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881 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
881 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Incredibly honest book about what it is like to love someone with a serious mental illness. Also the author ends the book with a Mary Oliver poem which I LOVE
“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it: and, when time comes to let it go, to let it go”
“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it: and, when time comes to let it go, to let it go”
4.5⭐️ a very heavy read but worth it! she did a great job shedding light on such a sensitive topic
One of those books where due to the content and the author's experience, you feel bad giving it anything less than 5 stars!
What a heartbreaking, gut wrenching memoir/biography of a family's struggle with mental health and the impact that mental illness had on them. If you think that mental illness wasn't as prevalent in the 70's than it is now, you are so wrong-- it was just covered up. While You Were Out really illuminates that. The book is separated into two parts: one that tells the family's story, and one that is a journalistic review of mental health treatment at the time. I did enjoy reading both parts, but they each felt slow in some sections.
This book felt like it was really important for the author to write and probably so useful in the author and author's family's healing process. That said, for the average reader, I think more intimate depictions of the characters and an examination of pace would have made it much better.
What a heartbreaking, gut wrenching memoir/biography of a family's struggle with mental health and the impact that mental illness had on them. If you think that mental illness wasn't as prevalent in the 70's than it is now, you are so wrong-- it was just covered up. While You Were Out really illuminates that. The book is separated into two parts: one that tells the family's story, and one that is a journalistic review of mental health treatment at the time. I did enjoy reading both parts, but they each felt slow in some sections.
This book felt like it was really important for the author to write and probably so useful in the author and author's family's healing process. That said, for the average reader, I think more intimate depictions of the characters and an examination of pace would have made it much better.
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
As far as my reading habits go, I don't generally read a lot of memoirs. I gravitated towards this one because I thought I might relate to it given my own family background, and I was not wrong. I have a lot more in common with Meg than I thought (other than the love of writing), and while it was painful to read through this book and go through the narrative of situations I've also been in - at some points, it was almost like reliving that old trauma - it was also therapeutic in the sense that I got to see how the author and her siblings eventually found ways to talk about and cope with their experiences. On top of that, I also came out of this learning a whole lot of new things about the history of mental health care in the US, so technically you could say I'm a little bit smarter now. I am glad I read this memoir and will definitely return to it in the future.
Brilliant memoir of a family plagued by mental illness and even more by the silence demanded by shame and social pressure. Funny, heartbreaking, excellent. The author is a journalist, one of 7 born to a turbulent and colorful couple in Wilmette, IL. She chronicles the best and worst from birth to being a grandmother, and I could deeply relate at many points. The audiobook is narrated by the author and is compelling.