When her six-year-old daughter found her collapsed on the kitchen floor, Rachel had no idea how much her life was about to change.
A brain scan revealed a dark shadowy mass, a huge abnormal growth of tissue that, whilst benign, was still growing and would surely kill her. It was too big to operate on. It needed to be 'managed', and Rachel had, at best, two years to live.
Refusing to accept the bleak prognosis, Rachel was determined to stay alive. She had already lost far too much. She had already watched her brother succumb, at only twenty-eight, to cancer. She had already lost her beloved husband in a terrible scuba diving accident when she was six months pregnant. So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She fought for her life.
This gripping and inspiring memoir about overcoming tragedy and trauma charts one tenacious woman's incredible fight to find light in the darkest of journeys. It is a life-affirming tale of positivity and hope in the face of the most difficult of human experiences.
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Throughout my turbulent childhood the one constant was the BBC World Service Shipping Forecast.- One
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(@LittleABooks, 1 December 2021, e-book, 254 pages, borrowed from @AmazonKindle via #PrimeReading)
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I found Flying on the Inside quite heart-breaking. I don't often read memoirs but am often drawn to memoirs like this one, books of loss and grief and illness and recovery and finding seemingly impossible strength. The author is more of a bad ass than I could ever be, refusing to accept her life is effectively over and determined to fight with everything she has, even if the doctors are right and she just needs to resign herself to her fate. I liked the way the memoir is structured with chapters focusing on the illness and recovery and flashbacks to important moments in her life including the tragic death of her brother and husband. I cried when I read this because it moved me so much.
