Not Weakness

2023 Living Now Book Awards Silver Medalist in Sexuality/Femininity/Women’s Experience“Intertwining her moving personal journey with the stories of other women living with chronic pain, Grossman sheds light on the stigma our culture places on pain and offers insight into the sense of connection, community, and, yes, hope, that may emerge when those who suffer share their stories—and are heard.”—Meg Donohue, USA Today best-selling author of You, Me, and the Sea“Not Weakness is a much needed examination of a pressing and urgent problem that faces not just modern healthcare, but also every one of us. Women’s pain is everybody’s pain. Or should be. Francesca Grossman, and the brave stories she’s collected, show us that it’s never too late to focus on what hurts us most and find a way through it to something entirely new.”—Laurel S. Braitman, New York Times best-selling author of Animal Madness“A powerful and poignant account of the experience of living with chronic pain. Francesca neither looks for pity nor hides the raw truths—this book will prove a comfort to anyone living with a condition others don’t understand, and a must-read for anyone supporting someone who does. Simply put, this book is a gift.”—Michelle Miller, best-selling author of The Underwriting and The Fairer Sex Collection“So much more than a personal memoir, Not Weakness is a meditation on womanhood, endurance, and daring to exist in a culture nominally obsessed with wellness and hustle yet deeply uncomfortable with those whose bodily realities reveal the limits of those ideals—limits which all of us, inevitably, will encounter. Francesca Grossman beautifully weaves together stories of chronic pain to illuminate how our embodied experiences are at once irreducibly unique, and universally, inescapable.”—Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, historian and author of Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession“This is the book we all need; whether or not we suffer from chronic pain ourselves. It’ll offer us a deeper understanding and let’s be real: we all know people suffering with chronic pain. Francesca Kaplan Grossman writes beautifully. It’s a pleasure to read every sentence, yes, even inside a book on pain. She brings love and beauty and deep empathy. Get this book for yourself and your people.”—Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human

Francesca Louise Grossman is a writer and writing instructor. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Brain, Child Magazine, The Manifest Station, Ed Week, Drunken Boat, and Word Riot, among others. She runs writing retreats and workshops internationally and leads an annual intensive workshop at The Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has a BA and MA from Stanford University and a doctorate from Harvard University in education. Her acclaimed instructional manual Writing Workshop; How to Create a Culture of Useful Feedback is used in universities and workshops all over the world. Francesca lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children and is currently working on a memoir and a novel.

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