Noe: The Book » Book

Noe Rides the Radio Waves Again–The Boston Area 12/22–’Its Your Health’ with Lisa Davis

Phil Wolfson MD — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:40:12 +0000

Details to be announced. Recording tomorrow at the crack.

Next show: January 11th–details to come–stay tuned.

Happy Holidays! The Best of New Years!

Love ya,

Phil and Noe

9/14/11 TV appearance, “Sacramento & Co.”

yourprotagonist2 — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:01:13 +0000

On September 14, Phil appeared on “Sacramento & Co.” on KXTV-10 to discuss “Noe,” dealing with loss and Leukemia Awareness Month:

August 2, 2011 “Noe” article in Marin Independent-Journal

yourprotagonist2 — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 05:11:46 +0000

On August 2, The Marin Independent-Journal published “The Toughest Story a Parent Could Tell,” an interview with Phil conducted by Paul Liberatore. Read it online at the I-J Web site, or click the graphics below to download a scanned clipping:

Part 1 (7.6 MB)

Part 2 (6.4 MB)

Isabel Allende introduces Phil Wolfson at Book Passage, 7/30/11

yourprotagonist2 — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:32:41 +0000

On July 30, noted author Isabel Allende introduced Phil at a book reading and signing for “Noe” at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA.

We were fortunate enough to capture her deeply touching introduction; if you know someone who might be interested in watching, please share a link to the video.

Review: “Gritty Wisdom: A Father-Son Journey”

yourprotagonist2 — Tue, 31 May 2011 23:41:10 +0000

Kim Chernin has written a loving, praiseful review of Noe. Here’s an excerpt:

From the time I started to read this book, I wanted to write about it. I made notes all over the margins with what I hoped would be useful things to say. Now that I am writing, I feel that I will never be able to do justice to this remarkable book. I will try, in the hope that many other people will discover it and experience its gritty, deeply felt, and hard-won wisdom.

Phil Wolfson’s Noe describes the experience of a family facing the serious illness and eventual death of Noah, their sixteen-year-old son. The book is woven from a rich tapestry of voices, from the author’s journals, Noah’s chemotherapy diaries, and the convincingly channeled voice of the boy who has died: “Pay attention, you bozo … I am going to tell you how to proceed. Don’t think I haven’t been watching you mope about these last weeks since you were so careless with our journal. After all this is also my loss. It’s my story you’re supposed to be telling, not just yours…”

Read Kim Chernin’s review of Noe in its entirety at Tikkun.

Kim’s most recent books include: Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine; In My Mother’s House: A Memoir, The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity; and My Life as a Boy: A Woman’s Story.

Our grateful appreciation to Michael Lerner, Kim, and staff person Alana Price. Please consider supporting Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Noe Has Arrived on the Shelves!!!

Phil Wolfson MD — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:35:09 +0000

I went to Book Passage Corte Madera to purchase what they should have had of Kim Chernin’s works–do check out her review of Noe as per our next blog. Today is the anniversary of Noah’s death and coincidentally the date of distribution for the book. Casually, I asked if they had a copy of Noe??? And there it was. For the first time, I touched Noe. It is real. He has reached the stores! He said ‘thanks’ and I have been in ecstasy as only a first time author with a mission can be. Call your bookstore and pick up a copy–or more. Noe is a tangible book presence. Hurrah!

Blurbs for “Noe”

yourprotagonist2 — Mon, 23 May 2011 04:59:03 +0000

Friends and colleagues have offered early praise for “Noe”:

Franz Wisner, author of Honeymoon with My Brother and How the World Makes Love:

“There is no doubt Phil Wolfson’s poignant and thoughtful Noe will break your heart. There is also no question Noe will strengthen your heart, as well as deepen your sensitivity and widen your range of emotions. A seasoned psychiatrist, Wolfson shares, through unbroken honesty and thoughtful prose, the toughest story a parent could tell. Yet out of the depths of his family’s tragedy, Wolfson enriches our emotional knowledge, better equipping us for the blows, large and small, sure to befall us all.”

Jerry Jampolsky, MD, founder of The Center for Attitudinal Healing and author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear:

“A sensitive chronicle of the vagaries of love and the struggle to stay clear and present despite great stress and difficulty. Noe can serve as a guide to those who are living through overwhelming personal crises, facing their own or a beloved’s death. It charts the possibilities for coming apart, staying together, and the choices that will have to be made during and after a great illness. A terrific book for fathers building a new culture of connection with their children.”

Lew Carlino, director and screenwriter of Resurrection and The Great Santini:

“Phil Wolfson has beautifully written a loving threnody to his son, Noah, who died young, much too young, of cancer. The work takes us deep into the sorrow and courage that lies in the most tender and vulnerable recesses of the human heart, until, finally, we are there, with Noah, walking alongside him on his via dolorosa. And we come to understand that we are walking with Wolfson and his family as well and, ultimately, with each other, sharing the grief that life brings us, and that the music of this book, this healing paean, is helping us along our way.”

Ralph Metzner, PhD, author of The Well of Remembrance and The Unfolding Self:

“My friend Phil Wolfson and I belong to that sorrowful fellowship of parents whose children have died. In this book of great courage, he shares the harrowing journey of his family as they endure the four-year ordeal of their teenage son succumbing to leukemia. Blending Noah’s rueful journal notes as he anticipates his life’s ending with Phil’s tender descriptions of an exuberant youthful life amidst the terrible despair of the helpless parents—this story is a heart-opening testament to the power of the spirit of love.”

Sasha and Ann Shulgin, authors of Pihkal and Tihkal:

“We lived this story with the Wolfson family and knew intimately of their pain, struggle, and loss, and their simultaneous commitment to love and sanity. They were courageous in their use of alternative methods to explore and heal mind and heart, and that story is told in Noe as an offering to others to take risks to find new truths. Noah’s death is still a terrible loss to all of us—he was an exceptional young man. Noe reveals him to you in hopes of helping you on your own life’s bittersweet path.”

Judy Norsigian, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves:

“This extraordinary memoir and moving story about losing a child to leukemia offers many provocative insights about how we raise our children, deal with death, and create the communities that support us in times of crisis.”

Noe News–Call-In Radio Show with Dr. Richard Miller, Tuesday 9 AM

Phil Wolfson MD — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:35:05 +0000

Dr. Richard Miller is hosting me for an hour this coming Tuesday 9 to 10 AM PDST on his Fort Bragg based call-in show:
Mind Body Health & Politics
National Public Radio Affiliate KZYX
PLACE: KZYX FM Radio
Live streaming on your computer at: KZYX.org and/or
mindbodyhealthpolitics.org
Phone in number: 707 937 5103 or
send an email, during the broadcast to: DJ@KZYX.org
before the broadcast to: DrRichardLMiller@Gmail.com
I HOPE YOU WILL JOIN US!

Thank you for your interest.

Phil Wolfson MD — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:01:15 +0000

Dear Readers,

I am honored by your interest. That is the second reason I wrote Noe—to reach out to the unintentional community of brothers and sisters, parents and children who inevitably suffer with illness, confusion, difficulty and loss–and can benefit immeasurably by sharing experiences. Isolation is too often the source of a cold heart, of bitterness and shame, of getting wrapped up in oneself and losing precious connection. The shared life is so much stronger, so much more vital—even with the difficulties of relationship we all experience. I came to this view over time. It was not natural to my situation. It had to be cultivated and appreciated as a greater pleasure.

I grew up in a backwater of Queens, New York during the 1950s—a time of cultural/political fear and insularity. Community and belongingness were confined to family with stringent rules about sharing outside its boundaries; church and synagogue based on traditional male hierarchies and frozen practices; and public schools in which classes of over thirty kids behaved remarkably well under the rule of one teacher—for fear of heinous penalties. Yelling and corporal punishment were component parts of family life, wives were often attacked physically—I knew of several in my neighborhood, divorce was impossible, and sick children were hidden or disappeared. Very different times than for many of us in this recent cultural period.

An alternative sense of what was possible between people arose in me as I was able to make close friendships during high school outside my house—I kept these private, to myself. Later, living away from home, in dormitories for eight years at college and medical school, I learned a bit of living peacefully with others. But I continued to long for something larger and a sense of community that included yet transcended local conditions. One night, finally after months of great agony and indecision, I screwed up the courage to go to a demonstration against the war in Vietnam at the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel where, ironically, President Lyndon Johnson was receiving the Leo Cherne Freedom Fighter Award. Perhaps there were a thousand people present surrounded by cops on horses and there was chanting and a near equal number of ferocious counter-demonstrators. I recognized a few people I knew from med school, actually, my professors (I seemed to be the only student) and they drew me in and helped me to become part of the protest. It was a different kind of group experience than any I had known. There were folks from all over the world, and there was a sense of love for all people, of great kindness, and a determination to achieve justice and equality for all people. I had found my own first home.

That day changed me forever. From small town boy, I was suddenly a Citizen of the World; welcome nearly anywhere I travelled or sought connection. There was a long road ahead to work out much of the cultural and only still later the spiritual foundations for a pluralist movement for sharing, but the door had opened and I had walked through, never to look back with longing.

My life path took me through commune life for several years, the Women’s and Men’s movements, dogmatic leftism, building a family within an extended community of supportive friends, becoming a psychiatrist/psychotherapist with a love of family therapy, psychedelic psychotherapy. group therapy and marathon work, running a community-based alternative process oriented psychiatric hospital, teaching, and organization building. It was far from a linear path and there were failed experiments and mistakes, even frank delusions that shaped and misshaped consciousness.

Noah’s illness was a sudden onslaught and it taxed every bit of what I had learned about people, family, and community. And it enlarged me at the same time. Catastrophic illness opens all the windows and doors in your house. Some people try to slam them shut and become congested with feelings and isolated. For me and mine, we opened them wider and were benefited by great support and love. We also discovered groups and practitioners who encouraged sharing and learning form others’ experiences. A group with members opening to others of their struggles and experiences is of immeasurable benefit–for kids and parents, as it was at the Center for Attitudinal Healing; for grief and healing; for just holding on to mind and sanity. Sharing truly works!

And reading is sharing. A good book resonates and it expands us, adds to our capacities, and references what others do. So, reason number 2: I hope you vibrate with Noe – and find helpful harmonics.

So, then, reason number 1: I had to write for myself—to see if there was any sense in all of this holding and then missing of my son and family. Or, if not sense, than something of value, some measure of what it means to me personally–this being alive, struggling for clarity, loving, making mistakes, and continuing on-a bit reluctantly, tattered, and yet blessed.

Thanks so much!

Watch the “Noe” book trailer

yourprotagonist2 — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:29:31 +0000

Eric Wolfson has created a short film that captures the essence of his father’s memoir.

In this deeply personal video, Phil, Eric and Alice, Noah’s mother, speak openly about his life, his illness and their hopes for how this book might touch others.

Please watch. If it moves you, we hope you’ll consider sharing it.