'In the Face of Catastrophe' details family journey after daughter's stroke

It was a normal workday for Jennifer Rose Goldman. Until it wasn’t.

On Aug. 18, 2021, just a few days before her 31st birthday, Goldman suffered a massive stroke that left her in a coma for three weeks, clinging to life. “My brain died a violent death on an otherwise tranquil Wednesday morning,” Goldman writes in the book she and her mother, Caryn Meg Hirshleifer, 70, wrote to reflect on their journey of healing.

Goldman remembers little of that morning. “I woke up feeling fine and meditated for close to an hour before driving to work,” she writes in the book, “In the Face of Catastrophe: How a Traumatic Brain Injury Became a Blessing” (Greenleaf). Looking back, about all she remembers is that she “felt strange.”

Sitting with her mother in her basement office at Hirshleifer’s, the Manhasset luxury department store owned by their family for more than 100 years, Goldman talked about her grueling path to recovery over the past four years. She doesn’t hold back, readily acknowledging that “I hoped to be further along.”

Speaking softly and somewhat hesitantly, Goldman said she still has no peripheral vision, which she finds especially frustrating, and limited mobility. She uses a walker and a wheelchair to get around and spends hours a week in physical, occupational and speech therapy. And yet, she is grateful.

“I refuse to be a victim to my circumstances,” she wrote on her Instagram page, where she seems able to express herself more clearly. “I make the conscious choice to wake up every morning and embrace the opportunity each day presents.”

As the book’s subtitle makes clear, Goldman takes every step toward recovery as a positive sign. “I’m doing well,” she said. “I’m counting my blessings.” She returned to work gradually and now manages the store’s human resources department with her mother. She had recently started a program called The Vibe, designed to help build staff community with activities and events. “We want to make people feel special and appreciated,” she said.

MOTHER AS CHRONICLER

The book is a journal of sorts — Hirshleifer became a documentarian, carefully noting all that happened from the first day, realizing her daughter would eventually want every detail. “I knew at some point she would want to share her story,” she writes. Once Goldman was able to communicate after a few months, it was one of the first things she said to her mother. “I have a new sense of purpose. I want to write a book. I want to share my story. I want to bring others hope and maybe help them overcome challenges.”

A compendium of comments from the authors, as well as Goldman’s father, sister and others, the book also includes progress notes from the hospital and several therapists. It’s not until more than halfway through that Goldman is able to add her own comment. Her first entry, dated Nov. 1, 2021, reads simply, “I am grateful that I am alive.”

The beginning is powerful. Goldman arrived for work, and the staff at the family’s department store contacted Hirshleifer. “Call now, Jenn’s not right. She’s walking into walls, like she dropped acid or something,” read the text from the store’s general manager. “I was gripped by fear,” Hirshleifer writes.

David Goldman, an emergency physician, got an urgent call from his wife. He wasn’t at work at the time and rushed to the store. Trying to lighten things up, he told his daughter, “Jenny, if you want to take a day off, there are easier ways.” But he was terrified. “Four words ran over and over in my mind,” he said during an interview. “Jenny, please don’t die.”

At North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, testing revealed that Jennifer had suffered a major hemorrhage due to a cavernous malformation in her brain. Doctors said surgery was her best hope, but it couldn’t be risked until the blood swelling in her brain was drained. Huddled in the Neurological Intensive Care Unit waiting room, where a sign on the wall read “Believe in Miracles Every Day,” the family could only wait. “This must be grueling for David,” writes Hirshleifer in the book, where she calls him a “doting yet grieving father, a physician who knew the full weight of the possible medical outcomes. … My heart ached for him.”

‘CRITICALLY CRITICAL’

The congenital defect had gone unnoticed, and there were no warning signs, Hirshleifer wrties. “Your daughter is critically critical,” doctors told her parents when they arrived at the hospital. After stabilizing her, surgeons removed a piece of her skull so they could drain the blood. A second surgery successfully removed the malformation in her brain, and doctors are confident the problem won’t return. But how well Goldman recovers from the stroke remains to be seen, though Goldman has been told her peripheral vision will probably not improve.

The book is helping her focus on becoming a motivational speaker, something that was a goal prior to the stroke. She always had a bit of an entrepreneurial streak, starting an essential oils business from her dorm room while at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. A few months before her illness, she shut it down. “I was no longer passionate about it,” she said. She went to work at the store, and started looking for opportunities as a speaker, believing she could inspire people by sharing her path to mindfulness and wellness. “I was in perfect health,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I went to the gym five times a week. ... I was super conscious of how I ate and what I put in my body.”

BOOK TALKS

Her illness has sent her in a different direction. Since the book was published in 2024, she and Hirshleifer have made numerous speaking appearances, reading passages that focus on strength and overcoming challenges. Former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel hosted their first reading at his Oyster Bay store, Theodore’s Books. He recalled being impressed by the large audience, “not always a guarantee for local authors,” he wrote in an email. Questions, he said, focused on how the mother and daughter stood the barrage of challenges and how these devastating events made their relationship stronger.

The book stands out “as a compelling tale of resilience,” Israel said. “At a time when so many of us are overwhelmed by petty annoyances, this book reminds us of what really matters.”

The readings are a challenge for Goldman. Speaking clearly and coherently is tough, but gradually becoming easier. “It’s a sign of major progress,” she wrote on Instagram after a reading in July. “I’m feeling so proud of myself.”

SPEECH THERAPY

Susan Kahn, the speech pathologist who has worked with Goldman since she got out of the hospital, notices a remarkable difference. “It’s unbelievable,” she said, “she’s made tremendous gains.” Kahn, of Woodbury, said when she first met Goldman in January 2022, she was very different. “She had memory problems and difficulty finding words. She was not engaged at all,” she said. “She didn’t initiate conversation ... she just didn’t participate.”

Over time, and with therapy, that has improved, something Kahn especially notices when she attends one of the book signings. So that’s a big part of their focus now. On a recent Monday afternoon, Kahn started the session with Goldman reading some passages from the book, then asked questions an audience might throw at her. After Goldman read a passage about her experiences in a wilderness school, Kahn asked a question and Goldman came back with a quick retort: “Read my book.” Kahn didn’t let that go. “Expand,” she said. “What do you mean?” Noting that the two can be “tough on each other,” Kahn said she has figured out how far she can push. “She’s a perfectionist” Kahn said of Goldman. “She is self-motivated, and as she’s recovered, she’s gotten more engaged, become more inspired. That’s the kind of person she is.”

Kahn is just one of the specialists who guided Goldman along the way, through four weeks at North Shore, then for seven more weeks in rehab at Glen Cove Hospital’s brain injury unit before she returned to the family’s Old Westbury home in November 2021. Many are mentioned in the book. Her psychologist sent a poignant note: “I want to express my gratitude for having the chance to have the encounter with Jennifer. It was a profound experience for me.” There’s also the occupational therapist who brought a hairbrush and a toothbrush and taught Goldman how to use them; the aide who, Hirshleifer writes, “has become like another daughter to us”; the neurological intensive care unit nurse who kept checking on her progress long after she left the hospital, and her neurologist, who was briefly left without words when Goldman called to thank him, saying “I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you.”

A NEW CLOSENESS

Near the end of the book, in an entry dated Aug. 18, 2022 (one year after the stroke), Goldman writes, “The tragedy of my stroke has been such a blessing for our family. It’s brought our family closer in ways I never could have imagined.”

Her mother shares those feelings. “Before the stroke,” she said recently, “Jenn was very independent ... traveling all over. We never really had time to spend together.” Writing the book “was extraordinary,” she said. “Now we just sit together, being in each other’s company, connecting.”

Three years later, Goldman talks about how she hopes the book is a message of resilience, bringing comfort to anyone going through a difficult time. Looking radiant and joyful as she sits with her mother posing for photos, she reflects on all that has happened. “I have a way to go,” she said. “But I also cannot deny how far I’ve come.”