A review by babewithabookandabeer
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

“But I was learning that you can’t fast-forward through grief or read a CliffsNotes version of your life and expect to make peace with it.”

What a sad, sad book. Thank you Netgalley and Celadon Books for my copy of WHILE YOU WERE OUT by Meg Kissinger, an intimate family portrait of mental illness in an era of silence. Out now!

It follows the Kissinger family, who from the outside seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, they were highly involved with their Catholic church and spent summers at Lake Michigan and loved each other.

Behind closed doors, mental illness was rearing its head. The mother was heavily medicated and in and out of the hospital for anxiety and depression. The father was manic and prone to violence. Multiple children were diagnosed with bipolar disorder and chronic depression. Two children end up taking their own lives and Meg details her famiy’s shame and silence around these acts. 

I think anyone who grew up in the late 1900’s and early 2000’s know the exact feeling. Sadness? Wanting to die? Wanting to give up? You just don’t talk about it. This book is incredibly intimate and a devastating portrayal of what not talking about it does to a family. Kissinger goes into details with her investigative journalism background about our country’s flawed mental health care system and the consequences of deep-rooted shame and ignorance of trauma. 

I loved this book. It is so important and it is incredible that Kissinger found the strength to put it all out in the open to hopefully help another family find the courage to talk about it. What a thought-provoking memoir, highly recommend.