I Live a Life Like Yours

~ Live & Learn

I started Jan Grue’s new memoir listening to his story on Audible. It’s titled “I Live a Life Like Yours.”

Oh, no Jan. You so do not.

I’m walking listening to his story. Free to take a step, not giving a moment’s consideration to how I keep my balance. And then following this step with another and another and another.

Suffering from Sciatica DK? Put out a bit? YOU are suffering?

Grue was diagnosed as a child with a rare form of spinal atrophy. As Michael J. Fox explains in his book review, “all of the wins in his life are come-from-behind —  a person who is much more than what others see. He discovers that “to be stared at, gawked at, is …to be situated in a narrative that has already been written, and that is told by others.” “The world,” he says, “perceives a body with frail arms, legs locked into certain angles…in a large bulky wheelchair” as not…a whole man…He offers messages of wisdom that will resonate long after you’ve finished the memoir. “At some point or another I stopped thinking about myself as someone who needed repairing.”

Dwight Garner is his book review describes “A Life Like Yours” a quietly brilliant book that warms slowly in the hands. And that it does. I, highly recommend the book.

Let me close with a passage from his memoir.

Since an early age, I had known that I had spinal muscular atrophy… I would like to think myself away from my body, away from my injured, worn ankles. But there is no me that exists apart from this body, in some unmarked form. That body would have lived an entirely different sort of life. And yet it haunts me. It casts another kind of shadow. I shut my eyes and go skiing each winter, I run 10K each morning. I dash off to another country at a moment’s notice, grab my carry-on, run out the door and hail a taxi, make my way quickly through the security check and sprint to the gate. I haven’t made arrangements for where I’ll stay when I arrive, I climb into a taxi and simply say: Drive me somewhere I haven’t been before.

I open my eyes.

— Jan Grue, I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir. B. L. Crook (Translator). (FSG Originals, August 17, 2021)

25 thoughts on “I Live a Life Like Yours”

    1. Yes. So ties in to more words from Jan Grue:

      “From that period of half a year, during which I depended on my wheelchair almost exclusively, and when every single step was painful and merely a means to an end, something grew. It’s not true that ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’; on the contrary, whatever doesn’t take your life can make you humbler, more willing to acknowledge your vulnerability. I hope this is what happened to me.

      Jan Grue, I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir. B. L. Crook (Translator). (FSG Originals, August 17, 2021) 

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  8. I’ve seen praise for this memoir a lot lately. Thanks for the inspiration. I’m dealing with the limitations of old age, and it’s truly humbling to be aware of someone who has these limitations all of his life. Vulnerability is strength!

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