Walking on Pins and Needles nonfiction memoir

 

Walking on Pins and Needles: A Memoir of Chronic Resilience in the Face of Multiple Sclerosis 

by Arlene Faulk
River Grove Books, February 15, 2022, 268 pp
Health and Fitness
ebook 7.99
paperback, 16.95
 
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About the Book:
Tai Chi is not about trying harder; it’s about letting go, being in the moment, feeling balance, and the fluidity of energy.
 
When you’ve been voted as “most likely to succeed” as a senior in high school with a bright future ahead, you set challenging goals and move forward to fulfill expectations. And as far as Arlene Faulk—accomplished businesswoman, storyteller, and Tai Chi instructor—knew, multiple sclerosis wasn’t going to get in her way.
 
At the age of 22, in the middle of working the busiest shopping day of the year, Arlene loses all feeling in her body from the waist down. Her mobility returns but she’s given no diagnosis, and one question pervades her thoughts: What is happening to my body?
In this moving and illuminating memoir of one woman’s years-long struggle to understand and conceal her debilitating symptoms as she ascends the corporate ladder in a major airline comes a story of perseverance, rediscovery, and hope in light of multiple sclerosis. As she jumps into the unknown, Faulk finds comfort and healing through Chinese medicine and Tai Chi. Her inspiring story demonstrates how a chronic and debilitating health condition lacks the power to control our lives and stop us from moving in the direction of possibility.
 
My Review:
Faulk’s captivating story drew me into her world, from the prologue of a young woman’s dreams of leaping into a responsible career as a new adult, independent in the exciting and challenging era of the 1970 and 80s, all the way to the final page. Memoirs are often so personal that I feel like a voyeur, but Faulk’s engaging and frank storytelling made me part of her story, cheering, booing, encouraging, parental at various points along her journey of discovery. Perhaps because I have personal experience through friendships with this condition, Faulk’s perspective helped me take part in her life through her eyes and grow in empathy.
 
As a newly minted adult, Faulk experiences frightening symptoms that could have easily been contributed to hysteria, had her father not been a physician and helped direct her first medical consultation. During that first consultation, the neurologist spoke to her father instead of to her as they direct her tests and receive a result of “inconclusive.”
 
I marvel at Faulk’s fist boss who gave her space to realize she has to change her career. She returns to school, earning a graduate degree and gaining lifelong supportive friendships. Focusing on the positive and most honest aspects of her life choices, Faulk sets the pace and tone for a forthright and authentic revelation about achieving a balanced life.
 
With her graduate degree in business communication and a recommendation from a friend, Faulk enters corporate America in Chicago at first through the restaurant industry, “studying promotional opportunities for entry-level workers in the food service industry.” The pace for young professionals is brutal, and she tries have a social life tucked between long hours on the job. When she’s head-hunted by a major airline at first in research, and later promoted to “management education representative,” Faulk slowly rises to become one of top female executives in a high-profile industry and moves to New York City.
 
But these rungs on the corporate ladder are all challenged by fits and starts and stops of strange symptoms as specific areas of her body seem to turn on and off with extreme weakness and pain mostly in her legs, and brain fog. A visit to a neurologist results in the dreaded “inconclusive” result. But this doctor asks her to track her symptoms and try steroid therapy. She joins a fitness club and makes special friends who encourage her to find a good balance in life—not easy for anyone.
 
Faulk eventually receives a possible diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, but little advice and support from medical professionals of that era in New York City and refuses to participate in an experimental drug therapy study. A job-related return to Chicago and involvement in church results in setting down roots.
 
Throughout this decade, Faulk reflects on her family life and future decisions while she tries to ignore increasingly disturbing symptoms of her multiple sclerosis. Her father’s sudden death in 1983 makes her realize that she knew little about his family beyond the facts of his emigration. Faulk is stunned to hear painful truths and questions her reasons for not sharing her own condition with any but her siblings and a few close friends.
 
After five years of stability, Faulk’s symptoms return with a vengeance and she concludes she needs to be honest with her mother. Amazingly, Faulk deals with the challenges of her health and her job until the economic downturn of the early 1990s forces her career into a radical sidestep. It’s also that time when her condition becomes so severe that she makes the decision to leave the workforce. She’s young yet, depressed and disillusioned about where to go from here, and spends two years on the couch at home. A friend’s strong recommendation to see an alternative healer finally sinks in and Faulk makes a choice that changes her fate.
 
Here’s where her real journey to managing her health, well-being, and outlook truly begin. Through fits and doubts, Faulk begins to learn about Chinese medicine and gradually regains her equilibrium, learning to re-channel and redirect her energy and pain through therapeutic manipulation, acupuncture, and eventually tai chi, the gently flowing Chinese-origin exercise regime which gives her life back.
 
Told without pretense, Faulk’s enlightening and fresh perspective of her personal journey of living with a dreaded chronic condition will encourage anyone, especially those who live with severe challenges. Highly recommended.
 
About the Author:
Arlene Faulk is a teacher, writer, storyteller and accomplished businesswoman. She led Human Resources departments in a major airline for 19 years. Her MS symptoms that she kept secret for years stopped her cold. She jumped into the unknown and discovered health practices that transformed her life. In her award-winning blog, she interweaves Tai Chi principles and her own life experiences to inspire readers to live their best lives.