Redding woman writes book about memory loss
REDDING — About 10 years ago, Joan Peckolick had an idea for a book about forgetting. Unable to get to it at the time, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and tucked it away into a folder. And then, she forgot about it.
But when the note “serendipitously” fell out of Peckolick’s idea folder years later, she picked it up and ran with it.
“I was getting very antsy about COVID ... and since I couldn’t take a vacation and go away ... I decided that I’d sit down and design the book,” Peckolick, 76, said.
Over about a year, Peckolick — a Redding resident — penned “The Don’t Forget Book,” a graphic novel brimming with inspirational quotes about memory with a blank section where people can write in reminders to themselves. The book is selling on Amazon and expected to be sold by other outlets in coming weeks.
The book was partly inspired by life events that prompted Peckolick to found Self Chec, a nonprofit raising awareness about early detection and selfchecks for diseases such as cancer. She remains the director of the organization.
Peckolick was motivated to build the foundation after watching some of her family members battle cancer. When she was 9 years old, her uncle died of “this mysterious disease that people called the Big C.”
She realized the adults around her seemed terrified to talk about the disease and that’s when she finally learned it was cancer.
“I went over to my piggy
bank and I broke it open … and I went to the local store around the corner, and I bought alphabet noodles and toothpicks. I made name pins and I sold hundreds of them. I gave the money to the American Cancer Society,” Peckolick said.
“I said to them, ‘Please, I’m giving you this money, please don’t let anyone else in my family get sick from cancer or anything else that’s going to take them away from us,’ ” she said.
Years later, both her father and her daughter’s father were diagnosed with forms of colon cancer. Her father lived with it into his 80s until doctors operated and removed the cancer, but her father’s daughter succumbed to the disease at 36 years old.
“For years, I wondered
why my father lived and why my daughter’s father died and what was the disconnect there,” Peckolick said.
“I was witness to the fact that people who do take into consideration the importance of checking themselves can live a longer life if they’re diagnosed early enough,” she later added.
Peckolick realized there was a lack of “personal interaction” stemming from cancer societies and medical journals messaging, so she quit her job and crafted a caring card that said don’t forget to self-check.
“That was the beginning of it,” she said. “Don’t forget has always been in my head and the fact that I found the paper that had the Don’t Forget Book on it shot up a light bulb in my head.”
In time, she launched Self-Chec and came up with the idea of her book.
Peckolick said she also gleamed inspiration from the small frustrations she experienced every time her partner forgot his list when going to the store. She said they always laughed about it and she knew other people were probably facing similar forgetfulness.
“I’m at the age where I forget everything and there are millions of people who are like me, so I’m hoping this can bring a light to people and give them a little bit of a laugh and they can feel good about reading it,” she said.