Name Susannah Meadows Role Journalist | Spouse Darin Strauss (m. 2004) Education Duke University | |
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Confronting Chronic Disease and Refusing To Give Up | Susannah Meadows | TEDxNashville
Susannah Meadows is an American journalist. She is the author of the book "The Other Side of Impossible" about people facing difficult illnesses who find ways of getting better on their own. In the book, one boy who has severe food allergies undergoes an unconventional therapy and is soon eating everything. A physician with MS creates her own combination of treatments and goes from a wheelchair to riding a bike again. A child diagnosed with ADHD refuses to take medication and instead improves his life, and the life of his family, after changing his diet. Other families take on rheumatoid arthritis, intractable epilepsy, and autistic behaviors.
The book originated with a personal experience that Meadows wrote about in the widely viewed New York Times Magazine article, "The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints." The 2013 article was about her young son's unexpected recovery from juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The article received such an overwhelming response that the editors gave the entire letters to the editor page over to it. It topped the most read and most emailed lists for a week.
She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times. Most recently she wrote the Newly Released column for the Arts section, as well as book reviews. She has written reviews for the Sunday Book Review section since 2002.
For ten years she was a reporter, writer, and editor at Newsweek magazine. The stories she’s covered include the 2004 presidential campaign, the aftermath of 9/11, Columbine, Hurricane Katrina, and the Duke lacrosse scandal. She has appeared on CBS This Morning, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, Charlie Rose, and The Brian Lehrer Show.
She is a cum laude graduate of Duke.
She is married to the novelist Darin Strauss.