Gum on My Shoe

This book review is written as an open letter to my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson at I’m NOT Disordered . In the dying days of the old asylums, three paths intersect. A brother and sister separated for fifty years and the idealistic young social worker who tries to reunite them. Will truth prevail over bigotry, or will the buried secret keep family apart? (Anne Goodwin) Dear Aimee, You asked what I thought of the book I’ve been reading this week. I’m glad you asked because I think Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home by Anne Goodwin is a book you’d enjoy. A little about the author before I get going. I first met Anne a few years ago when Fran and I approached her as a potential reviewer for our book High Tide, Low Tide . (You can read her review here .) I met her in person in 2015 at a book launch for her first novel, Sugar and Snails . It was the first author event I’d attended and I loved hearing Anne talk about and read from her book. The cupcakes were f...

By Jen Evans Twenty years ago, when I was twenty-eight, and after a month with no sleep, I was diagnosed with a major mental illness. At the time this occurred, I couldn’t feel anything. My brain and heart were so completely shut down that when I was diagnosed, I had no reaction to the diagnosis and what the ER doctor was saying to me. When the doctor told me that I had bipolar disorder, I stared blankly and flatly ahead of me, disassociating from the reality of this diagnosis and the surreal experience of sleeplessness and mania that I was experiencing at the time. Although I had heard of the illness, I knew next to nothing about it. I certainly didn’t believe I had it, no matter what this doctor was telling me. He must be mistaken. But, something was wrong because a person just doesn’t stop sleeping for no reason. Years ago, when I was fourteen and got my first period, odd things began happening in my day to day life. Though the circumstances I was living in at the time we...

As any author will tell you, compiling the acknowledgements page is not the simplest part of writing a book. We learned so much compiling the acknowledgements for our first book High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder that we wrote an article about it , in the hope other authors might benefit from our experience, and our friends and readers might understand how we went about it (and, perhaps, why they were — or were not — included). It is the most read post on our blog. You can read our acknowledgements for High Tide. Low Tide here . The publication of a new edition of our second book No One Is Too Far Away: Notes from a Transatlantic Friendship offers us the opportunity to again share our gratitude here on our blog. Acknowledgements Fran and I would like to thank Sarah Fader and everyone formerly at Eliezer Tristan Publishing for inspiring this collection and publishing the first edition. We are grateful to Kingston Park Publishing for the o...

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. (Anais Nin) Sunday, May 2, 2021. Dear Fran, I’m writing this sitting on the bench that’s been my regular stopping / thinking / journaling place since we first went into lockdown last March. I’ve had calls with you here many times, and I’ve taken you along on my walks — sharing my world in photos and chat, and voice and video calls. We’re three thousand miles apart but we still use all the tools and means available to us to bridge the distance and keep our friendship and lives vibrant, aligned, and alive. Ten years ago we’d not yet met. That was still a few days into my future and yours. (It’s a constant reminder that transformational change can appear at any moment.) And then that evening came — May 6, 2011 — and I posted seven words to a friend’s Facebook wall. A friend who was struggling. In pain. Suicidal. Flooding light and love ...