As someone who has been diagnosed in the past with schizoaffective disorder, I was a bit wary on what this book would be about and how detailed it would be. I was slightly afraid that it might be triggering for me, but that was not the case.

I enjoyed the first chunk of essays more than the last few. I'm not a highly spiritual person, to each their own on that fact and some of the essays delved into more spiritual memoir.

I found it interesting though, reading from another person's perspective on schizoaffective disorder/schizophrenia. She delved into topics that were interesting and the points she was trying to make held true, to a fault.

For example:

She talked about one story that really affected me where a family had a schizophrenic son and the sister shot him thirteen times on the side of the road while the mother waited in the car. They talked about being terrorized by this person. The author then went on to talk about other cases where the family was affected by someone with mental health issues or organizations that cater to families and not the individual person with the issues. I am not sure if she was supposed to offer any sort of comfort or solutions, as she did not do so.

In the various essays she also talked about her personal experiences with mental health and how that transformed into various hospital stays, and psychotic episodes.

She also mentions some movies and television scenes that discuss mental health whether negatively or positively. I really enjoyed that.

I was a little frustrated at the end

it seemed to imply that her spiritual journey is what led to her not having symptoms/hallucinations, which good for her to be honest, but not everyone is like that.

Overall this was good but it was hard to say what I officially got out of this essay collection.

This book  flew by! Wang weaves her personal narrative into a broader societal and historical context of mental illness smoothly and poignantly. She writes with impressive clarity and reflectiveness. I was so moved by her different descriptions of her own experiences and those of the people around her. She illustrates the detours, rabbit holes, alternative paths, and dead ends of diagnosis and treatment that are so often overlooked around complex conditions. Her writing is frank without being hopeless. I also appreciate how she moves between traditional and non traditional treatment mindsets/approaches/paradigms in a way that’s grounded in her own needs.

Highly recommend this book, especially to those wanting a better grasp of chronic illness and schizophrenia.