Jessie Close

I was expecting something wholly different than what I got. I was not at all the intended audience for this. The first person with schizophrenia I ever met was someone I proceeded to date for five months. We were seventeen and she informed me the third time we met that she had it. She was cheerful. She'd been diagnosed six months prior and she was jazzed about a medication combination she had just begun. I was caught off-guard and decided to match her cheeriness with a smile. I had no idea show more what schizophrenia was, and seriously thought "undifferentiated" was a made-up word. No...twenty years ago, that was a term meaning "multiple types." It's so outdated now that it doesn't exist and there are different ways to describe what she had. Four years later, I met the second person. She had another type than my ex did. This gal and I were close friends for two years. I was much better equipped to--not be a jerk, and I knew more, by then. We drifted apart and I wish her all the best. Two years later, I met a third person with this disease that is supposedly super rare. She was a neighbor of mine. She could not access treatment. This is not her fault. Her schizophrenia made her perform invasive behaviors and say and do strange things. Her actions towards me ranged from annoying to unsettling, and she refused to communicate. Maybe not a refusal. I don't actually think she could. There was absolutely no point, and people thought I was -nice- to her. I do not think I was. She got on medication and remembers me fondly for reasons unknown.

It was during this time that one of my best friends developed schizophrenia. I watched it happen. It wasn't schizophrenia, it couldn't be, because it was a really rare disease and I was not a shrink. I was seeing schizophrenia everywhere, I decided. She went into a mixed episode. Her family did not believe mental illness existed, and thought she needed more Jesus. I don't believe in Jesus. I wanted her to see a shrink. Maybe her behavior was just stress. But it wasn't. We were in denial. Even after she was diagnosed, she still didn't see anything wrong with her and getting her consent to treatment was a long road. I broke off the friendship. We were going to be best friends for the rest of our lives originally. She has this illness for the rest of her life, and here I am, treating it as my own personal tragedy.

The fifth person I met with a type of schizophrenia...I watched and frowned and was too tired to care because I am an asshole. She got herself help right away, and has an adoring, strong, supportive family system. She told me her diagnosis and I started to say, "Yeah, I can tell" before shutting my trap because she didn't know I'd already had such friendships and relationships. We broke off the friendship for entirely unrelated reasons a few months later.

The sixth person...I did not know well at all and still don't. She's hot and was hostile when she turned me down for a date. Like, such that I asked her friends wtf. They blamed me. A week later we realized she'd been having symptoms. I have given her the space she asked for and will continue to do so.

This is not a rare disease. I went into this book expecting something far more profound and compassionate than I got. I wanted to learn something new. EVEN THE MEDICATIONS ARE THE SAME FROM TWENTY YEARS AGO. I am so sorry that the authors' families were so antagonistic to them. "He went with some crazies to the mall zomg" Oh NOES, he was on an OUTING. Clearly he should have stayed in his room! Oh NOES, he was SOCIALIZING with people with similar symptoms to him! Just soooo dreadful. I absolutely hated his mother, even as I wished for her to get medical help to stop drinking. I liked the dad. Yay dad. The siblings were eh, fine.

This book made me look up information on schizophrenia again and things have changed a lot in some ways. Some old memories that I did not need or want came up, so I am seeking therapy and I feel gross about it. Gross because this is a misunderstood illness and I don't have it, so I should not be experiencing so many negative emotions and memories. Grr.

Still way, way more realistic than "Words on Bathroom Walls" though. show less

Resilience is billed as "two sisters and a story of mental illness." It is, however, much more. It is a story of parents belonging to a cult, a dysfunctional family, substance abuse, a famous film actress, and yes, mental illness.

Jessie Close writes about her life with details of her battle with Alcoholism and mental illness. She indicates a causality. Which way does the cause and effect go? It is hard to tell

The book makes for an interesting read but other sufferers of Bipolar Disorder will show more tell you it is not necessarily a completely authentic story of the illness as not all sufferers go through the number of husbands, cars, and houses that Jessie does! show less

Mental illness is not a stigma.

I always find it really hard to rate a book that talks so openly about the struggles that the author has lived with, yet that I didn't consider particularly well written. In this case the award winning writer, Pete Earley was involved, so there really wasn't any excuse for this being so slow to get going.
The early stages of the book were far too much back-story of parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. It didn't keep my interest and I couldn't show more remember them all anyway. I would have preferred a family tree, possibly accompanied by a list with a little more detail, something that could be referred back to. (And at the FRONT of the book, not the back, where Kindle readers only find it when they finish reading!)

After the first quarter, the book began to improve; there started to be mention of the mental illness that I had read the book to learn about. I appreciate that Jesse Close did not get a diagnosis until she was in her fifties, so I understand the lack of explanation at that time in her story, but it was a bit alienating for me, as a reader.
My real involvement with the book began when her son, Calen started to show symptoms of mental illness and Jesse realised how his behaviour mirrored her own.

Jesse's childhood spent with a nanny, so her parents could dedicate all their time to a religious cult, was heartbreaking. She and her siblings had to live with the fact that they were second in importance for their own parents. Even once Dr and Mrs Close had broken away from the cult, her father was still a distant figure in her life, always putting his patients before his family. Although they spent a lot of their time apart, the siblings supported one another and became very close.

The main reason for the publication of the book is to publicise the issue of mental health and to attempt to reduce the stigma attached to the condition. To this end, Jesse and her family, including actress Glenn Close, have done a marvelous job of presenting their story from the heart. Although I could not rate the book as highly as I would have liked, I wish them all the best in their fight for recognition of the disease and acceptance of those who suffer from it as valid human beings. show less

I've had the pleasure of hearing Jessie Close speak at a mental health summit some years ago, shortly after the launch of Bring Change 2 Mind, the non-profit co-founded by Jessie and Glenn Close to fight stigma attached to those with mental illness. I respect the advocacy work they're doing, and I admire Jessie for sharing her story of living with bipolar disorder. Hearing her speak about her rocky life, which included several husbands and houses and moves across country and across the show more world, and her path to managing her health after receiving her bipolar diagnosis, was really eye-opening to me as someone who at the time knew little about the illness. So when I heard that she had written a book about her experiences, I was looking forward to picking up a copy.

That said, I struggled a bit to finish the book. This memoir read more like an autobiography, starting with her recounting her first memories as well as outlining her family history and then moving very linearly through her life up until about 2009. It just started off really slow for me, and it wasn't until she starting talking about her adult life (around page 100) that I felt invested enough to finish reading. By the end, though, I realized the affect of including lots of family history--despite her failed marriages and a distant relationship with her father, Jessie's own children and her sister were key to her well-being.

There were a few short chapters throughout the book that gave the perspective of Glenn Close, Jessie's older sister. Those chapters didn't add much to the overall story, except to demonstrate that, indeed, it's difficult to see a beloved sister struggle with mental health. I suspect that tying in Glenn and including her face on the book cover is supposed to help catch the attention of potential readers. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I would suggest this book to those who are interested in mental health (specifically what it's like to be diagnosed with bipolar), to those who like reading about other's path to self-discovery (I was reminded a bit of Eat, Pray, Love while reading this--except with less eating and praying and more drinking and self-harming), or to those who like books with a celebrity tie-in.

A link to Bring Change 2 Mind: http://bringchange2mind.org/

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reading e-copy. show less