The Sensitive One

At age fifty, Susan Morris is diagnosed with breast cancer—and she’s floored. Desperate to pinpoint the cause, one night she decides to type a question into her search engine: “What are the risk factors of getting breast cancer?” She’s surprised to discover research showing that long-term exposure to stress and traumatic childhood experiences can both increase the risk of breast cancer.

The Sensitive One is a braided memoir that alternates between Morris’s childhood—as a sensitive child and then teenager who shouldered the burden of caring for her younger siblings as her dad’s alcoholism tore at the threads of their home life—and an adult who for a decade-plus has been living a trauma-free life with a caring husband and rewarding career in nursing . . . only to be diagnosed with breast cancer.

This is a story of redemption—of a woman who manages to escape harrowing circumstances and start anew—but it’s also a story of how our legacy lives within us, and how healing from the adverse effects of childhood can truly take a lifetime.

Author: Susan F. Morris

Publication Date: August 24, 2021

Categories: Fall 2021, Memoir

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About the Author

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2021 Foreword INDIES Awards Gold Winner (Autobiography & Memoir)

“Susan Morris weaves together a compelling memoir, taking the reader through the darkness of childhood abuse and its effects on a family, an individual life, and a body. As a somatic psychotherapist specializing in trauma, her story is an act of compassion reflecting her life’s journey in attempts to understand, heal, and transform.
—Ann Saffi Biasetti, PhD, LCSWR, C-IAYT, author of Befriending Your Body: A Self-Compassionate Approach to Freeing Yourself from Disordered Eating

“Susan Morris’s courageous story The Sensitive One will inspire you to learn how healing is possible despite a lifetime of traumas, physical and emotional. Susan shows that love, joy in life, therapy, and a gritty determination to overcome it all are a powerful combination to change darkness to light and live a richer life.”
—Linda Joy Myers, president of the National Association of Memoir Writers and author of Song of the Plains

“Morris’s insights into how adverse childhood experiences influence our health later in life are cutting-edge. The book is a delight to read. I am sure that it will become loved by women and their families, particularly those who are living through the diagnosis of breast cancer.”
—Rebecca G. Rogers, MD

About the Author

Susan Frances Morris was raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the second oldest of seven siblings with two sets of twins. She was a practicing nurse from 1989 to 2011, primarily in Women’s Health. The highlight of her career has been the time she spent at Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven Connecticut working in nursing management alongside international experts in the field of women’s health. Since 2011, she has focused on her life outside of work.

She met her current husband, Bruce, in 1989. Her passions are walking and bike riding in nature, yoga, traveling, photography, and jewelry design. She has three grown children, four grandchildren. She lives with her husband and three dogs in Clifton Park, New York.