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At mid-life, Bill Sutherland was in his prime – happily married with two wonderful daughters, working for a great company thriving at his job, and an ex-jock who ran to keep fit. One day out for his usual run he mysteriously fell down—over and over again. His life changed forever.
Athletic since childhood, he excelled at all sports and attended the University of Minnesota on a baseball scholarship, rare for a Canadian in the late sixties. He remained active right up to his illness running five marathons and countless 10K and 10-mile road races.
A diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, the first of many, stopped all that. He had lost his identity, and with it, his source of strength. His life was crumbling and pushed by guilt and fear, he found himself on the brink of suicide. It was there he started to push back.
He went searching for hard to find answers and forged the difficult lessons of acceptance his way. It’s your choice to use his answers as they are, modify them to make them work for you, or keep searching for your own. It matters not what you choose. What matters is that it work for you.
This is Bill Sutherland’s first book.
Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite
“I promised myself that if I ever got through this, I’d write a book for people who, like me, went searching for answers and couldn’t find them.” Acceptance Is Not Surrender: A Little Girl, an Old Man and One Man’s Story of Hope by William ‘Bill’ S. Sutherland is about an ex-avid runner who had to struggle to regain his mobility after an incomprehensible debilitating illness. Bill’s life was blessed; a great family, a great job, he was healthy and fit. It all started with a seemingly harmless flu, difficulty in getting out of bed, constant nausea and other instances of malaise. Determined to get rid of these ‘blahs’ as he called them, Bill went for a run one morning and he mysteriously kept falling. This turning point is in chapter two, ‘My Last Run,’ and readers will really feel the emotions resonate from page to page.
I can truly empathize with Bill’s frustrating moments with all the medical tests and difficulties with some doctors that he had to go through. When perseverance left him, his family was there to support him and became his reason to push through. However, strain in the family was inevitable, and there were lots of reflection on his past, present and future. This is a very detailed book with footnotes, pictures and other things included in the appendices that make Bill’s story more personal, clarifying and visual. I got to know wonderful individuals through his perspective. He wrote Acceptance Is Not Surrender to help people find answers through his experiences. His elaborate long journey in trying to pinpoint the diagnosis for his medical condition and dealing with the drastic changes in his life will definitely benefit others.
