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870 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
870 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
4.5 stars. Wow, I really loved this book. The author was so candid and humane about her family's struggles with mental health. She gave such a lovely context for their lives. It was also just a really tender portrait of a Midwestern family in the 20th century. The humor and vitality of her parents and siblings balanced their story with the tragedies they endured. This was as good of a portrait of an American family as anything I've read. Just brilliant!
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I enjoyed this. I also hope it was healing for the author to write.
This book almost felt like two separate books to me: one an honest, emotional personal memoir about the effects of mental illness on one family and the other, a journalistic, factual account detailing the mental health crisis in our country. While I found both thorough and captivating, I wish the author blended the two parts more seamlessly into one cohesive work.
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Death, Drug abuse, Alcohol
Minor: Abortion
This is an incredible memoir. Compellingly written and deeply researched, Meg Kissinger shares her story of growing up in a family that fought mental illness behind closed doors in an era where such struggles were not to be talked about openly. Everything was hush-hush, swept under the rug, and left to fester. It’s ultimately a devastating story as she shares that two of her siblings took their own lives. It is heartbreaking to read how little support and understanding there was leading up to their deaths, and the ripple effects that this had on the rest of the family. Throughout her lifelong career in journalism, Meg has brought to light the reality of the ways we treat people with mental illness and by sharing her story hopes to continue the fight for change.
This was a very hard review to write as Meg’s family’s story hit very close to home for me. She is close in age with my parents, and the world she grew up in is so familiar to me from hearing my parents’ own childhood stories. Mental illness runs in both sides of my family and it’s something that my parents still battle and struggle to open up about. I have always wondered what it was like for them growing up and how it shaped them into who they are, and this book gave me a peek into what it might have been like. My mom herself has said that my dad’s family just “didn’t talk about their feelings” and I can’t imagine how alienating that must have been as a struggling young adult. It was a lot to examine and wrap my head around as I read this book.
Beyond the topic of mental illness, there are so many interesting threads of history in this book that I’m dying to unravel further - the 15,000 pilots in training that died on american soil, the boom of pharmaceuticals, the “twilight sleep” that was induced upon pregnant women, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s unrealized dream of better mental healthcare. While nowadays we talk more openly about feelings of anxiety and depression, there is still a long way to go in how we treat people with mental illness and in some ways it seems as though we have regressed. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Why, after all these years, can we as a society still not figure this out? Why can’t we do better? When did we stop trying?
This is not a light read by any means, but an important one. It was thought-provoking in so many ways, and the story of Meg’s family is one I won’t soon forget. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC.
This was a very hard review to write as Meg’s family’s story hit very close to home for me. She is close in age with my parents, and the world she grew up in is so familiar to me from hearing my parents’ own childhood stories. Mental illness runs in both sides of my family and it’s something that my parents still battle and struggle to open up about. I have always wondered what it was like for them growing up and how it shaped them into who they are, and this book gave me a peek into what it might have been like. My mom herself has said that my dad’s family just “didn’t talk about their feelings” and I can’t imagine how alienating that must have been as a struggling young adult. It was a lot to examine and wrap my head around as I read this book.
Beyond the topic of mental illness, there are so many interesting threads of history in this book that I’m dying to unravel further - the 15,000 pilots in training that died on american soil, the boom of pharmaceuticals, the “twilight sleep” that was induced upon pregnant women, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s unrealized dream of better mental healthcare. While nowadays we talk more openly about feelings of anxiety and depression, there is still a long way to go in how we treat people with mental illness and in some ways it seems as though we have regressed. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Why, after all these years, can we as a society still not figure this out? Why can’t we do better? When did we stop trying?
This is not a light read by any means, but an important one. It was thought-provoking in so many ways, and the story of Meg’s family is one I won’t soon forget. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I liked that this was a memoir about her family’s struggle with mental health that turned into commentary on mental health services.
It was objectively a sad story but somehow lacked emotion. I still enjoyed it.
It was objectively a sad story but somehow lacked emotion. I still enjoyed it.
I think rating memoirs is such a challenging thing because how do you rate how someone shares her life? But this book is incredible. And honestly, it’s very difficult. There’s simply continual heartbreak but it is eye opening about how mental health has been treated and handled historically through the very personal example of the Kissinger family.
Meg was so honest and I’m so grateful that her family gave her permission to be. Piecing together the personal with her investigative journalism was really interesting. Again, this is a hard book emotionally so treat yourself with care if reading about persistent mental health illnesses, suicides, addiction and postpartum depression feels too much for you right now.
I’m going to process this book for a while and think about people I know and love who have probably suffered in silence.
Meg was so honest and I’m so grateful that her family gave her permission to be. Piecing together the personal with her investigative journalism was really interesting. Again, this is a hard book emotionally so treat yourself with care if reading about persistent mental health illnesses, suicides, addiction and postpartum depression feels too much for you right now.
I’m going to process this book for a while and think about people I know and love who have probably suffered in silence.
DNF @38%. I’ve read many memoirs like this but I couldn’t connect with this one. I agree with one of the comments that it felt like the author was writing in a somewhat detached way.