Storied Companions: Cancer, Trauma, and Discovering Guides for Living in Buddhist Narratives

A professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner helps readers discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence.


“With my diagnosis of grade IV brain cancer, I no longer observe the truth of impermanence from a critical, analytical distance. I am crashing into it, or it into me.”

Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris—professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner—turned to books.

By reading ancient Buddhist stories with new questions and a new purpose—fin...