Janet Sternburg
Phantom Limb

University of Nebraska Press, hc, Apr 2002
$20.00 buy

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When I first read Phantom Limb some months ago, it moved me deeply. It is evocative, raw, absolutely genuine and original and I was stunned that the author had the courage to share so much of herself. Booklist recently ran the following review: "Sternburg's mother lost her leg during her later years yet, like so many who experience such a loss, continued to feel the presence of the lost limb. In setting out to learn more about this baffling condition, called Phantom Limb, Sternburg discovered more than she had expected, encountering and developing new ideas about the mind-body relationship. She suggests that each person suffers from Phantom Limb, that is, from the grievous loss of someone who, though no longer with one, remains a palpable part of one. She approaches that paradox by writing this book that is part moving account of greater love in the face of her mother's approaching death, part medical inquiry into neurology, and part spiritual meditation on the struggles and sufferings that living visits on each of us. In making peace with physical emotional ghosts, Sternburg shows that emotional and spiritual integration is possible, though born out of pain and loss."