Resilient: Surviving My Mental Illness

by Liz Grace

Overview

An inspiring and unforgettable memoir that provides hope to others who are experiencing depression, mania, or psychosis, RESILIENT is a deeply personal account about life with mental illness, hearing loss and resiliency. Liz's journey provides encouragement for patients, families, friends, and healthcare workers by showing that recovery is possible.

At seventeen, Liz's world collapses into a place of depression, psychosis, and a revolving hospital door. She is overcome with grief and a loss of reality. Despite this, she gets to university, only for bipolar disorder (later diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder) to return to threaten all that she has worked towards.

Written to encourage empathy in those without lived experience, Liz effectively shares her emotional rollercoaster of going deaf and losing her mind, giving the reader the gift of insight she needed then, and others need now. Experience the triumphs and tribulations of surviving the world of mental illness from the view of a healthcare professional.

Read and share this book with others to help fight the stigma of mental illness.

Content warning: This book contains content related to suicide, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and restraints

Liz Grace is an occupational therapist and first-time author who is in recovery from schizoaffective disorder. At age sixteen, she gradually lost her hearing and learned American Sign Language (ASL). At twenty-six she received surgery for cochlear implants.
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"inspiring and unforgettable... this is a remarkably honest, fearless, and selfless piece of writing, one that could help people facing a myriad of challenges, which could even be life-saving." - Self Publishing Review (4.5 stars)

"Liz Grace's unflinching account sheds much-needed light on these struggles, making Resilient an incredibly valuable read for anyone who knows someone battling mental illness." - Books That Make You

"Grace's transformation from someone battling the shadows of her mind to thrive is a testament to the possibility of recovery and growth." - Books That Make You

"An honest and inspiring account of a young woman's struggles with deafness and mental illness." - Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781990533112
Publisher:	Sisters Ignited Media and Publishing Inc.
Publication date:	06/30/2023
Pages:	280
Sales rank:	180,363
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)

Editorial Reviews

2024-01-02
Grace offers a challenging but candid account of mental illness and its impact in this memoir.

As a 17-year-old, the author was still struggling to cope with her mother’s death from breast cancer seven years earlier, a struggle made more difficult by the lack of emotional support from her family. Although very bright and outwardly stable, Grace practiced dangerous self-harm to deal with her persistent anxiety and low self-esteem. When her father announced unexpectedly that he was about to remarry, to a woman poorly equipped to handle her new stepdaughter’s challenges, the author was thrown into intense emotional turmoil and increasingly considered suicide. Readers will be shocked by Grace’s account of mental health workers who concluded, despite evidence to the contrary, that her behavior was simply attention-seeking and repeatedly used physical force to restrain and medicate her. But this book also contains an inspiring story of resilience; coping not only with ongoing mental illness but also profound hearing loss, the author courageously set out to become an occupational therapist. Grace’s account of her descent into psychological crisis is made vivid and compelling by the use of her early diary entries, which bring readers into direct contact with her mental illness. She comments on these passages and develops their meaning in plain text, but they appear largely unedited, and, as such, testify to the confusing and deeply painful impact of mental illness on a human personality. “What’s wrong? What’s right? What’s normal?” she asks herself at one point. “Everything is so twisted in my mind.” Because the author is honest and detailed when writing about her experiences, this book can be challenging and even disturbing at times. But in the end, it is the author’s candor and her unwillingness to look away from the reality of mental and physical illness that make her book so valuable.

An honest and inspiring account of a young woman’s struggles with deafness and mental illness.

Kirkus Reviews