Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer, published by She Writes Press, is a memoir about how Antoinette Truglio Martin found the courage to navigate her first year of breast cancer treatment. It’s the story of how a community—colleagues, family, friends—rallied to support her. The book is moving, brave, informative, and occasionally funny—and it speaks to us all.
I turned to journaling when my son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and after his suicide death. The page became a healing balm for me. Eventually I included those journal entries in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Suicide and Surviving His Suicide. Like Antoinette, my writing kept me calm and focused.
Here is her essay on how she benefitted from writing in her journals and emailing her community after her cancer diagnosis.
How Writing Calms the Nerves
by Antoinette Truglio Martin
I don’t run. I don’t sit still long enough to mind my breath and meditate. Beach walking and sailing are seasonal respites that need planning. Although I find my happy place when I cook, it only comes between frantic shopping excursions and cleaning up.
Finding a means to keep me calm and focus has to be convenient, spontaneous, and come from my core.
Writing fits.
I have always written. Through the years, I kept composition notebooks, diaries with miniature locks, and pretty journals. Pocketbooks must have room for the current journal. My entries record the weather and mundane daily recaps, task lists that, at the moment, seemed impossible, and anxiety-riddled ramblings. My journal writings spark story ideas. I seldom need writing prompts.
I did not realize how important this practice was until I was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer the first time. An ugly spiral notebook served as my journal that year. I ranted, raged, and sogged the pages with tears and snot. The detour rattled my linear life. I wrote out the worst possible scenarios, listed things that had to be done just in case everything went wrong, and practiced the words I did not want to hear or say.
Writing emails also served as a way to calm my nervous energy. I composed vignettes of treatment adventures and sent them to My Everyone, a tribe of family and friends who genuinely wanted to know how I was doing. Encouraging words and virtual hugs filled my inbox.
When a second diagnosed confirmed Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, I dug out that ugly notebook and used it as a talisman to help me navigate this permanent detour. That was almost eight years ago. I continue to write daily. I rant and rage, sog up pages with tears and snot, list everything I need to do, and still dream up worse possible scenarios. I do add gratitude, even if the only good thing in my day was that my feet were warm.
Then I close the book. I can leave the angst alone, take a breath. I do not need to clutter my day with anxiety. Writing is my private therapist who is always available and eventually shows me a path beyond the tangles and detours. I can calmly move forward, be present in the day.
***
Book Summary
During 2017’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, She Writes Press published Antoinette Truglio Martin’s touching memoir, Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer. It is a 2017 USA Best Book Awards Finalist in Non-Fiction: Narrative and a 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist: Non-Fiction Women’s Issues.
In 2007, Martin believed her call back doctor appointment was routine, maybe a scare, nothing worse. Her shock at receiving a Stage I breast cancer diagnosis was instantly compounded by her own deep fears. As a self-described wimp—afraid of needles and uncomfortable with sedation—how was she going to get through this?
Antoinette started her fight against cancer with words. She began by journaling and by writing emails to Her Everyone—the large close-knit family and circle of beloved friends wanting to offer their support, especially those who were fighting breast cancer alongside her. The emails not only helped to keep Her Everyone informed, they gave cancer less of a presence in Antoinette’s life, since she wasn’t repeatedly updating people or saying the word “cancer” over and over. The practice of writing calmed her and also gave her space to focus on living: on the house that wasn’t selling, an exciting new job, daughters in college, and summer beach plans. She signed every email with the reminder to “hug everyone you know.”
Those emails and journal entries are at the heart of this memoir, which gives the book an immediacy and raw power.
Print Length: 325 Pages
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: She Writes Press
ISBN-13: 9781631522628
ASIN: B07415341C
Hug Everyone You Know is now available to purchase on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and IndieBound.
Antoinette Truglio Martin is a life-long Long Islander, teacher, wife, mother, daughter, and friend. She is the author of Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer—a memoir chronicling her first year battling breast cancer as a wimpy patient. Personal experience essays and excerpts of her memoir were published in Bridges, Visible Ink, and The Southampton Review. Martin proudly received her MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook/Southampton University in 2016. Antoinette had also written the children’s picture book, Famous Seaweed Soup (Albert Whitman and Company), and was a regular columnist for local periodicals Parent Connections (In a Family Way) and Fire Island Tide (Beach Bumming). Her blog, Stories Served Around The Table, tells family tales and life’s musings. She lives in her hometown of Sayville, New York with her husband, Matt and is never far from her “Everyone” and the beaches she loves. Since being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2012, she strives to not let cancer dictate her life.
Follow her at Facebook and her website.
Praise for Hug Everyone You Know
“…a well-written, concise telling of what it’s like to be hit with a cancer diagnosis and the human thoughts that accompany it, like ‘how do I tell the family?’ and ‘what do I tell them?…. In five words: she writes a good story…. Martin’s persona is optimistic; you just want to hang around her and it’s that attitude that got her through. Not surprisingly, gratefulness is part of her mantra. So are hugs.”—The Suffolk County News
“Filled with fresh air, light, and life, Hug Everyone You Know is an intimate conversation with an intelligent, funny survivor. The voice rings true, and the insights resonate well beyond the cancer moment. Highly recommended.”—Joni Rodgers, NYT bestselling author of Bald in the Land of Big Hair
“… a compelling memoir about the importance of community while navigating a life crisis such as cancer. As an oncology nurse and a cancer survivor myself, I found Martin’s writing to be a refreshingly real depiction of life as a cancer patient. Her writing is a testimony to the endurance of the human spirit, the importance of love and community, and the need for hope every day of the journey.”—Lee Ambrose, StoryCircle Book Reviews
“Martin used journaling and emails to “My Everyone,” her group of close family and friends, to get through her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from early-stage breast cancer….The account reveals the value of keeping a journal as a means of coping with one’s fears and acknowledges the support Martin received through sharing her experience rather than trying to shield others from her illness.”—Library Journal
“…how does one wake up from a nightmare like Stage 1 breast cancer? For Antoinette Truglio Martin, the answer was in her community — her family, friends, and close “everyone.” In this memoir, she documents how staying connected with the people in her life helped her to find the courage to embrace her reality and to transform it into a life-giving experience….Martin writes with natural humor and readers will find a lot of encouragement and hope in her writing. This book will show readers the power of human connectivity and how sharing our experience can become an inspiring journey, not only for those who listen to us, but for us who live it….a gift to receive, use and pass on. This book will give readers the strength and the inspiration to name their suffering and to triumph over it. It’s exciting, informative and, above all, entertaining.”—Christian Sia, Reader’s Favorite
“This is a beautifully and honestly written account of the challenges that face women and families confronting a breast cancer diagnosis. It passionately illustrates the ability of women and their ‘Everyone’s’ to find their strength and demonstrate their love.”—Karen Schmitt, MA, BSN, Director, Cancer Services Program of Manhattan New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia Executive Director, CARE Shared Resource Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center
“…Being in the medical field, it’s a shot of reality seeing it from the patients’ point of view, with the day-in and day-out struggles of life compounded with the diagnosis. This book brought a face to breast cancer and I feel privileged and honored that she shared it with me. I will hug everyone I know, now and forever.”—Barbara M. O’Brien RN, Director of Cancer Services Program of Staten Island, Staten Island University Hospital
“…beautifully captures the terror and anxiety—as well as the awkwardness and occasional humor—that follow a diagnosis of breast cancer, and the salvation to be found in the love and support of family and friends.”—Andrew Botsford, Editor and Visiting Professor, Stony Brook Southampton MFA in Creative Writing & Literature
And I can’t resist asking you this. Don’t you just love the book cover art? Please take another look above.
Thank you so much for the blog stop. And yes, the cover came out beautifully, and as you may guess, there is a story to it..
Thanks, Antoinette. I hope you’ll share the story.