The Healing Art of The Memoir

The Healing Art of The Memoir
By Ayesha 
Writing My Personal Story Has Been a Cleansing Experience
I want to write about how cleansing it was for me to write a 3,000-3,500-word personal narrative. This memoir is the beginning of what I hope will become a book-length personal narrative. I like to think of the benefits that I get from writing personal narrative as “narrative therapy.”
When I write about my experiences as an African American woman living with schizophrenia, I am writing my story which began twenty years ago. I have made progress simply by sharing my story with others. As I read the first two pages of my narrative with students and alumni at Memoirfest—a memoir-reading party that Dr. Giunta, the memoir class professor, holds every May and December at her house in Teaneck, New Jersey—I was being bolder than I have ever been before.
I have written personal essays and narratives that I have shared in safe spaces, but never as part of a college-level workshop or at a gathering of students as I did at Memoirfest. I felt so good after sharing the first two pages of my memoir with everyone and getting their positive feedback. One student told me she really enjoyed my piece, which I shared with her just before she left at the end of the night. She was doing her honors thesis and, although I cannot remember her name, her comment meant a lot to me. 
The first class that I shared my life experience as an African American woman with schizophrenia was English Composition II while doing research in the Guarni library for our final research paper; Dr. Alina Gharabegian was my instructor.
I had been encouraged by Dr. Hamburger to take ECI and ECII at the university level. I took the Advanced Creative Writing Workshop with him and did not do well, barely passing the course. Dr. Hamburger encouraged me to repeat ECI and ECII, which I did to improve my writing skills. 
Dr. Gharabegian had assigned the class a five- to seven-page research paper on the broad topic of love. We could approach the assignment in any way we liked. In her comments on my proposal, Dr. Gharabegian suggested that I write about schizophrenia and love. I felt like someone was opening a door for me. I was surprised by her suggestion, but also thrilled. I had not yet written a paper about my personal experiences with schizophrenia during my time at New Jersey City University. 
I was happy to be taking Memoir Workshop with Dr. Giunta, who taught me to avoid writing my story as a chronology or autobiography. When I nailed voice, it was like church bells were ringing at that moment, and I felt so accomplished, mature and independent. I am so glad I took Memoir Workshop and then Advanced Memoir Workshop during the spring of 2015. I graduated from NJCU in August 2015 with a BA in Creative Writing. 
I am fond of NJCU because of my experience in Dr. Giunta’s class. She was an amazing, supportive, caring and sweet person as well as a great teacher. I feel such an overwhelming debt of gratitude to her. I never thought I would have such an experience with a professor or as part of a class. It had such an amazing impact on me and on my life.
Now I am back at NJCU majoring in Early Childhood Education. I feel more a part of the university's community now than when I began in the fall of 2007. 

Book Ends: “When Cries are Silenced” by Debra Faes-Dudden

Book Ends: “When Cries are Silenced” by Debra Faes-Dudden
Reviewed by Kurt Sass
Debra Faes-Dudden is a multi-faceted artist who has written a book titled “When Cries Are Silenced,” containing her poetry, artwork and a song.
Ms. Faes-Dudden was sexually abused at a very young age by her grandmother’s live-in boyfriend, who died when she was seven. She said she had repressed almost all the traumatic experiences and that it has taken her over 20 years to heal from these repressed memories. She credits her use of the creative arts as one of the major tools in her recovery.
Ms. Faes-Dudden's poetry is a mixture of a range of emotions from fear to despair to hope, joy and pride and the many subtleties in between.  She is honest and lays bare he reality while remaining pragmatically optimistic.
Her poem, “A Struggle For Peace,” speaks of fear, with: “I feel so alone and out-of-control, I lay paralyzed, every breath pain-filled,” and, “The struggle to find this elusive peace continues.”
In the poem, “Locked Inside the Untold,” she communicates despair with: “But it’s so cold within this cell” and “I'm not truly not living, I only exist.”
An example of hope can be found in last two stanzas of her work, “So Many Children Cry in the Silence of the Night,” with such lines as: “A renewal of energy begins to grow” and “She's able to see that beyond the rain there lies a rainbow.”
“Proclamation,” evokes joy with such phrases, “I flourish in change and movement, in wind and in waves.” and “Change is my nourishment, movement, my dance of creation.”
Pride can be felt in her piece, “It's Good to be a Woman,” with the lines, “We, who can offer warmth, acceptance, and shelter, just with the opening of our arms” and “Oh, yes, it is good to be a woman.” 
There are many more examples of the emotional spectrum contained within the 36 poems. This diversity of emotions is what kept me hooked. Many books about one's recovery from mental illness and/or personal trauma (whether poetry, biography or fiction) often lean dramatically to the horrors they have gone through or focus solely on the successful, happy, fulfilled life they are leading today. Ms. Faes-Dudden portrays the broad spectrum of her life and experiences.
“When Cries are Silenced: Writings During My Journey in Healing Repressed Childhood Trauma” is available in paperback for $11 at Amazon.com.
Note: You can write to Debra Faes-Dudden, P.O. Box 7223, Indian Lake Estates, FL 33855.

Book Review: “Left of the Dial” by Christina Bruni

Book Review: “Left of the Dial” by Christina Bruni

By William Jiang, MLS

Fashion, Romance, Music, Ambition and More

Christina Bruni’s memoir Left of the Dial (Createspace, 2015) is a tour de force. Christina is a storyteller, first and foremost. Schizophrenia is the backdrop to her hopeful story, which is full of fashion, romance, music, ambition and more. Since the first chapter was fortissimo engaging, I could not put her book down, and so ate it whole the very first day. Needless to say, I was aching for more.

In this powerful memoir, Christina reveals she studied English Literature during college (tops in her classes, I’m sure). Bruni’s writing flows with passionate energy while maintaining a subdued mellow feel. If still waters run deep, she tells it best.

Throughout her book, Miss Bruni’s life philosophy, “normal is boring” (and I strongly agree), is loud and clear. Like the Chinese axiom, “May you live in interesting times,” translating as “May you live an interesting life,” are exemplified by her experiences and biographical anecdotes. People who live with serious and persistent mental illnesses seem to live, by default, more colorfully than those who float by on a cloud of normalcy. Perhaps, Christina’s story would also do well on the silver screen. 

Like Bruni, the lot of us who battle mental illness have larger-than-life personal stories. Indeed, our life chronicles take us from heaven to hell and back again. When I read a story like Christina’s, I am reminded that in some way I am blessed to be able to share my own story of schizophrenia with others. As a Buddhist monk once said to a woman who was a victim of rape, “You are so fortunate to have survived your ordeal. Just by living, you will be able to give other women who have survived rape and sexual abuse much needed hope.” If more people had the courage, vision, optimism and storytelling ability of Christina, it would suit me just fine.

I disagreed strongly with one thing Ms. Bruni said in her book toward the end. It was something to the effect of “this is my only story.” My hunch is that we are in for another treat in the future. I feel that her book publishing career has just begun. “Bravo, Christina e gratzie!” My sincere hope is to someday talk to Ms. Bruni on the phone and maybe meet up for a coffee one author to another. Buy the book and experience the ride. The way you think about schizophrenia and your life may never be the same after you read Left of the Dial.

Life is best lived left of the dial.

Editor’s Note: William Jiang, MLS, is the author of A Schizophrenic Will: A Story of Madness, A Story of Hope and Guide to Natural Mental Health, and eighteen other books on Amazon.com.

Gail Caldwell’s Memoirs: Eloquent Profiles in Courage and Humility

Gail Caldwell’s Memoirs: Eloquent Profiles in Courage and Humility
By Carl Blumenthal
Whatever Issues She Had Did Not Get the Best of Her
New Life, No Instructions (2014): “I wonder about the pilgrims at Lourdes and Fatima, the ones who felt the glow and realized they could walk….The real task must have come later, after they absorbed what had happened: miracle, new life, no instructions.”
Let’s Take the Long Way Home (2010): “It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died so we shared that, too.”
A Strong West Wind (2006): “The real beauty of the question—how do we become who we are?—is that by the time we are old enough to ask it, to understand its infinite breadth, it is too late to do much about it. That is not the sorrow of hindsight, but its music: That is what grants us a bearable past.”
Gail Caldwell, the author of these three memoirs, is a master of the “mot juste,” French for the perfect word or phrase. She plucks at the reader’s heart strings, not just through the “shock and awe” of her life story, which contains enough turning points to leave ordinary mortals gasping for breath, but also with a thoughtfulness which is a saving grace.
Born in 1951 and raised in Amarillo, Texas, she immerses herself in the counter-culture of Austin, in and out of the university, then lights out for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she stakes her claim as a writer, including more than 20 years as chief book critic for The Boston Globe, winning the Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism in 2001.
Coming from a family with deep roots in the Panhandle, Gail Caldwell insists the alcoholism, depression, and suicide, which stopped several of her relatives in their tracks, were as much a matter of geography as genes. Thus she begins the first chapter of her first memoir, A Strong West Wind: “Poised at the heart of so much land, Amarillo, too, sprawled in a sort of languid disregard, as though territorial hegemony might make up for all that loneliness.”
However, time or timing is an equal factor in determining her fate. At the end of the polio epidemic, she contracts a mild form as a toddler. Her mother motivates Gail to walk by performing beside her the necessary leg-strengthening exercises, which are repeated for hours on end.
Reaching this milestone instills a sometimes naïve expectation that loved ones will go the extra mile to help when she’s down, but, when they don’t, it’s better to find the gumption to carry on alone rather than compromise. Such whipsawing eventually disproves that “love is a many-splendored thing,” (the title of a popular 1955 film starring heart throbs William Holden and Jennifer Jones).
Thus, to compensate for this limitation as a child, Gail becomes, on the one hand, a bookworm, and, on the other, a swimmer; maintaining balance over both imaginary and real depths. Yet over the years her hip deteriorates from the residual limp, requiring at age 60 a replacement as complicated as repairing a truck’s broken axle in the middle of a traffic jam.
Once her own biological clock ticks past 50 years, Gail appreciates the support her parents provided growing up, even if her rebellion in the 60’s and 70’s, including bad boyfriends, a terrible Vietnam War, and the fierceness of early feminism, butted against that support as if it were a police barrier.
A Strong West Wind doubles back in its last half to the stories and jokes of survival her dad shared with her as a child. Surely these inspired her writing. Nevertheless, as a World War II vet, he often appeared unsympathetic when she strayed from the fold. A reconciliation occurs as their respective ambitions diminish with age.
Only later, in New Life, No Instructions, after the recovery from hip surgery gains Gail new mobility, does she recall how much her working mom surreptitiously encouraged Gail’s   independence and acted as indomitably in her own way as her father.
By inserting their reappearances outside the narratives’ chronology, Caldwell recognizes the long shadow they cast over her. While Gail cites Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel as seminal to her youthful romanticism, his subsequent, more plaintive You Can’t Go Home Again better epitomizes the writer’s nomadic plight.
By 1981 Caldwell flees home with an abandon fueled by the elixir of liquor. Her preferred drink is Jack Daniels, which she swills from a bottle like mother’s milk. Even in cozy Cambridge with all her success, the emptiness of the Texas plains seems to extend to her doorstep. She finally trades alcoholism for AA and therapy after falling and breaking her ribs in a stupor.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home chronicles Caldwell’s friendship with Caroline Knapp, the celebrated author of Drinking: A Love Story and Appetites: Why Women Want, about her alcoholism and anorexia, respectively. By the time they meet, both are sober and, in Knapp’s case, slim but apparently healthy.
They bond over walking their dogs. Caroline teaches Gail how to row on Boston’s Charles River and Gail instructs Caroline in swimming New Hampshire’s lakes where they vacation. These mutual strengths (and occasional sore spots) form the basis of a camaraderie legendary in the literary circles around Harvard Yard.
When Caroline dies suddenly of lung cancer at 42, after smoking throughout adulthood—an addiction which seems socially the lesser of three evils when compared with drinking or fasting herself to death—Gail experiences the greatest of many losses in her life.
She leads the reader through the wearying process of grief with exacting details like those describing her hip operation and training her dogs. After one Samoyed sled dog dies she adopts another and both Let’s Take the Long Way Home and New Life, No Instructions are as much canine as human love stories.
How to summarize a writer whose prose is as brilliant and dense as diamonds? Gail Caldwell exhorts us to lead a life of compassion for ourselves and others, during which whatever we perceive as our failings doesn’t impede our instincts for survival.
That she omits from these memoirs her long and successful career as a writer demonstrates the advice invariably offered in non-fiction classes—it’s just as important to show what counts as to avoid telling too much. Given she’s a self-taught author, Caldwell implies achieving our greatest dream is not always cracked up to what it’s supposed to be.
In the big scheme of things, all that fracked Texas oil may lower the price of her weathered Volvo’s gas, but in the long run we will have to transform the simple pleasures of sun, wind, and water into the energy needed to get us to that big rest stop in the sky. Or as JK Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, said in her commencement speech at Harvard in 2008, quoting the Roman philosopher Seneca, “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”  

Book Ends: Left of the Dial by Christina Bruni

Book Ends: Left of the Dial by Christina Bruni

Reviewed by Columnist Kurt Sass

Christina Bruni’s book, Left of the Dial, is an uplifting, triumphant account of her ongoing battle with schizophrenia, a battle she is winning every day. I found there to be three main messages in her book: 1) Never give up, no matter who tells you what you can or can not accomplish; 2) Acceptance of an illness is a major component in the battle; and 3) that service to others in life will bring you joy.

The very first thing that struck me about Ms. Bruni’s book is that she pulls no punches and gets directly to the core. No five to ten leading chapters on how I grew up and how grade school was and this and that. The very first sentence, “It happened that night,” within the first chapter of the book we find Ms. Bruni in the psychiatric ward. No pussy-footing around with this memoir.

And no pussy-footing around with Ms. Bruni, either. While still in the hospital, her doctor tells her that she would probably never go to grad school or get into writing again. She also reads in the hospital that only 30% of people with schizophrenia fully recover. Rather than resign herself to the opinions of the “professionals,” she makes a conscious decision “to be determined to be the 30%” and begins to set up goals for herself. Immediately upon her release, she buys a computer (one goal) and was soon writing (another goal).

Shortly after this, Ms. Bruni’s journey takes her to a day treatment program. She is still feeling optimistic about the future until she reads in another “professional journal,” a book titled “Surviving Schizophrenia,” that only 6% of people with schizophrenia go on to obtain full-time jobs. At first she retreats into herself and bows to the pressure, but then summons up the courage to fight the stereotype once again.

Ms. Bruni eventually graduates from the day treatment program into a halfway house, and enrolls in a journalism class. Her hopes are crushed on the first day, however, when one of the requirements are that she keep a journal of news reporter mistakes each night on television, a task she knows will prove impossible, as the halfway house has only one shared television set for all the residents.

There does come a point in which Ms. Bruni believes that once she does in fact find full-time work, she can stop her medication and be drug-free. This day does come as her dreams of becoming the “6%” come true. Unfortunately, even though she tapers off the medication in accordance with her doctors instructions, she suffers a psychotic break and is hospitalized. This break teaches her a valuable lesson, and she comes to the realization that schizophrenia is just one part of who she is. She decides, rather than fight the diagnosis, to work with it.

After accepting her diagnosis, Ms. Bruni continues to flourish. She enrolls in a Masters of Library Science program, finding it a perfect fit. She finds love and loses it when her partner gets an out-of-state career opportunity, but is not crushed. Today Ms. Bruni continues to work full-time as a public service librarian and writer.

It is easy for any mental health consumer who has ever been told by a mental health professional that he or she can’t do something to relate to this book. In 1998, while in my deepest, darkest depression, I was told by a therapist that I would not get much better, and I would just have to learn to deal with it. Today, I celebrated my 10-year anniversary with the non-profit company I work for, so I know, to some extent, what Christina had to go through. I recommend this book very highly for any consumer in the mental health system, or, for that matter, anyone who has ever been told “You can’t do that.” Christina Bruni retorts “Yes you can.”

Book Ends: Silent Screams by D. Cross

Book Ends: Silent Screams by D. Cross

Reviewed by Columnist Kurt Sass

Silent Screams is a brutally honest, well-written account of the life of a woman who has endured a myriad of hardships most of us could barely imagine.

Although the first four chapters are devoted exclusively to her experiences with (and failures of) the mental healthcare system, the remainder of the book is a biography of a life full of setbacks, and more importantly, uncaring people.

The book is full of countless example of how people in all facets of life had failed her. For example, growing up, many doctors would dismiss her many symptoms until her condition grew worse and worse. This neglect continued until she finally got diagnosed with tuberculosis, far later than necessary. In addition, the nuns refused to believe her when she said she had difficulty walking up stairs.

Years later, while in a psychiatric hospital for six weeks, she was never told her diagnosis, participated in completely silent group therapy and psychiatry sessions and was discharged even though told that she had no home to go to.

Ms. Cross also reveals later in the book about an illness later in her life and the many many delays in getting a proper diagnosis and treatment, all the time while in constant pain.

If all this wasn’t enough, throw in some uncaring relatives and three “predators” and you can see what a brutal existence this women had to deal with.

The major point I got from this book, unfortunately, is that no matter where you turn, especially the ones in whose hands you put your life, they will disappoint you. Ms. Cross’s viewpoint, as stated in the end pages of the book, has been one of acceptance.

While I recommend this book to most people, there are some that definitely should not be reading this. To most people, this book is a good example of how, in some cases, the medical/mental health care system, in the regard to how they treat people, has not changed (in some cases) over the years. Great strides have been made, and patients for the most part, have been treated with more dignity, but this book will show as evidence that much more needs to be done. For this reason, I recommend this book, especially for mental health and medical healthcare advocates. While I am glad Ms. Cross has found peace in acceptance, I wish she had an advocate during her times of need to help get the proper care and treatment she needed.

On the other hand, this book should not be read by anyone who is currently undecided about their opinion of mental health or healthcare professionals in general or anyone who is contemplating seeing a therapist or healthcare professional for the first time. It does not give a full representation of healthcare professionals. This is just one person’s experience and is not typical. It is also a very depressing book.