This is Body Grief: Q & A and Book Signing with Jayne Mattingly

Jayne Mattingly is joining us for an evening at Three Avenues Bookshop for her book This is Body Grief. The event will feature a audience Q&A with an author meet & greet and book signing to follow.

When: Friday, April 25th at 6:00 pm (doors open at 5:30 pm)

Where: Three Avenues Bookshop. 3009 N Southport Ave, Chicago, IL.

Tickets are $35. All tickets include one copy of This is Body Grief, which Jayne will sign after the event.

If you already own the book, once you're at the shop, we can refund you the price of the book ($29, not the full price of the ticket) onto a Three Avenues gift card, so you can shop our other titles!

A guide to living and making peace with your ever-changing body

Have you ever felt like your body has failed you? Maybe you’re not as quick or as strong as you used to be, or an illness has wrecked your sense of self, or no matter what diet you follow, you still feel uncomfortable in your own skin. So you go to war with your body for what it can no longer do—when the truth is, our bodies are always on our side.

In This Is Body Grief, disability advocate and recovery expert Jayne Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one’s ever-changing body. Like all grief, she says, Body Grief cannot be overcome but felt in all its complexity. Dismantling the narrative that your body is “against you,” she presents new ways to cope with your body’s fluctuating abilities with self-compassion and grace. Along the way, she walks you through the seven stages of Body Grief—from dismissal, shock, and self-blame to hopelessness and hope, and eventual body trust—offering wisdom for how to make space for each difficult emotion as it arises.

Sharing stories from everyday people in the throes of Body Grief as well as her own journey as a newly-disabled woman—from the first of many harrowing hospital visits that resulted in her own life-altering diagnosis, to having to use a rollator on her wedding day because she could no longer walk safely on her own, to accepting the need for a hysterectomy in her early 30s—Mattingly shows that although healing isn’t a linear journey, it begins when we trust and work in tandem with our bodies.

Jayne Mattingly is a disability advocate and eating disorder recovery coach. She is the CEO of Recovery Love and Care, a global virtual eating disorder recovery coaching curriculum and training program. She is also the Founder of nonprofit The AND Initiative, which aims to provide inspiration, advocacy, resources, support, and the gifting mobility aids to those with chronic illness and physical disabilities. Jayne lives in South Carolina with her husband and pets.

Three Avenues Bookshop's goal is to be a safe, accessible, and inclusive space for all. Please email us at YWNjZXNzIHwgdGhyZWVhdmVudWVzYm9va3Nob3AgISBjb20= to let us know if you need any accommodations for this event, and we'll do our best to meet them. If you are joining us for this event in a wheelchair or with another mobility aid, let us know how many people are in your party and we will reserve space for you with your people.

Also check out other Arts events in Chicago, Literary Art events in Chicago, Workshops in Chicago.