Publications

 

 

Shift Happens, Oldster (July 2026)

"When a geriatrician asked an audience of people working in healthcare how many of them expected to die, very few raised their hand. Then she asked, 'Would you prefer to be old when it happens?'"

Read Kierkegaard. And Flush, Oldster (May 2026)

"I grew up in a house of silent strangers. I was one of them. "

Three Miracles, Beyond with Jane Ratcliffe (May 2026)

 "Things are subtracted by brain damage. Erased from the inside-out. The meaning of words imploded, as did the meaning of everything else."

 

 

 News from Lake Brain-Be-Gone, Open Secrets (December 2025)

 "Santa has 31 hours to travel 75-1/2 million miles. Conventional reindeer top out at 15 miles per hour (as opposed to 650 miles per second)."

 

 

 Please Keep Blood Off Gifts, Oldster (December 2025)

"My belt was big and my cheeks were red to match the jaunty jacket and hat, both of which made me feel itchy and hot, as a set of ten Christmas tunes played on endless repeat."

 

 

When My Brain Broke, I Rebuilt My Life One Word at a Time, Oprah Daily (November 2025)

"My life ended with no fanfare on a rainy Tuesday morning in a town I've never seen before or since. Rather, the last day of my first life."

 

 

 Like a Version, Oldster (October 2025)

 "We were missing persons, missing the persons we used to be."

 

 

Dating at Age 152, ANOTHER JANE PRATT THING (June 2025)

"I lost my life nineteen years ago, but I didn’t notice for a few months."

I Would Like A Word, Dorothy Parker's Ashes (April 2025)

"As you get older, you are supposed to have time for yourself. If you’re brain injured, you skip a few steps. You don’t have time and you don’t have yourself."

Before We Had Sex, ANOTHER JANE PRATT THING (March 2025)

"Women did not “get” breast cancer when I started freelancing at Condé Nast in about 1981, because we couldn’t say “breast” in media, though you could show them in men’s magazines."

Breaking Your Head in Hollywood, ANOTHER JANE PRATT THING (February 2025)

"Real disabled people don't tend to win awards and often can't get in or out of a bathroom."

I Know Nothing About Sex. (Or Nothing I Recall.), Oldster Magazine (February 2025)

"I’m getting old. I imagine my last day on Earth. I see my child with my heart. I feel her in my arms as she was when she was one or two."

I Got Hit by a Drunk with a Truck, ANOTHER JANE PRATT THING (February 2025)

"You might wonder how it feels to wake up one day and not know who you are. I don’t know. I don’t remember. "

 My Mind Was Trashed by a Truck, Memoir Land (February 2025)

"One moment I was someone. Then I was someone else. There's a song that says you don't know what you've lost till it's gone. With brain damage, you don't know what you've lost cuz you're gone."

My essay, "Not Screwed-Up Enough", appears in the book

The Examined Life Journal Vol. 12

"The first and second person who now overlap as "me" have different lives and different memories. Alternate realities. Gives new meaning to the terms first and second person."

My essay, "Sorry Your Brain Broke, Here's a Casserole", appears in the book

Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay

"It's like I need nine ingredients for a recipe and I have three, or like I need twelve words for a thought, and I have five."

Are You There God, It's Me, J and I'm Getting Old, Oldster (June 2024)

"Birds soaring skyward, plants poking through earth, buds stretching toward sun. In my first life, I didn't stop to smell the roses. Now I do. "

How to Save a Life, Huffpost (April 2024)

"It takes decades to build a life, and seconds to destroy it."

Assistant Head Wrapper, Pulse: voices from the heart of medicine (February 2024)

"I’m an antique. I started working as a junior copywriter at Time in 1972. I was a token Jew, a token hippie and a token 'female professional' among hordes of perky typists and preppy males."

 Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Dorthy Parker's Ashes (October 2023)

"My brain broke up with me. Rather, my brain broke up in me and sometimes it shows on my face."

It Took Six Years for Me to Say Two Words, Oldster (September 2023)

"In cartoons, people like me are hilarious, especially in the scenes where skulls get smashed. Think baseball bats, frying pans, and coconuts on craniums."

   

I Lost My Life in 2006, Salmagundi (Summer 2023)

"You might wonder how it feels to wake up one day and not know who you are. I don’t know. I don’t remember."

       

  Radio Interview with Steven Spierer, Talk Radio One (Spring 2023)

"At 10:00 AM on a Tuesday, a woman in Dutchess County, New York ran out of beer for breakfast and ran out for more.  She stole a truck, careened around a curve, and hit a parked car.  Steve talks with Judith Hannah Weiss, the woman who was sitting in that parked car and lives with brain damage caused by that crash."

When the words won't come. This is my life with aphasia, The Washington Post

(Spring 2023)

“Within days of my injury, I could unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and create an odd sound every now and then, and I do mean odd.”

I have aphasia., NBC News, Opinion (Fall 2022)

"John Fetterman starts many speeches by asking his audience, 'How many of you have had your own personal health challenges?' And every time, nearly every hand goes up."

The Doctor Said, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine (Spring 2022)

“I speak like I’m landing on this planet for the first time.  Words spurt from my mouth and go splat on the wall.  This may have happened to Bruce Willis, too.”

 

 

Dispatch from Bewilderness in Bellevue Literary Review (Winter 2020)

"Some things happen over years. Others occur in seconds—and replace who you were with someone you never met."

Notes from a Former Ghost, The Rumpus (Spring 2018)

"I started keeping a journal ten minutes ago. It’s 800,000 words long and it’s on 2,043 scraps of paper, 7 shopping bags, 4 paper plates, 1 paper cup, 3 placemats, 12 receipts, and 2 popsicle sticks."

 

 

Losing My Mind and Getting a New One, Literal Latte

"I'm not an expert on brain injury. I am a person who has one."

 

Find scores of new pieces and original art in Dispatch from Bewildnerness on Substack.

 

Honors

Judith Hannah Weiss has been honored by The Best American Essay, The Pushcart Prize,  44th and 45th New Millennium Writing Awards and the Virginia Festival of the Book, Challenge into Change Contest.