I don’t know if it’s the coffee or my weekly excitement over the Sunday New York Times Book Review. It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart, and I only have a few more days to tell you this…

“You don’t fight fear with fear. You fight it with fear’s antidote: the truth.” — Alan Gratz (NYT Book Review, May 26, 2024)

So many people are afraid of someone walking down the street mumbling to herself. I make sure to smile or say “Hi” to that human. It could make her day.

It’s tough to struggle with mental illness. But many individuals make it out to thrive, and live complicated lives.

Mental illness never comprises a person’s entire identity. Here are two books I highly recommend that show the complexities of individuals and families dealing with mental illness. Both are also terrific reads!

Fire in the Brain by Susannah Cahalan. If the journalist author didn’t have the family support and financial means to get the best care possible she might have succumbed to her “fire in the brain,” or been left to languish with perceived schizophrenia. A surprising and important page-turner!

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger

“The raw intimacy of her prose exemplifies the empathy our society so desperately needs.” — The New York Times

Please remember: We are all on a mental health spectrum. When I lived in Tucson I heard that a former Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court had bipolar disorder. Every human must have the opportunity to live a joyful and complicated existence.