Carolyn Larkin Taylor, MD
Neurologist • Author • Storyteller
Where medicine meets humanity.
For more than thirty years, I cared for patients whose illnesses revealed the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. Their stories—and the lessons they taught me—live on in my award-winning memoir.
Whispers of the Mind invites readers inside the exam room, the intensive care unit, and the quiet moments that forever changed the way I understand life, loss, hope, and healing.
🏆 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist (Memoir)
🏆 2026 National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist (Science)
FEATURED BOOK
WHISPERS OF THE MIND
An award-winning memoir by Carolyn Larkin Taylor, MD
Some patients become unforgettable.
Some change the physician forever.
This poignant memoir unfolds in a series of essays that trace the author's path from medical school to private practice, revealing moments of triumph, heartbreak, and transformation. Written with compassion and insight, Whispers of the Mind explores the emotional weight of caring for patients while also celebrating the remarkable resilience of those facing neurological challenges. These essays are more than reflections; they are testaments to the courage, strength, and the profound lessons learned along the way.
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Reader's Favorite Review
Whispers of the Mind is a medical memoir and a compilation of essays that blends stories based on real-life patients, reflections on topics ranging from medicine to philosophy, and personal narratives to deliver a unique meditation on life and death. Drawing from decades of clinical experience, neurologist Carolyn Larkin Taylor, MD. pulls the reader into a world filled with humanity, hope, courage, and resilience in the face of cruel, often unfair circumstances. Starting from her time in medical school to private practice, the author discusses individual cases, general themes such as addiction and the AIDS epidemic, and thoughts about grief, caring for children, dignity in death, and other subjects. Some chapters also explore difficult aspects of Taylor's life, including the challenges of pursuing a medical career while raising a child.
The writing is perfectly accessible to nonexperts, using vivid metaphors and simple language to explain complex concepts and conditions. For example, epilepsy is described as a thunderstorm in the brain, and spinal cord motor neurons are portrayed as orchestra players coordinating the symphony of muscle contraction. But rather than technical minutiae and medical terminology, Carolyn Larkin Taylor focuses on the human side of things s she writs from an honest, personal perspective that acknowledges limitations, intuition, and subjectivity. The book kept me immersed from beginning to end, as each essay felt more like a conversation than a dry description of medical cases. The chapters dealing with the death of loved ones, felt particularly poignant and impactful. Overall, Whispers of the Mind is a must-rad for lovers of memoirs and those involved or interested in the medical field, especially neurology.
- Reader's Favorite
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carolyn Larkin Taylor is a board-certified neurologist with over 30 years of experience in general neurology. After growing up in Spring Lake, New Jersey, she was among the first women to graduate from the University of Notre Dame. She later moved to Philadelphia, where she obtained her MD from Hahnemann Medical College, completed a medicine internship at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, and finished her neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania. While in Philadelphia, she received the Humaneness in Medicine Award from the Philadelphia Medical Society and was named one of Philadelphia magazine's Top Doctors for Women.
In addition to private practice she also served as medical director for the Parkinson's Outreach Center. In 2001, she moved to the Pacific Northwest, where she founded Northwest Neurology and the Cascadia Center for Multiple Sclerosis, ultimately concluding her clinical career at Swedish Neuroscience Center in Seattle. Throughout her journey, she has been a passionate advocate for MS patients and is dedicated to educating others about addiction as a brain disease. Dr. Taylor's manuscript, Through a Mother's Eyes, won second place for best unpublished memoir from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association.
She currently resides in Bellingham, WA with her husband, their Bernese mountain dog, and golden retriever, and has one adult son living in Seattle.
Step Inside the Story
From the pages of Whispers of the Mind
Every patient leaves a mark.
Some change the physician forever.
The following pages offer a glimpse into the experiences that shaped my career—and my understanding of life.
The day started like any other, with an early rise to begin my hospital rounds before 7:00 a.m. As a seasoned neurologist, this was one of those intense weeks where I was on hospital call—seven straight days of consults and admissions instead of my usual office routine. It was a warm, clear summer morning, though I barely noticed. My pager was already demanding my attention, pulling me in different directions. By now, the calls had become familiar—strokes, seizures, changes in mental status, and the occasional Parkinson's patient needing medication adjustments before surgery. I had learned to move through these cases with practiced efficiency, constantly triaging and recalibrating my day based on urgency. But through it all, one thought kept me grounded: the hope of making it home to my family at a decent hour.
Today, however, was somehow different. As I made my way around the hospital, I heard whispers of a particularly tragic case that had come in earlier that day involving a young boy who had been admitted to the intensive care unit. As a mother of a young boy myself, I hoped they would have no need for my services for this case. When a neurologist is summoned to the ICU for a consultation, it can be a sign that all the options have been exhausted.
...
The ICU consult was called in to me late that evening.
What had led up to this patient's accident would remind me of the pleadings of my own eleven-year-old son when he really wanted something badly...
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For Matt, I would later learn from his family, that moment of sheer happiness occurred the day his parents finally acquiesced and presented him with the BB gun he had been longing for on his birthday...
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And so this tragic story began.
Continue the Journey
If this story moved you, there are many more waiting inside Whispers of the Mind—stories of hope, heartbreak, resilience, and the remarkable people who forever changed the way I practiced medicine.
