She doesn't pull punches as to the depths of her pain. The Body Broken details Greenberg's coming to terms with a serious debilitating condition. According to Greenberg, 'in the breath of a moment, I could see that my life had fractured in two as clearly as had my fractured neck.' Twenty two years after Lynne Greenberg thought she had walked away unscathed from the neck fracture she sustained at age nineteen, her ordeal came roaring back when she learned that her neck was still broken. The Body Broken is a powerful, lyrical story of one woman's remarkable determination and breathtaking courage, as she puts mind over matter in the struggle to reclaim her life. This deeply personal saga takes us to the heart of a family's struggle to survive a crisis, and shows us how, at the most profound levels, such an odyssey affects a patient's marriage, the ability to parent, family, work, and friendships. Drawing on her family's support, her own indomitable spirit, and an intense connection to the poetry she taught, Greenberg found the strength to return to a productive and satisfying, if irrevocably changed, life.

As she and her family navigated an increasingly complicated web of doctors and specialists, Greenberg taught herself to fight her own battles against a medical system ill-equipped to handle patients with chronic pain, and against the emotional pitfalls of a newly restricted life. Greenberg realized that she had been living for years on borrowed time.

Then, one morning, this blissful facade shattered and the pain in her neck returned in the most vicious way. Years later, she seemed to have it all: a loving husband, two wonderful children, a peaceful home, and a richly satisfying job as a tenured poetry professor. more » r broken neck healed, or so everyone thought,her recovery was hailed as a medical miracle and she returned to normal life. At age nineteen, Lynne Greenberg narrowly survived a devastating car crash. In the tradition of William Styron's tour de force Darkness Visible, The Body Broken is a gorgeously told and intensely moving account of one woman's extraordinary odyssey into a life of chronic pain and of the unyielding resilience of the human spirit.

The Body Broken by Lynne Greenberg