About the Book

“Brilliant and Heartbroken: The Girl Who Survived It All” by Kathleen M. Seaver is a powerful memoir that tracks the life of the author with her medical problems and family problems. During the last seventeen years of her mother’s life, Kathleen lived with and cared for her mom. In the process, she realizes that there was a sense of guilt that pervaded the relationship between the author and her mother, especially with respect to the unusual medical condition that the author had, which was an enlarged thymus. The memoir exposes the traumatic incidents that led up to her birth, and one of the most painful incidents, which the mother of the author felt had an enormous influence on the health of her daughter.

The book “Brilliant and Heartbroken: The Girl Who Survived It All” sheds light on the medical practices of the day that were outdated, in addition to the severity of the treatment that the author was going through as an infant. Comprising an ominous analogy with the level of radiation that people were exposed to in Hiroshima, the story is marked by the lack of awareness in the times of conducting safe medical practices. The author creates a distinct image of her childhood life in the Cleveland Clinic, where she lived for two years because of her disease.

It is clear that, as the memoir evolves, the reader understands the emotional impacts of extended hospitalization on both the child and the mother. The story “Brilliant and Heartbroken: The Girl Who Survived It All” by Kathleen M. Seaver is a personal tale of survival and also a commentary on a larger scale on the development of the healthcare system and the long-term relationship between a child and a mother. Every chapter makes readers think of how complicated the relationship between health, guilt, and familial love is, and eventually, there is hope and strength in the face of the disorder.