Brewster Wickersham Publications

Tools for living well with chronic pain.

An independent press publishing books, workbooks, and applications for people living with chronic pain and rheumatic disease — written from experience and guided by expertise, by clinicians who live with chronic illness themselves. Your condition may be permanent. Your relationship with it is not.

The Resilient Path

Books

Resilience is not a personality trait you either have or lack. It is a set of skills — they can be learned, practiced, and rebuilt after setbacks.

The Resilient Path

Book

Managing Life with Chronic Pain · Pendleton B. Wickersham, MD, and Louise Locker, LCSW

You have been told to manage your pain. Nobody has told you how. That gap is where most people living with chronic pain spend years — the diagnosis arrives, the prescriptions start, the appointments stack up, and the daily work of actually living with the condition falls to you.

Dr. Wickersham is a practicing rheumatologist who has spent his career in that gap with his patients, and who has lived with ankylosing spondylitis since he was 22. This book is what he wishes he had time to say in every appointment. Written for people with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and other autoimmune and chronic pain conditions.

Grounded in the biopsychosocial model, it shows how your body, your mind, and the life around you all shape how much pain you feel — and how each one offers a way to turn the volume down. Not a to-do list to finish, but a way of living well with pain, one step at a time.

Available in paperback and for Kindle

The Resilient Path Workbook

Workbook

Pendleton B. Wickersham, MD, and Louise Locker, LCSW

Reading about managing chronic pain and actually managing it are two different things. The book helps you understand; the workbook is where the lessons take root and become yours. Every chapter matches a chapter of the book, so you are never left wondering which exercise goes with what you just read.

Every exercise is approached through three lenses — patience, self-acceptance, and honesty — which turn a list of activities into a way of being.

  • Guided reflections that surface the patterns you have not noticed
  • Trackers for pain, fatigue, sleep, and flares — turning scattered impressions into information you can bring to your doctor
  • Pacing plans built around your real energy, not an ideal day
  • Scripts for the hard conversations with family, employers, and clinicians
  • Flare planning you do while you are well, so the decisions are already made when you are not

The pages are yours to write on. There are no right answers and nothing to score.

Applications

Apps

Digital companions that carry the same approach beyond the page. Built by Wickersham Development Group, LLC.

Resilient Path

Available now

iOS and Android

A comprehensive workbook companion for navigating life’s most challenging moments, developed in consultation with mental health professionals.

  • 25 interactive modules — guided reflections at your own pace
  • Your own plan — your workbook answers become your plan, and Flare Mode reads your Flare-Up Plan back to you when you need it
  • Health tools — track medications, log symptoms, monitor well-being
  • AI program guide — grounded in the full book and workbook, and names the chapter or module to turn to, so you can find what you need without searching the pages
  • Emergency guidance — quick access to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
  • Private by default — responses saved locally on your device

Free to download · 7-day free trial, then $3.99/month

RheumCompanion

Available now

iOS and Android

A flare tracker first. Flares are the thing that actually changes your treatment, and they are the hardest thing to describe accurately eight weeks later at an appointment. RheumCompanion captures one while it is happening — severity, duration, what preceded it — and turns a season of scattered impressions into a record your rheumatologist can read in a minute.

  • Flare tracking — log a flare as it happens, with severity and duration, while the details are still accurate
  • Daily symptoms and joint pain — pain, fatigue, and stiffness in a few taps, on the days you can manage it
  • Diet and symptom correlation — see what lines up with your flares over enough days to mean something
  • Medications and biologic infusion dates — your regimen and schedule alongside the symptom record, so changes and flares sit on the same timeline
  • Lab history — results kept together, where a trend is visible
  • Appointment summary — export a 30-day report to hand your care team at the start of a visit
  • Disease encyclopedia and medication reference — 13 conditions and 7 drug classes, drawn from FDA package inserts and PubMed research
  • RheumBot, interaction checker, and clinical trial finder — sourced answers, interactions grouped by severity, and what is recruiting for your condition

Free to download · 7-day free trial, then $6.99/month · cancel anytime

SootheQuest

Available now

iOS and Android

A match-3 puzzle game built from the ground up for people living with chronic illness and chronic pain — and for anyone who wants a game that respects their energy. Genuinely engaging puzzles, with every pressure mechanic deliberately removed. Nothing is locked behind a purchase: all 72 levels across nine worlds are playable free, start to finish.

  • A rest-friendly streak — it counts the days you show up, forgives rest days, and losing never breaks it
  • The Zen Garden — a no-fail sanctuary mode. No moves, no timer, no losing
  • Tiny Wins — one-minute levels for low-energy days that still count toward your daily goal
  • A gentle boost — struggling with a level? The game quietly offers a little extra room, no judgment
  • Real encouragement — a line from The Resilient Path after each level, saved to your Comfort Journal
  • The Calm Corner — guided box breathing with rain and wave soundscapes
  • Comfort & Access — larger gems, tap-only controls, and a gentle battle clock that adds time to boss levels

Free to play, start to finish · optional Soothe Plus ($3.99/month or $34.99/year, 7-day free trial) adds unlimited lives and comfort perks — every level is playable without it

Lumina: The Cloud Garden

Coming soon

A gentle sky-garden game

A small island in the sky that grows at your pace. Lumina is a quiet garden game that adapts to how you feel each day — plant, explore, and solve unhurried puzzles when you have the energy, or let the rain fall and simply rest when you do not. Nothing is lost by being away.

  • Plays to your energy — choose a full day, a lighter day with hints always on, or a rest day when the garden tends itself
  • Unhurried puzzles — wind chimes with no wrong notes, lanterns to light, and fireflies that are slow on purpose
  • Always growing — your island keeps flourishing whether or not you show up

In development · Email us to hear when it launches

Authors

Who writes our books

Pendleton B. Wickersham, MD

FACP, FACR · Board-certified rheumatologist

Diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis at age 22, Dr. Wickersham brings both clinical expertise and personal experience to the understanding of chronic pain.

Outside of medicine he is a rockhound and a fisherman.

Contact Dr. Wickersham: pendleton@brewsterwickershampublications.com

Louise Locker, LCSW

Counselor and community leader

Louise has spent decades helping people navigate life’s challenges with courage and compassion, informed by her own journey with arthritis and chronic pain.

She is drawn to music, photography, and community work.

Friends

Businesses we recommend

Restore Biosciences

takerestore.com · Curated supplements and medical supplies

Walk into a big-box pharmacy and you face a wall of supplement bottles with wildly varying quality and no one to ask. Restore Biosciences does the opposite: a small, physician-reviewed catalog, medical-grade supplies from FDA-registered manufacturers, and a certified wellness coach on staff who will actually talk through how a product works and where it might interact with a prescription.

  • Supplements vetted before they earn a place in the catalog
  • Mobility and daily-living supplies — walkers, canes, supports
  • A coach who will review your supplements and your needs
Ownership disclosure

Dr. Wickersham provided founding capital for Restore Biosciences and retains a partial ownership interest.

Supplements are not medications and are not reviewed by the FDA the way prescription drugs are. Nothing Restore Biosciences sells is part of any treatment plan from Arthritis Associates or from Dr. Wickersham, and buying from Restore will never affect your care. Talk to your own clinician before starting any supplement, particularly if you take a biologic, methotrexate, or a blood thinner.

Visit takerestore.com

E. Cates Designs

ecatesdesigns.square.site · Handmade jewelry and gifts

Eleanor Cates makes stylish jewelry and small gifts by hand — scarf necklaces layering patterned silk with beads and a charm, and pieces like a gold cross set in a clear acrylic block. Most things run $20 to $30, so it does not take an occasion to justify one.

Relationship disclosure

Eleanor Cates is Dr. Wickersham’s sister. Neither he nor Brewster Wickersham Publications holds any financial interest in E. Cates Designs or receives anything from purchases made there.

Visit ecatesdesigns.square.site

Contact

Get in touch

General, reader and publisher enquiries:

info@brewsterwickershampublications.com

Dr. Pendleton B. Wickersham, MD — author, press and review enquiries:

pendleton@brewsterwickershampublications.com