I. Discovery
1. Heartsong
2. Strategies, Tactics, and Counting
3. The Family Body
II. Parallel Universes of Time and Space
4. The Crucible of Time
5. Uncharted Territory
6. Portrait of Healing
III. New Landscapes
7. Creative Detective
8. Coals and Diamonds
9. Mirror Mirror
IV. Process of Uncertainty
10. Illness as Partner: Intimacy, Vulnerability, Love and Anger
11. Grand Rounds: Listening and Hearing as Healing Resources of
Creativity
12. Elements of Style for Doctor/Patient Communication
V. Congruence
13. Heartsong to the Inexplicable: A Calendar of Days
14. Eating Fried Eggs
15. The Phoenix and the Fairy
VI. Epilogue
A Note on the Future of the Arts in Healthcare
Personal Acknowledgments
Professional Acknowledgments
Appendix
Timeline
Boomer Study Summary
What is a Lucid Moment?
Gene Cohen Bibliography
Endnotes
Further Reading
About the Authors
Afterword
Wendy L. Miller is the Co-founder of the Create Therapy Institute,
an Integrative Arts Medicine Studio, and the Executive Director of
Projects on Intergenerational Communication at the Washington, DC
Center on Aging.
Gene D. Cohen was the founding director of the Center on Aging,
Health and Humanities at George Washington University in
Washington, DC where he held the positions of Professor of Health
Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry.
"There is no other book like this. It is a fascinating and loving
collaboration -- between a wife and a husband; between an artist
and a scientist; between the living and the dead. Sky Above Clouds
embodies Dr. Gene Cohen's message of creativity, growth, and care
in the face of aging, loss and death. It is imaginative and
fearless, hopeful yet grounded. Read it." -- Thomas R. Cole, PhD,
University of Texas-Houston School of Medicine, author The Oxford
Book of
Aging, and A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging
"In this beautiful volume, Wendy Miller and Gene Cohen offer a
deeply-moving account of love, illness, wisdom, aging, and death.
Sky Above Clouds is a joy to read and a profound book, one filled
with invaluable insights for making the most of the second half of
life." -- Marc Freedman, CEO, Encore.org http://encore.org/ and
author of The Big Shift, Encore, and Prime Time
"Dr. Cohen's groundbreaking work to develop the concept of creative
aging has provided a blueprint for the future of aging where growth
and development play as important a role as decline and disability.
In a work that is both manual and memoir, Dr. Miller incorporates
Gene Cohen's voice and thinking into her own and describes how
creative aging can enable individuals to grow beyond the
limitations imposed by both illness and aging. The story flows
beautifully,
poignant at places, instructive always, and moving. This book is
about facing adversity and loss and how to cope, told in a way that
opens up to a broad audience including professionals in
psychology,
social work, case management, therapeutic programming and the arts
who work with older individuals." -- Marc E. Agronin, MD, Vice
President of Behavioral Health at Miami Jewish Health Systems and
author of How We Age
"This book brings us the message of ourselves in our own dream
couples of marriage, as Wendy and Gene become our guiding image of
what we all carry-the utter terror of losing our beloved soul
mates-and sometime in a sleepless night, that awareness knocks at
the door. This book is the witness of mourning; that everlasting
love, carried in its beautiful, radiant, empowered and yes, sad,
language, in its crystallization of that experience, is a
pathfinder in the
art of aging." -- Paolo J Knill, PhD and Margo Fuchs Knill, PhD,
Professors, European Graduate School, authors of Minstrels of
Soul
"This is a brilliant, illuminating, poetic, and profoundly touching
book. Its hopeful loving message should be read by every expressive
arts therapist and caregiver wanting to help others find their way
in the shifting clouds of life. We see the vicissitudes of the
gathering storm through Wendy's unflinchingly honest artist eyes,
and marvel at Gene's equally clear-eyed scientific capacity to find
the sky above, and to harness the power of creativity in the
deepest sense." -- Judith A. Rubin, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM, President,
Expressive Media, Inc., author of 7 books including The Art of Art
Therapy, and creator of 13 films on art therapy, including Beyond
Words:
Art Therapy with Older Adults
"This powerful book is about life with illness beyond heartbreak -
teaching us all love, grace and creativity make a powerful cocktail
for living fully. Miller/Cohen take us across many bridges
translating what are such essential human experiences into a sea
change of ideas breaking down the paradigms of stale medical models
and aging stereotypes with strength and resilience. Sky Above
Clouds is a must read as much for healthcare providers as for the
couples
and families living with and through catastrophic illnesses." --
Gay Powell Hanna, PhD MFA, Executive Director, National Center for
Creative Aging
"This book is a spiritual treatise on love and creativity in life's
major transitions." -- Andrea Sherman, PhD. Cofounder of
Transitional Keys and Co-Developer of Seasons of Care, A Care for
the Caregiver Program
"This book takes us into the inner galactic spheres of creative
potential and healing. The fact that Cohen's illness went on for
more than 13 years - a powerful condition called 'Medically, you do
not exist' makes this book a miracle story because this is what
gave both authors the opportunity to have such powerful insights.
They wrote under the sword of Damocles of his severe metastatic
condition, within the context of raising a child, thriving
professionally,
and loving one another: the miracle of the life that they weren't
supposed to have gave them the opportunity to merge their personal
and professional lives, and to flesh out concepts that are not
normally understood around aging, illness, and a creative life.
This story is amazing to any of us reading." -- Sanford Finkel, MD,
geriatric forensic psychiatrist and expert witness, Clinical
Professor of Psychiatry at University of Chicago Medical School
"At various times in one's life and especially during an illness,
it is vital to be able to creatively assess, interpret, and react
to your situation. Loss is inevitable but true strength, power and
hope are found in how we experience and make sense of loss. In this
book, there is a sense of continuity despite the chaos of time;
there is endurance despite change. Emotional movement that varies
from loss, to reflection, to hope, to new futures is a chain that
is
repeated within smaller sections as well as in the book as a whole.
I felt that as a person reading this book, I needed to know that
people can survive loss, not that they're unchanged by it, but
that they are not destroyed. The elements of this book come
together into full consciousness, creating a special gift of
insight." -- Kate de Medeiros, Ph.D, Blayney Associate Professor,
Sociology and Gerontology at Miami University, author of Narrative
Gerontology in Research and Practice
"Sky above Clouds is a powerful narrative of illness that will
reshape current thinking about chronic disease, health care, aging,
and the arts. It details their approach to managing his care when
deemed a "medical outlier" and the illness' impact on their
relationship, family members, and professional lives, his as a
renowned gero-psychiatrist, researcher, and author and hers as an
artist, art therapist, and psychologist. On another level, it
portrays how
interweaving their unique perspectives as scientist and artist
influenced their approach and led to the formulation of an exciting
new paradigm about aging and illness, one that emphasizes human
potential
and the creative spirit to bring new meaning to later life and end
of life." -- Linda S. Noelker, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Sociology,
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
"Tell your numbers in a rhyme if you can" - an exercise in
imagination associated with the game of cribbage, which brought two
creative healing souls - artist Wendy Miller and scientist Gene
Cohen - together in life and in death. Their book Sky above clouds
reveals the twinkling depths of the unfathomable universe of human
compassion and wisdom. This beautiful piece of writing
intergeneratively blends the quantum and qualia of life and allows
us to experience
the swirling galactic energy of their shared relationship. It shows
us that one and one are fun and also a few more than two." -- Peter
Whitehouse, MD, Ph.D., Professor of Neurology Case Western
Reserve
University, author The Myth of Alzheimer's
"Wendy Miller and Gene Cohen, the guru of creative aging, shared a
public silence about Gene's terminal cancer for a remarkable 13
years. As the fog of grief surrounding Gene's illness and death has
lifted, Wendy has reclaimed her voice and created a poetic
reflection of the love affair with art, science and creativity she
shared with Gene. Sky Above Clouds is a contemplation on the power
of the creative spirit to find sunshine behind and beyond a
tempestuous
struggle with terminal cancer. It is a story of personal heroism,
survival and recovery with profound lessons for us all." -- Michael
C. Patterson, co-founder and CEO of MINDRAMP Consulting
"Sky Above Clouds is the inside story of how science and art come
together to create something larger than one plus one equals two.
Creativity and the creative imagination is at the heart of this
magical transformation. First the father wishes to write a
fairytale for his daughter whom he may not see grow up. Then Gene
and Wendy come together to bridge, enhance and illuminate our
understanding of "living with loss." It is with profound gratitude,
I thank Gene
and Wendy for sharing their unique perspectives on resilience and
growth as these creative thinkers integrate theory and life in
story. We are our stories. Sky Above Clouds is an important tale
that
shows the power of art and science to uplift and inspire us all in
challenging times of loss." -- Susan Perlstein, Founder, National
Center for Creative Aging (NCCA)
"Sky Above Clouds is a powerful book....offers a realistic portrait
for any art therapist, physician, or caregiver to reflect on in
grief, communication, ageism, and creativity." -- American Art
Therapy Association
"Radiant with Miller's loving prose and psychological insight, Sky
Above Clouds shows how attitude, community, creativity and love can
powerfully shape a life as one moves through health, illness and
even death." -- Aging Today
"An important expression of creativity reverberating throughout
this book, starting with its title." -The Gerontologist, 2017, Vol.
57, No. 3
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