My Stroke of Insight Jill Bolte Taylor: Phoenix Rising Books, Glebe

Imagine what it must be like to wake up one morning with a blinding headache -no apparent reason for it, no history of headaches. You are in the prime of your life (37 years of age), physically fit and healthy, professional respected in your chosen career (Brain Science). As the next four hours unfold you observe mind deteriorate to the point where you can not talk, walk, read, write or recall any part of you life.

This is Jill’s story. Written with grace and humour she guides you through her experience of a massive stroke as a blood vessel explodes in the left side of her brain. Over the four-hour period her left-brain swung in and out of function. When it was out of function she was in the nirvana of the intuitive right brain, when it was in function she needed to use the rapidly deteriorating skills of the left-brain to seek help before she was lost completely.

After the trauma of the first four hours she writes about her eight-year journey of healing. Using her professional skills she shares insight into the working of the brain, and how we don’t have to be locked into patterns of thought and behaviours, which no longer work for us.

I can promise you an engaging read. Jill’s story is inspirational. There are many parts of it that stayed with me long after I put the book down- none more so that the notion that we are each only one thought away from the feeling of nirvana.

Sue Sharpe

Phoenix Rising Books