"Fix What you Can": Apt Philosophy for Family Mental Health (and book review)
Mindy Greiling and I have many things in common, though we've never met. The biggest shared experience: we both have sons with schizophrenia, and we haven't given up on them. As she says in the epilogue of her new book, we are "the best mothers we can be."
As any parent knows, good parenting is a shifting balance between stepping in and letting go. When mental illness and substance abuse enter the picture, that balance is ever more precarious. And "happy endings" are, often, only fleeting respites from trauma, until the next chapter begins.
Still, we love.
Still, we hope.
Still, we fight.
Mindy, for much of this memoir, is able to channel much of this fight into her work as Minnesota State Representative - a position she held for twenty years, advocating tirelessly for improvements to the mental health laws in that state. She's received more than eighty awards for her legislative and advocacy work. She has so much good reason to be proud.
But her son, Jim, still has schizophrenia. That, as we know all too well, sucks. And in this memoir she is raw, real, and informative about her family's journey, and also her work to enact changes in the system.
I highly recommend this memoir for anyone who wants to know more not only about the family experience with schizophrenia, but also why it can be such a long and difficult process to change the legal barriers to getting our loved ones the help they so desperately need (but think they don't).
When I wrote Ben Behind His Voices almost ten (!!) years ago, there were very few memoirs about the family experience with schizophrenia- and even few that offered any hope or action steps. Since then, I've seen (and read) quite a few - and this one stands out for its honesty, its perspective (Mindy is the granddaughter of, as well as mother of, someone with schizophrenia), and its knowledge about advocacy and the way things work in the world of state legislation.
Mindy Greiling is a fine writer - you'll keep turning the pages. You'll feel less alone, if you share this issue. And you'll get a really accurate ride on the roller coaster of family experience with "recovery" - what happens after someone with severe mental illness is treated and released? I know this ride all too well - am on it right now, as my son Ben is nearing the end of a three-month hospitalization after nine years of relative success.
Highly recommended.
