The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living & Dying by Nina Riggs

The paperback edition of The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying is a memoir by Nina Riggs.

The author, a mother and writer, is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in her late thirties. The memoir considers daily life, family and mortality. Activities often associated with creativity, learning, and leisure can also play a meaningful role in cognitive and emotional well-being.

Reading, writing, listening to music, and playing an instrument do more than provide entertainment or creative expression. Research suggests that these activities can help individuals explore, express, understand, and regulate emotional experiences. Music has been associated with emotion-regulation processes and mood management (Peters et al., 2024; Chong et al., 2024), expressive writing has been linked to emotional processing and reflection (Pennebaker, 2018), and reading has been associated with emotional understanding, empathy, and perspective-taking (Rezende & Shigaeff, 2023; Luperini, 2021). These activities also engage cognitive systems involved in language, attention, and memory (Kunert et al., 2015; Maess et al., 2001; Patel, 2003; Yurgil et al., 2020). Musical and linguistic activities draw on shared neural resources for processing structured information, including syntax (Kunert et al., 2015; Maess et al., 2001; Patel, 2003), while music training has been associated with working-memory processes and executive functioning (Yurgil et al., 2020). Reading, writing, and music may support emotional well-being and cognitive development while strengthening communication, memory, attention, emotional understanding, and self-regulation.

Details

• Author: Nina Riggs
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 336
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 5.4" x 1.1" (21.3 x 13.7 x 2.8 cm)
• Published: January 16, 2018