“Life is pain,” says the Man in Black in The Princess Bride. But some people are in more pain than others. Take, for example, Michelle Rial, who has been in chronic pain since she injured her neck and her foot as a teenager. She has an autoimmune disorder, and she’s grieving for the loss of her father to terminal lung cancer. But most of the time, she still gets out of bed and tries to do some work, and she has written Maybe This Will Help in an attempt to, you know, help.
Rial knows that there is no One Right Way to Heal or a magical drink that will cure everything that’s wrong with you. But she also knows that sometimes drinking more water can help, or finding a more comfortable position on the sofa, or going to the doctor 6 times (because for some reason it takes 6 visits for them to find the right diagnosis). She knows what it’s like to get non-helpful but well-meaning advice for everything from an alkaline diet to acupuncture to going back to school giving up sugar.
She tells her stories of pain and hope, of family and of self, of facing her challenges and spending too much time scrolling on her phone. And in between these stories are graphics she’s created that also tell her story. With lovely charts and clever uses of everyday objects, she shares her visual representations of things like Types of Brain Fog, or “I’m Not a Hypochondriac” Bingo, or It Might Help to Stop and Breathe (complete with a diagram that makes a stop sign in the center).
With her words and her illustrations, she asks important questions. How do you believe in yourself and your art when nothing is original? How do you keep creating when you know someone else will always be better than you? At what point does anxiety hold you back? Can you ever really be in control? How many candles can you light before it becomes a real fire hazard? What kind of drink do I need right now to feel better?
Rial is real about her struggles, her pain, and her sacrifices. She was in pain when she started writing Maybe This Will Help, and she is still in pain today. But she has learned to respect her pain, to speak up for her needs, to do work that helps her feel good when she can and to give herself breaks when she needs them. She is honest about who she is and who she isn’t. She may not know how to fix the pain in her neck, but she knows how to pick out a comfy couch. She knows that becoming a hat person can be easier than working so hard to straighten you hair. And she knows that the Beatles had a lot of good relationship advice.
But most of all, she knows how we need to talk about our pain. Those around us may not completely understand our pain, but they can help us anyway. They can carry some of the weight of it. The can offer us snacks. They can help with the laundry, break down the boxes, tell us when we’re overreacting, or take us to the dog park.
Maybe This Will Help is a lovely, painful, honest acknowledgement that life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan. And it’s an affirmation that that is okay. I loved the honesty and creativity of this book. I am not someone who feels chronic physical pain, but I have anxiety, which comes with its own chronic uncertainty. As I read this book, I felt seen and understood, and it made me want to buy a copy of this book for everyone I know who is in physical pain or emotional pain or is dealing with grief, and I couldn’t think of someone I didn’t need to give this book to. It is lovely and inspiring and heart-breaking and wonderful, and I recommend it to anyone who is alive because I think it will help you too.
Egalleys for Maybe This Will Help were provided by Chronicle Books through Edelweiss, with many thanks.
