Susan Rako seemed to have it all. She was a piano prodigy at eight, a highly intelligent teenager focused on academics and determined to study medicine, and then a wife, mother, and M.D., all before thirty. But she knew at her core that her spirit was clouded by despair. Dr. Rako was drawn to the study and practice of psychiatry as a seeker of truth about herself and others, and as much to free herself as to be of help to her patients.
Dr. Rako was in her forties before years of therapy - both given and received - freed her to explore her innate and broad based creativity. A well-respected Boston psychiatrist, Susan Rako has also become a pioneering expert on women’s reproductive health and a writer whose incisive intelligence enables her to pierce through clutter to deeper meaning. In THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN, she gives us important life lessons through example. What she has learned, though decades of experience as a trusted psychiatrist who has helped hundreds of people -- and through her own self-exploration and therapy -- is distilled in a lyrically wrought memoir that truly does illuminate that which makes us human and makes life an adventure of magic and mystery.
THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN is an intelligent and intensely personal story from a highly respected doctor, author, and advocate for women’s health issues. Dr. Rako’s insightful stories of self, family, friends, patients, and colleagues bear inspirational witness to the power of discovering and standing to one’s truth. Susan Rako will inspire you to look within yourself and acknowledge your deepest ambitions, develop your own imagination, and learn to break through the boundaries and limitations that each of us places on ourselves. THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN will inspire you to live the life you’ve always wanted to live—the life of your dreams.
“These are travel notes of a seeker after meaning, and it is the good fortune of her readers that—having found and lived through many answers—she is, in the end, unwilling to regard any of them as final enough to end her search.”
-- Allen Wheelis, M.D., author of How People Change, The Path Not Taken, and The Quest for Identity.
“This remarkably candid memoir is like a dance in which components of the author’s self – child, parent, lover, learner, teacher, therapist – move in relation to one another. The reader experiences fragmentation and integration, distress and delight. This is life as lived thoughtfully, deeply, and honestly.”
--James Sabin, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry.
Harvard Medical School
"Rako brings the examined life—hers—to us in a book that truly reveals how the light got in. With a novelist's eye for detail, she presents a memoir that is a wonderful combination of memory and interpretation."
--George Harrar, author of The Spinning Man
From Publishers Weekly
Rako (The Hormone of Desire) trains her professional lens inward in her first memoir. In seeking the roots of her fears and desires, Rako sweeps her history's crowded terrain, her mind a searchlight picking up telling detail. She discerns profound significance in a torrent of events in her formative years, an assertion made plausible by the frenzied, meddling Jewish household of her Worcester, Mass., 1950s childhood. From childhood, Rako aimed to please her mother through piano playing, then by attending medical school and jumping into an early marriage; though her mother was a remote, detached figure, Rako still struggled to break away from her. She considers the fraught yet taut bonds between the women in her family—five generations trying to reconcile legacy with individuality. After the wrenching process of enlightenment, it appears Rako has achieved a calm, even amused resignation that glows with lucidity. Her memories and epiphanies make agreeable and often stirringly inspirational company.
Dr. Rako was in her forties before years of therapy - both given and received - freed her to explore her innate and broad based creativity. A well-respected Boston psychiatrist, Susan Rako has also become a pioneering expert on women’s reproductive health and a writer whose incisive intelligence enables her to pierce through clutter to deeper meaning. In THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN, she gives us important life lessons through example. What she has learned, though decades of experience as a trusted psychiatrist who has helped hundreds of people -- and through her own self-exploration and therapy -- is distilled in a lyrically wrought memoir that truly does illuminate that which makes us human and makes life an adventure of magic and mystery.
THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN is an intelligent and intensely personal story from a highly respected doctor, author, and advocate for women’s health issues. Dr. Rako’s insightful stories of self, family, friends, patients, and colleagues bear inspirational witness to the power of discovering and standing to one’s truth. Susan Rako will inspire you to look within yourself and acknowledge your deepest ambitions, develop your own imagination, and learn to break through the boundaries and limitations that each of us places on ourselves. THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN will inspire you to live the life you’ve always wanted to live—the life of your dreams.
“These are travel notes of a seeker after meaning, and it is the good fortune of her readers that—having found and lived through many answers—she is, in the end, unwilling to regard any of them as final enough to end her search.”
-- Allen Wheelis, M.D., author of How People Change, The Path Not Taken, and The Quest for Identity.
“This remarkably candid memoir is like a dance in which components of the author’s self – child, parent, lover, learner, teacher, therapist – move in relation to one another. The reader experiences fragmentation and integration, distress and delight. This is life as lived thoughtfully, deeply, and honestly.”
--James Sabin, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry.
Harvard Medical School
"Rako brings the examined life—hers—to us in a book that truly reveals how the light got in. With a novelist's eye for detail, she presents a memoir that is a wonderful combination of memory and interpretation."
--George Harrar, author of The Spinning Man
From Publishers Weekly
Rako (The Hormone of Desire) trains her professional lens inward in her first memoir. In seeking the roots of her fears and desires, Rako sweeps her history's crowded terrain, her mind a searchlight picking up telling detail. She discerns profound significance in a torrent of events in her formative years, an assertion made plausible by the frenzied, meddling Jewish household of her Worcester, Mass., 1950s childhood. From childhood, Rako aimed to please her mother through piano playing, then by attending medical school and jumping into an early marriage; though her mother was a remote, detached figure, Rako still struggled to break away from her. She considers the fraught yet taut bonds between the women in her family—five generations trying to reconcile legacy with individuality. After the wrenching process of enlightenment, it appears Rako has achieved a calm, even amused resignation that glows with lucidity. Her memories and epiphanies make agreeable and often stirringly inspirational company.
