Title: An Impossible Life: The Inspiring True Story of a Woman’s Struggle from Within (The Impossible Series)
Authors: Rachael Siddoway and Sonja Wasden
Publisher: The Gap Press
ASIN: B07NVW99D9
Pages: 319
Genre: Non-Fiction
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
Rarely does a travelogue to the land of mental illness tell such a gripping and honest story as this one does. The reader is tempted to draw hasty conclusions at the start of the book – such as, this woman is a victim of gaslighting. She doesn’t need to be in a psychiatric hospital. But as anyone who has ever worked with the chronic mentally ill will tell you, the vast majority of patients are not there under false pretenses. Like co-author Sonja Wasden, bipolar patients and the people in their lives have had to endure decades of harrowing symptoms and life reversals before effective management – not cure – of their disorders can ever be achieved.
In this and the other volumes of the Impossible series, Wasden gives an expert, sometimes painful but always moving account, of what it’s like to live with severe bipolar disorder. She sketches out in mordant articulate terms what it is like to be plagued with the invariable detritus of bipolar disorder: surges of suicidal thoughts and behavior; shopping sprees to the tune of six figures; inappropriate and self-destructive acts that leave one’s family and friends holding on for dear life and gasping for breath.
There is a hardy survivor peeking out from the wreckage. Wasden’s family truly loves and celebrates her triumphs her daughter is co-author of this book. Wasden’s children and family rise to the occasion time and again, drawn to their mother who has somehow remained the bellwether of hearth and home in spite of multiple hospitalizations and impairments. There are stops along the way devoted to narrative sidebars on psychotropic medications and to stories about other patients she met and learned from along the way. The author finds strength and meaning in an abiding spiritual belief and practice she and her family are Mormons.
When it rains, it pours. Her father, another family member with bipolar disorder, shocks and stuns by finally caving – he surrenders to his illness and commits suicide. Wasden’s children leave home for college, go on spiritual missions, and Wasden’s sister has fatal melanoma. Did I mention Wasden’s muse? Somewhere in all this her muse, another of her several guardian angels, raises the battle standard and fights the good fight. Sonja Wasden is an accomplished writer, no mean feat given the extent of her episodic and sometimes disastrous disability. Her gift includes the uncanny ability to translate raw experience and suffering into credible wholes for the reader. We accompany her dis- and relocations, from Texas to Missouri to Utah. We are with her in the supermarket as she freights her shopping cart with seventeen varieties of corn chips. The magic is in the telling. Sonja and her daughter Rachael are master storytellers, and the telling is ultimately redemptive.
An Impossible Life: The Inspiring True Story of a Woman’s Struggle from Within, is custom-made for certain reading audiences. Those who have negotiated the mental health system, whether as patients or family members or helpers, will recognize and welcome the guiding voice at work here. The authors have been there and relate first hand intimate details of the system up close. We meet the doctor hiding behind the professional persona; the authentic therapist who gives and gives; the stymied family members and co-workers who must somehow deal with the ‘elephant in the living room’ of mental illness. Those who are curious about the journey will also find this book illuminating and well worth the read.
Bipolar and related disorders have been center stage in a number of books and films Girl, Interrupted, for example, and Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched by Fire but this volume offers a unique perspective on what it’s really like. Puzzling behaviors – symptoms like non-stop talking, shopping sprees, grandiose and persecutory delusions – become intelligible and manageable when viewed from the point of view of someone recovering from the disorder. Interestingly, individuals with bipolar disorder which used to be called manic depression may be more creative and accomplished than most. Studies have borne this out. And so does the present book. An Impossible Life is a testament to the indomitable, to intelligent spirit and courage that won’t back down.
An Impossible Life is an easy read, but painfully transparent which in many ways is necessary to help those who do not have this illness gain understanding of the suffering and stigma that exist for those who live it daily. This book is more than a memoir, it is a resource for those who have loved ones with this illness. This is a great book for anyone who has struggled with mental illness or those who offer support to people who do. A must read for all psychiatric professionals.
