Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope

by Sallie Crotty

Overview

Out of the Ashes, an inspiring story of hope . . .

With Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope, Sallie Crotty offers a profoundly moving memoir told with unflinching bravery and insight. Her compelling story explores a topic that affects us all: mental health. Detailing a mid-life descent into debilitating despair, she brings the reader on a deeply personal journey. She reveals her struggles, time spent in a psychiatric ward, and how lacking a clear diagnosis almost led to her death. She also describes how proper care and receiving the right diagnosis and treatment can provide hope, stability, and a path to happiness.

This inspiring memoir will help remove some of the stigma surrounding mental illness and encourage those suffering to seek treatment. Crotty provides hope for the many individuals diagnosed every year, their loved ones, and anyone interested in learning more about the lives of those who live with mental illness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632995360
Publisher:	Greenleaf Book Group, LLC
Publication date:	05/20/2022
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)

Editorial Reviews

2022-06-08
A memoir of mental illness and of the difference that good care makes.

In her debut book, Crotty, an educator, creative writer, and mental health advocate, gives readers a gripping account of her struggle with bipolar disorder, from her hospitalization in 2007 at a Dallas hospital’s mental health facility following a suicide attempt to her successful treatment at a private clinic that showed her possibilities for better inpatient mental health treatment. Her account of her stay at the first facility, including attempts at escape and a petition for discharge, is narrated with a mix of despair and hope: “I wanted to get better. I just wasn’t completely sure how to do it.” This is followed by her life-changing and ultimately lifesaving transfer to the Menninger Clinic in Houston, which had a less hospital-like setting. During her stay at Menninger, she says, she learned to speak out about an abusive fellow patient and stand up to an overbearing staff member. She was released with skills for managing her condition and with an awareness of the possibility of relapse. In this book, she also describes her post-treatment turn to advocacy and her aim to end the stigma that prevents proper mental health treatment. Overall, the work offers an engaging narrative that picks up speed near the end, reflecting her transition from frustration and despair to hope. It includes a painfully honest account of the strain that her illness put on her marriage while also acting as a tribute to a spouse who stuck with her and acknowledging his own need for healing. Her account of a brain scan, while riveting, is unclear in terms of what it had to do with her mental health condition. Overall, though, she gives readers a refreshingly upbeat message about the possibilities for managing bipolar disorder while not ignoring its potentially deadly effects. That said, the book might have benefited from more links to outside resources and further readings.

An earnest and ultimately inspiring narrative about living with bipolar disorder.

Kirkus Reviews