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874 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
874 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Suicide, Suicide attempt
My work book club finally picked a book I liked. Hallelujah!
This exceptionally well-written memoir explores the author’s family experiences with mental illness, including family members who have committed suicide. She traces the history of her relatives’ depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and more, as well as how the mental healthcare system and expectation of social silence failed them and others like them. This could have easily felt exploitative, but the book is written with warmth, love, and grace extended to her parents and siblings without minimizing the negative parts of anyone’s actions or choices.
I can’t imagine the vulnerability of writing this. I read one poem about a trauma at a poetry reading and then had nightmares for days, so the thought of putting a memoir like this out into the world is absolutely horrifying to me—but maybe it shouldn’t be. Normalizing that trauma, mental illness, and other kinds of emotional pain exist and are valid experiences that can be spoken of is the entire point of the book, and the fact that she got every one of her surviving siblings to give their blessing before publishing it is telling of how much love and support there is between them. As someone with mental illness and substance abuse in my family as well, I appreciate her efforts to shine a light on the ways in which we’ve let down people suffering with these issues, as well as the ways in which we could do better—on a personal level, but also in society as a whole.
This exceptionally well-written memoir explores the author’s family experiences with mental illness, including family members who have committed suicide. She traces the history of her relatives’ depression, substance abuse, anxiety, and more, as well as how the mental healthcare system and expectation of social silence failed them and others like them. This could have easily felt exploitative, but the book is written with warmth, love, and grace extended to her parents and siblings without minimizing the negative parts of anyone’s actions or choices.
I can’t imagine the vulnerability of writing this. I read one poem about a trauma at a poetry reading and then had nightmares for days, so the thought of putting a memoir like this out into the world is absolutely horrifying to me—but maybe it shouldn’t be. Normalizing that trauma, mental illness, and other kinds of emotional pain exist and are valid experiences that can be spoken of is the entire point of the book, and the fact that she got every one of her surviving siblings to give their blessing before publishing it is telling of how much love and support there is between them. As someone with mental illness and substance abuse in my family as well, I appreciate her efforts to shine a light on the ways in which we’ve let down people suffering with these issues, as well as the ways in which we could do better—on a personal level, but also in society as a whole.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of “While You Were Out” in exchange for an honest review. To say I enjoyed it doesn’t feel like the right word for a very personal memoir that revolves around a family’s numerous and challenging encounters with mental health. That aside, I really enjoyed this. Kissinger’s journalism background is evident in the memoir’s concise storytelling. Kissinger manages to explore her family members’ minds with the intimacy of someone who lived through it and the clarity of a seasoned researcher.
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5 Stars
Wanted to love this more - very (too much) detailed in some areas, but lacking emotion to let me really get into the book and feel connected to her family. But do feel this is an important memoir on mental illness and hope it helps pave the way for more books and memoirs on the subject.
Wanted to love this more - very (too much) detailed in some areas, but lacking emotion to let me really get into the book and feel connected to her family. But do feel this is an important memoir on mental illness and hope it helps pave the way for more books and memoirs on the subject.
What a heartbreaker! I really enjoyed how Kissinger is a mental health advocate throughout, weaving in her current ideas and insights to her tangled history and acknowledging the hard feelings and failures that came along with being a member of her family. It really does raise the age old question of nature vs. nurture in much different way than Hidden Valley Road did. While it's clear Kissinger is a journalist and writes in a straightfoward style, there were a lot of tender moments expressed both in real time and in hindsight. I would have loved even more of those human touches, but this was a great read from the perspective of someone who has been navigating the mental health system in the US for almost as long as it has existed.
Wow. On many levels, Wow. The book is about a large American family growing up in the 50s-70s with significant mental illness, substance abuse & trauma. It should be sad and/or horrifying. But the author does a magnificent job of sharing both the darkness and the light of her family. It’s a great example of one of my favourite learnings of recent years: two contradictory things can be true simultaneously. She recognizes all the hard stuff but also describes the love and laughter without going anywhere near the range of toxic positivity. She also shares a lot of the insights she gained as a reporter focusing on government support for mental health. I had trouble putting it down and would love to continue reading about them.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Abortion, Suicide attempt
emotional
medium-paced