Housebound recommendations?

[quility]

Hello friends,

A friend of a friend of mine, who just turned 40, has worsening health and looks like she might have to be housebound for the rest of her life. It sounds like they are doing a great job being supportive of her, but she is understandably struggling with sadness during this adjustment. While this is an understandable and healthy response, I want to give her resources to try to help adjust the stories in her head about not being able to go out to something more positive if possible.

I am looking for recommendations for stories about people who were happy living (almost) entirely inside. Ideally these would be real life biographies or auto-biographies, but I image that fiction could also be helpful.

She is also in a fair amount of pain some of the time.

"The Sessions" and the ending of "Minority Report" are the only things that are currently coming to mind.
I know next to nothing about Emily Dickinson... was she happy in her staying home?

Thank you for any recommendations!

Comments

[mplsfish]

My mom was almost totally shut in for about 5 years. She got fairly enthusiastic about message boards on topics she was interested in. She had on-line subscriptions as well. New York times is the only one I remember now. She also liked their message boards. Well moderated, she said. Lots of kindle books. But she was reclusive before she became disabled. And she did get out for doctor appointments twice a year and rare other things. She needed a lot of support to make these trips. In the modern world, in the city it would be a lot easier to be housebound than in the boonies or in the past. Amazon was another resource mom used a lot.

Her mother was also really reclusive in her retirement years, and I am leaning that way more every year. Best wishes to your friend. I sympathize with her frustration.

[quility]

Thanks for these ideas. :)

It sure is a challenging situation - but people can be amazingly adaptable, so I am hopefully.

Also - to be clear since I wasn’t - she lives with her husband and children - so she has help… it’s mostly the sadness that I’m hoping to chip away at…