| Praise
for A Journey Not Chosen
“Early in this manuscript about her
discoveries in disability, Gloria Revilla Doyle writes of
making ‘a pilgrimage in search of grace.’ A
Journey Not Chosen demonstrates that she has indeed found
the grace she sought. There is no bitterness, self-pity, or
self-indulgence on these pages. Instead, Gloria’s clear,
insightful voice rings out with deeply achieved lessons in
humanity.”
SUSAN STAMBERG, National Public Radio
“This is a magnificent story about
suffering, growth, faith and strength. You will remember it
for life.”
MORTON KONDRACKE, Roll Call
newspaper, Fox News, author of Saving Milly: Love, Politics
and Parkinson’s Disease
“An incredibly brave, beautiful, and
sparely written book, elegant and deeply affecting. Confronted
many years ago with cause for grinding suffering, Gloria Doyle
has made of her life a hymn of grace, honesty, and beauty.”
MICHAEL NOVAK, American
Enterprise Institute and author of The Universal
Hunger for Liberty
“A Journey Not Chosen is a fascinating odyssey
through the American medical system, a first-hand primer on
how to keep our wits when the logic and reason of science
not only can’t tell us why we are sick or how we are
to get well—but sometimes becomes as much an enemy as
the illness itself. Gloria Revilla Doyle’s moving account
of her struggle over two decades with quadriplegic disability
is full of insight on the human experience and the connection
of art, literature and spirituality with health.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, author of The
Other Greeks and Carnage and Culture, Senior
Fellow, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
“Gloria Doyle’s brave account of how she came
to terms with her own disability–and her description
of how others grappled with theirs—should be required
reading for anyone who has ever faced a dramatic or unexpected
illness.”
ANNE APPLEBAUM, The Washington Post,
Pulitzer Prize author of Gulag
“During a week in which I myself was facing major surgery,
I found Gloria Revilla Doyle’s A Journey Not Chosen
a great gift. With simple elegance, and with an intimate’s
confidence, Doyle teaches the reader that survival and healing
are not granted by a surgeon’s knife, but come to the
person who is willing to accept responsibility for the gift
and mystery of one’s own life.”
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, author of Hunger
of Memory and Brown: The Last Discovery of America
“We have so much to learn about where and how mind,
body and spirit align. Gloria Doyle’s search for that
place is one all of us will have to make one day; her determination
to live both fully and consciously is an inspiration to her
readers.”
KATHRYN HARRISON, author of Seeking
Rapture, The Mother Knot and The Seal Wife
“Modern medicine has come to appreciate
how one’s state of mind—through the brain—can
affect the most rudimentary, subconscious bodily functions.
But modern medicine has not come to grips with the unique
power that some people have to influence another person’s
state of mind, and consequently their health. Gloria Doyle
skillfully articulates through her own medical saga, both
of these realities, and in her own way, exhorts us to challenge
the prevailing dogma when medical science does not have the
answers. As a medical professional, I took away important
lessons from Gloria Doyle’s story that will help me
to better communicate with and treat my patients. Patients
and families who must face neurological disorders can learn
much from this story including courage, resiliency, faith,
and the importance of taking the ultimate responsibility for
one’s own health.”
DAVID S. ZEE, M.D., Professor of Neurology,
Johns Hopkins Hospital
“This is a remarkable story, brave, honest and powerfully
encouraging to anyone challenged by health or fortune or circumstance.
It’s beautifully crafted, and it’s believable.
I can say that because I not only read the story but I know
the person. You search in life for coherence between word
and life, but seldom find it. You find it in Gloria Doyle’s
A Journey Not Chosen.”
THE REV. WILLIAM MCD. TULLY, Rector,
St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York
“This is a beautiful book, searching, life-living,
immediate, spontaneous, demanding–just like Gloria.
What comes to mind is the poem, Invictus: ‘…it
matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment
the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of
my soul.’ Gloria’s journey also takes us into
the uncertainty of modern medicine and the promise of alternative
forms of healing. We can all learn from Gloria’s combination
of skepticism and fate, her courage to face devastating facts
about her treatment and refusal to give in to despair.”
DR. MICHAEL MACCOBY, author of The
Gamesman and The Productive Narcissist
“This is a powerful book—disturbing and yet hope-filled,
intensely personal yet never self-pitying. Gloria Doyle is
a courageous woman, possessed of an indomitable spirit and
keen self-awareness. In her compellingly written chronicle
of twenty years of physical disability, she offers her readers
a rare insight into the resilience of the human soul. A
Journey Not Chosen tells of her zest for life, her capacity
to love, and her tenacious search for truth. Its carefully
presented exposition of the fallibility of modern medicine
should make it a must-read for both physicians and laity.”
THE REV. MARGARET B. GUENTHER, Associate
Rector, St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Washington
DC, author of Toward Holy Ground: The Art of Spiritual
Direction
“A remarkable story about an unconquerable will to
live. In the prime of life—happily married, two fine
children, and a professional career—Gloria Doyle becomes
progressively immobilized by a rare disease. A gifted writer,
she guides us on her travels—geographic, physical, and
psychological—over the ensuing years in search of cures,
both traditional and untraditional. Her body failing her as
she once could not have imagined, but her mind sharpened by
experience, she remarkably stabilizes her condition beyond
what conventional medicine would have predicted. Her astonishing
determination to live life as fully as possible is riveting
in itself. But it also is a gift to us all, reminding us of
the capacity of the human spirit, when summoned fully.”
JOHN O. FOX, Professor, Mount Holyoke
College, author of If Americans Really Understood the
Income Tax
“This bittersweet, courageous and poignant chronicle
carries important lessons for physicians and patients alike.
It should help doctors to recognize the limits of their knowledge
and encourage them to share far more information with their
patients, particularly in complicated and ambiguous situations
such as that presented by my friend Gloria Revilla Doyle.
Patients, too, should learn from this tale to insist on all
the relevant information and to make themselves key players
in all the medical decision-making relating to treatment.
The pros and cons of every therapy should be openly weighed
by patients and doctors together. Medicine is not a perfect
science. We doctors make mistakes, though nearly always with
the best of intentions. It saddens me that Gloria’s
saga occurred as it did, but it should inspire us all that
she has had the courage, the candor and the pluck to recount
it so frankly and eloquently. An important book for physicians,
patients and those who love them.”
RENU VIRMANI, M.D., Chair, Department
of Cardiovascular Pathology, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology,
Washington, DC
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