During Covid, depression increased exponentially among aging women. For many, including Joan Cusack Handler, quarantine precluded the preferred treatment of psychotherapy. As a licensed psychologist with forty years’ experience treating patients, Handler turned to her own pathology to teach herself and others how to survive emotionally.

Handler writes the full orchestral score of what is female. Laid forth in six sections, the poems speak of the transmigration of a woman–from an emotionally stifled girlhood through the first tentative steps of self-discovery to, finally, the apostasy of womanhood and the ecstasy that everyday rebellion can bring.

The Red Canoe: Love in Its Making is a verse memoir that explores the anatomy of a marriage–underbelly and crown. A practicing psychotherapist and former marriage therapist herself, Handler unveils the multileveled role of parents, children, religion, illness and the emotional/psychological lives of the two spouses on the frail and treacherous

A memoir written in the voice of a twelve year old Irish Catholic girl living in the Bronx in 1954, Confessions recounts one year in the life of Joan, a very tall, religious, funny, self-conscious, emotionally imprisoned, lovable girl whose journey takes her from innocence,

Poet psychologist Joan Cusack Handler explores our most primitive and essential relationships – those with our parents – our aging parents – particularly the intense ambivalence that stems from the truth of their impending death. Feelings erupt that we aren’t prepared for – those connected to the reversal of

An anthology of poems & prose pieces, edited by Joan Cusack & Gabriel Cleveland. Founded twenty years ago by poet, memoirist, and clinical psychologist Joan Cusack Handler, CavanKerry Press has published fine literary work by established and emerging writers who explore the emotional and psychological aspects of what it is

Edited by Joan Cusack Handler, Foreword by Donald Hall, this book collects the poems of 24 prominent American poets selected to live in Robert Frost’s Franconia, New Hampshire, home: Julie Agoos, Sharon Bryan, Robert Cording, Mark Cox, John

Edited by Joan Cusack Handler, The Waiting Room Reader: Stories to Keep You Company was published in 2009, with generous co-sponsorship by The Arnold P. Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine and support from the Liana Foundation. This series, which