hospital and the doctors there are ready for you. Or, Well do chemo and then radiation and it might be a hard year but the chances are good that youll be your old self again afterward. You are going to be okay, in these circumstances, means Things are uncomfortable now, but you will get well. You will be better. But it doesnt always happen that way.

This is a book for people who will not be their old self again and for all those for whom, at least now, getting better isnt possible. This is a book that most reassuringly says even to those people, You, too, are going to be okayeven if you never recover your health!

Toni Bernhard is the perfect person to write this book. In the middle of a vibrant, complex, gratifying family and professional lifeliterally from one day to the nextshe took ill with a hard-to-diagnose and basically incurable, painfully fatiguing illness that waxes and wanes in its intensity, that sometimes seems to respond to a new treatment and then doesnt after all, that doesnt get worse but also never gets better. Nine years after the onset of her illness, she is still sick. She knows the cycle of hoping and feeling disappointed from the inside out as well as the cycles of deciding to give up hope in order to avoid the pain of disappointment and the sadness, and then the relief, of surrender.

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