"Happily married and in the flush of hard-earned professional success, with her first play opening on Broadway, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high risk pregnancy and given birth to twins when she discovers the left side of her face entirely paralyzed. Bell's palsy. Ninety percent of Bell's palsy sufferers see spontaneous improvement and full recovery. Like Ruhl's mother. Like Angelina Jolie. But not like Sarah Ruhl. Sarah Ruhl is in the unlucky ten percent. Like Allen Ginsberg. But for a woman, a mother, a wife, and an artist working in the realm of theater, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior, brings significant and specific challenges. So Ruhl begins an intense decade-long search for a cure, while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face-one that, while recognizably her own-is incapable of accurately communicating feelings or intentions. In a series of searing, witty, and lucid meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey as a patient, mot

"Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high- risk pregnancy when she discovers the left side of her face is paralyzed. She is assured that 95 percent of Bell's palsy patients experience a full recovery. But Sarah is in the unlucky 5 percent. So Ruhl begins a decade-long search for a cure while grappling with the reality of her new face. In a series of meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey. She explores the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain postpartum depression, being a playwright and working mom to three small children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of illness"--

In a series of meditations, Ruhl chronicles her journey as a patient, wife, mother, and artist. She explores the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain of postpartum depression, the story of a marriage, being a playwright and working mom to three small children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of illness.