Voices of Women with Host Kris Steinnes: Sonya Lea shares her powerful new memoir Wondering Who You Are

Voices of Women with Host Kris Steinnes: Sonya Lea shares her powerful new memoir Wondering Who You Are

  07/29/2015  10:00 am PDT

Voices of Women with Host Kris Steinnes: Sonya Lea shares her powerful new memoir Wondering Who You AreIn the twenty-third year of their marriage, Sonya Lea’s husband, Richard, went in for surgery to treat a rare appendix cancer. When he came out, he had no recollection of their life together: how they met, their wedding day, the births of their two children. All of it was gone, along with the rockier parts of their past—her drinking, his anger. Richard could now hardly speak, emote, or create memories from moment to moment. Who he was wasn't.Wondering Who You Are braids the story of Sonya and Richard’s relationship, those memories that he could no longer conjure, together with his fateful days in the hospital—the near-death experience and eventual traumatic brain injury. It follows the couple through his recovery as they struggle with his treatment, and through a marriage no longer grounded on decades of shared experience. As they build a fresh life together, as Richard develops a new personality, Sonya is forced to question her own assumptions, beliefs and desires, her place in the marriage and her way of being in the world. With radical candor and honesty, Sonya Lea has written a memoir that is both a powerful look at perseverance in the face of trauma and a surprising exploration into what lies beyond our fragile identities.

HOST

Kris Steinnes

Kris Steinnes

Voices of Women Radio with Kris SteinnesKris Steinnes began her spiritual journey in 1990 when she discovered her mission to bring people together. In 1993 after reading th...

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GUEST

 Sonya Lea

Sonya Lea

Sonya Lea is a screenwriter, essayist and memoirist.Her memoir, Wondering Who You Are (Tin House 2015,) is about her husband’s cancer treatment, through which he lost the me...

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