Last month, my memoir Two Sisters & a Brain Tumour was published! If you haven’t had a chance to get a copy, try the links below. In the wake of the launch and the post-publication buzz, I’ve been reflecting on the reasons I chose to wrote a memoir about such a vulnerable and difficult time in my life.
‘Sibling relationships are always part-joy, part-frustration, but throw a brain tumour into the mix and the rules for sibling engagement must be completely renegotiated. Emily’s recollections are simultaneously beautiful, amusing, tear-jerking, and wonderfully uplifting. You cannot read this book without being touched.’
Dr Louise Gosbell
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The reality is, some words are bigger than other words. In 2015 the words ‘brain tumour’ loomed very big indeed. As a teenager I prayed two prayers about my younger sister. I’d prayed for her salvation, and I’d prayed for her friendship. I never expected God to answer them with a medical diagnosis requiring immediate surgery.
I was twenty-one, a radiography degree almost behind me, my entire life ahead of me – and all it took were those two words to change my world forever. For Christians Romans 8:28 – God works all things for good for those who love him – is often a deep comfort. As someone who’d grown up with a chronically ill mother, I’d hated that verse. In every reading it seemed to mock me, because I could not see the good – only the constant pain, tiredness, isolation. Yet when my sister was diagnosed I took hold of it with both hands – it was all I had left – and began a relentless search for ‘the good’.
ONE: I wrote Two Sisters because I wanted to capture the messy side of faith.
Ten surgeries, three months in hospital, life-long complications… and at every turn, with tears and fury and doubt, I hunted desperately for evidence of God working. We often speak of faith as a quiet assurance, a joyful confidence. I had none of that. What I did have (by God’s grace) was a dogged refusal to accept that the overwhelming darkness meant that God was not working. Sometimes, this is what faith looks like.
TWO: I wrote Two Sisters because I wanted to testify to God’s presence in the forgotten pockets of ordinary living.
The diagnosis of a brain tumour comes in an instant, an irreversible bolt of lightning, but it’s lived out hour by hour, day after day. While my memoir is certainly about ‘big things’ – brain tumours, chronic illness, sisterhood – it’s also, very consciously, about the small niches of everyday life. This is where the battles of faith are fought – in the car on the way to the hospital; on an empty seat at the back of church; in front of a public bubbler. God works in minutes, and therefore minutes are important.
THREE: I wrote Two Sisters because I wanted to explore what it looks like to love and be loved in times of illness.
Tragedy brings people together, but it also isolates. During those three months I felt too seen, but never known. For good and obvious reasons my sister and my family were frequent topics of conversation in my church community. People were kind and generous. Yet at the same time I felt separated from the lives of others by my sister’s diagnosis. My priorities, hopes, and dreams had been changed in an instant. I didn’t know who I was anymore, so how could I expect to be known?
Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour is the story of two sisters, and how God saved them through a brain tumour. It contains miracles, both ordinary and extraordinary. Yet it’s also an ode to steadfast faith, because God is faithful, and an encouragement to godly living in unseen moments, because God is there. Most of all it’s a plea to reach out your hands to others and to take hold of the hands reached out to you, to love and to be loved, because God has given us other people.
Sometimes, in the case of my sister, he even gives them back to us, and graciously offers a second chance.
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