The Shifting Creek

About the Book

In this captivating memoir Mona Sen talks of current life with multiple sclerosis. In her need to succeed she talks about charting out a plan for graduate school to undertake a very challenging occupational therapy program at a highly respected institution. The rigor and stress that followed resulted in wanting to give up, ultimately breaking her spirit and eventually causing her MS to worsen. She talks of how her dream of a career in her chosen field was shattered but she refused to give up. Mona Sen discussed growing up in many worlds including her extended family in India. Her father traveled a great deal and she talks of India being a challenging existence for the early years of her life as she searched for a sense of identity and a home in one place. After India her family moved to the United States which held more challenges. Her father moved the family around until she finished high school and entered her undergraduate college. She talks of her undergraduate years as being the best years with a sense of identity and home in her young life. That however was to change when she graduated. In the Shifting Creek Mona learned all about true love of friendships including her current partner and a path besides the one she first desired, a career. Her beloved undergraduate college friends have shown her a new meaning of living with MS, “what she can do as opposed to what she can’t do!” In this truly inspirational memoir she shows us how life does not have one path, meaning or direction but many.

About the Author

Mona Sen was born in Asansol, West Bengal India in 1965. Her father was a Bengali and mother is American. She lived in India as a young person, completed her junior high, and also lived in Jakarta, Indonesia and the United States. Mona attributes her affinity for language because of multiple languages in her household. Her life has been shaped by an early diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1986 at the age of twenty. Mona completed her undergraduate work in psychology at Wells College in Aurora, New York and a master of science in occupational therapy at the Washington University school of medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to the worsening MS and accompanying hardship, she made the decision not to pursue a career but to educate others in the unforgiving challenges of MS. While in St. Louis Mona completed her clinical work at the MS Society and is currently an active support group leader in her area of upstate New York where she has given numerous talks and presentations. She currently lives in beautiful upstate New York with her partner of two decades, David in a glorious and tranquil healing environment.