The Sensitive One: A Memoir

by Susan F. Morris

Overview

At age fifty, Susan Morris is diagnosed with breast cancer—and she’s floored. Desperate to pinpoint the cause, one night she decides to type a question into her search engine: “What are the risk factors of getting breast cancer?” She’s surprised to discover research showing that long-term exposure to stress and traumatic childhood experiences can both increase the risk of breast cancer.
The Sensitive One is a braided memoir that alternates between Morris’s childhood—as a sensitive child and then teenager who shouldered the burden of caring for her younger siblings as her dad’s alcoholism tore at the threads of their home life—and an adult who for a decade-plus has been living a trauma-free life with a caring husband and rewarding career in nursing . . . only to be diagnosed with breast cancer.
This is a story of redemption—of a woman who manages to escape harrowing circumstances and start anew—but it’s also a story of how our legacy lives within us, and how healing from the adverse effects of childhood can truly take a lifetime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647421618
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	08/24/2021
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	1,128,726
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Susan Frances Morris was raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the second-oldest of seven siblings with two sets of twins. She was a practicing nurse from 1989 to 2011, primarily in women’s health.  The highlight of her career was the time she spent at Yale New Haven Hospital working in nursing management alongside international experts in the field of women’s health. She met her current husband, Bruce, in 1989. Her passions are walking and bike riding in nature, yoga, traveling, photography, and jewelry design. She has three grown children and four grandchildren. Susan lives with her husband and two dogs in Clifton Park, New York. 

Editorial Reviews

2021 Foreword Indie Gold Winner in Autobiography & Memoir

“Susan Morris weaves together a compelling memoir, taking the reader through the darkness of childhood abuse and its effects on a family, an individual life, and a body. As a somatic psychotherapist specializing in trauma, her story is an act of compassion reflecting her life’s journey in attempts to understand, heal, and transform.
—Ann Saffi Biasetti, PhD, LCSWR, C-IAYT, author of Befriending Your Body: A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing Yourself from Disordered Eating

“Susan Morris’s courageous story The Sensitive One will inspire you to learn how healing is possible despite a lifetime of traumas, physical and emotional. Susan shows that love, joy in life, therapy, and a gritty determination to overcome it all are a powerful combination to change darkness to light and live a richer life.”
—Linda Joy Myers, president of the National Association of Memoir Writers and author of Song of the Plains

“Morris’s insights into how adverse childhood experiences influence our health later in life are cutting-edge. The book is a delight to read. I am sure that it will become loved by women and their families, particularly those who are living through the diagnosis of breast cancer.”
—Rebecca G. Rogers, MD

From the Publisher

2021-02-21
A firsthand account of a traumatic childhood followed by breast cancer in adulthood.

Morris’ memoir poses the question that often follows a cancer diagnosis: Why me?In 2007, the 50-year-old registered nurse, who worked at Yale New Haven Hospital, had what appeared to be an idyllic life, which included a loving husband and three children. It takes some time for the memoir to finally reveal what is heavily foreshadowed: that she had a small lump in her breast that was malignant. Hearing the diagnosis panicked Morris, but shortly before she received the news, she hit the books and discovered correlations between a pattern of traumatic early-life experiences and adult-onset breast cancer. Morris expresses her memories of her difficult childhood so vividly that some may find them very hard to read; however, initially, the connection between these recollections and the cancer diagnosis is unclear, which may keep readers from becoming fully engaged at first. She writes of having an abusive, heavy-drinking father and of how she found no solace in her also-abused mother, who derided her for being overly “sensitive.” Morris also writes of an abusive first marriage. The author’s courage never flags as she uses these passages about her past to illustrate what she believes was the genesis of her illness. Her research findings, which include synopses of articles from medical journals, add a deeper dimension to the book and distinguish it from many other cancer memoirs. Later, she tells of experiencing painful but poignant events as she coped with the aftermath of chemotherapy and radiation, as when her family gathered around her to shave her balding head.

Cancer survivors will find solace in this work, which is sometimes difficult to bear.

Kirkus Reviews