“Buoyant: What Held Us Up When Our Bodies Let Us Down”

Two Book Reviews … And perhaps also a discussion?

Friends,

Just before Dotty and Jonathan Doherty moved to New Hampshire, we had a wonderful worship-sharing session with Dotty on her book: Buoyant: What Held Us Up When Our Bodies Let Us Down.

Ann Riggs recently wrote a book review of it for the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling. The book is available on Amazon and several copies are in our library. As Annapolis Friends age and our Light List grows, Pastoral Care and Ministry and Worship wonder if Friends might wish to engage in another discussion of this book?

If so, get in touch with pastoral-care@annapolisfriends.org.

Here is the beginning of Ann Rigg’s review…

“Dotty Holcomb Doherty’s “memoir” of her friend Janet’s two decades long experience with cancer (p. xiv) and her own life with MS is not a verbatim account of how they lived and were buoyed up despite the circumstances. But it may seem a familiar narrative learning form of “living human documentation” to spiritual care professionals and student readers.

The manuscript was shared for prepublication review with several medical doctors, who remark on its capacity to offer insight into their patients’ lived experiences. It might well have been shared with medical chaplains for that same purpose. Spiritual care providers could also benefit from the renewed and sharpened awareness Buoyant: What Held Us Up When Our Bodies Let Us Down offers into the lives, loves, faith, meaning making, and self-care the patients they serve carry out over the course of long illnesses…”

TO READ MORE … you may find a copy of Ann Rigg’s book review in the AFM Library, along with Dotty’s book.

A Second Review of “Buoyant: What Held Us Up When Our Bodies Let Us Down”

We are pleased to point you to another review of Dotty Doherty’s “Buoyant” by Annapolis Friend, Mary Barbera. This appeared in 2022, in “Outlook By The Bay”.

Mary begins …

“Local author Dotty Holcomb Doherty promised her friend Janet that she would write Janet’s story. Janet and Dotty had met as many of us do, through their children; Janet’s and Dotty’s daughters were in Girl Scouts together. Their bonding deepens in a kayak on Duvall Creek, five years after Dotty started leading the scout troop, almost three years after Dotty was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and fifteen years after Janet was given six months to live following surgery unable to completely remove the cancer in her sinuses.”

TO READ MORE, Click here…

The book is available for purchase online and in the AFM Library.