Customer Reviews

Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor

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The author describes in gret detail his struggles and satisfactions working with AIDS patients in New York. As he continues his work he finds need to look into his own background and discovers the details of his father's death when he was a child. A heartwarming portrayal of how life experiences often unrecognized motivate us in our choice of profession and the way we carry out our responsibilities. A heart warming book. Morris Wessel, M.D.

Dr. Peter A. Selwyn's book "Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor" is one of profound importance. It is the synthesis of Peter's life, his life's work, including his work with the late Elisabeth Kubler Ross and her teachings, and thus a path to healing for humanity. I hope that none are misguided into avoiding it because they think it is about what many so unfortunately see as the "unspeakable" AIDS epidemic just as they often mistook Elisabeth Kubler Ross's work to be about death and dying rather than life and living. "Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor" is another important entry in humanity's journal of life and living. I thank Peter for sharing a copy of this book with me prior to publication in preparation for furthering his support of those in need. This review was originally posted on Amazon a number of years ago. I was deeply moved by this book which helped create an opening into my own inner world and my own unfinished business. I am certain that for those who dare to look inside themselves and examine their own unfinished business, they too will find meaning in Peter's book.

One meaning that became evident to me in reading "Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor" is that it is a beacon. It is a beacon to all who wish to find their way to overcoming their personal inner obstacles and blockages, and thus to avoid becoming bitter, angry, and beaten down by life and to what they bear witness. It is a beacon to becoming the beautiful person each of us is meant to be. Peter's book exemplifies deep understanding of, and awakening to, the inner pain and struggles that can either lead us astray from our own paths toward beauty, or be the driving force behind our own personal and spiritual evolution. I hold that this book is a guide to becoming what each human is meant to be: a "flower". We are intended to strive throughout our lives to become that flower despite the strife which may surround and engulf us. The manure that is "thrown at us", life's trauma's, losses, and pains, is the fertilizer from which we grow. I hold that "The most beautiful flowers spring from the deepest manure". That manure, the pain and tribulations of life, can be the "detritus" from which we are driven to our own flowering or it can be just a stinking bunch of "muck" into which we sink and become, to ourselves and others, much like the muck. We can become the perpetrators of more "muck" upon others. Indeed we can become the muck in other's lives. We think we don't have a choice but I believe we do. I believe ultimately choice creates "Hitler's" and alternatively, choice creates "Mother Teresa's". It is our choice where the pain takes us: "Flowerhood" or "muckhood". Peter's book is an example to all of how one man had the strength to look inside and make a choice to reach for the beauty that is there for all to grasp. That beauty was the gift he received from, and gave back to, his patients and now to any who read his book. That beauty has led Peter to share his wonderful example of what can be derived from the manure that is thrown at us in life.

"Surviving the Fall: The Personal Journey of an AIDS Doctor" also points out a crucial factor in all healing: We gain much from those in pain for whom we remain present. Indeed, we gain much by remaining present for our own pain. It is hard to be cognizant that to *just be present* can make such a difference, yet this is a truth which Peter Selwyn exemplifies in his writings, his life, and his life's work. It is a natural outcome that when we remain so present for others who hurt, even if we do not have any answers to their suffering, if we are willing or able to look, we become aware of our own "demons". It is from just such a pivotal point of awareness that a choice, conscious or unconscious, of "flowering from the manure" or avoiding it and sinking back into the muck comes. It takes strength and courage to look at what causes us and others pain and to stay with it. Yet to heal we must do just that. Those who suffer with whom we share this definitively human compassion of simply being there are our greatest teachers. Indeed, we can see so much of ourselves reflected in their eyes if we dare to look. If we dare to "touch" their pain simply by our compassion and presence, we will see what is hidden in our own "shadows" that drives us to behave as we do, and thus, what can drive us all to beauty, peace and living life fully every second of every day. This is the human experience. Peace is obtainable here and now. It is elusive and perhaps transient, but we each can get there in this physical lifetime if we will just sit still long enough to discover where the struggles lead us. Dr. Peter A. Selwyn's book is a lighthouse to all who are willing to find their way through their storms to their own shore of self discovery.

Surviving the Fall is eminently readable, quite fascinating and very moving. It makes the reader care about the troubled people who become Dr. Selwyn's AIDS patients. Dr. Selwyn also shares very personal insights into his own emotions and the journey he took in coming to terms with personal losses.