While You Were Out Quotes

“But I was learning that you can’t fast-forward through grief or read a CliffsNotes version of your life and expect to make peace with it.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Trauma does that to you. It steals your memory. I either couldn’t or didn’t let myself remember her or talk about her.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“the easier I understood that two seemingly contradictory truths can exist simultaneously. My parents could be warm and loving but also reckless and flawed. Our family life could have been happy despite the tragedies.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Only love and understanding can conquer this disease.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“For so many years, I had identified myself by my family's tragedies, stuck in the mindset of the daughter of two lovable but deeply troubled souls.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“We used humor as a kind of Band-Aid, to keep the fear and anger from infecting us. But wounds also need fresh air and sunlight to heal.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“It’s okay to be disappointed, but don’t get discouraged. I”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“More than one-third of all people with serious mental illness don’t get treatment. We don’t have enough doctors. Many psychiatrists will only treat those who can pay directly. They won’t accept Medicare or Medicaid. Even with parity laws, insurance companies won’t pay many mental health claims.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. —MARY OLIVER, In Blackwater Woods”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Holmer loved that damn football team. He would sometimes sneak us into Bears games by hiding one of the little ones under his coat or have a few of us whiz past the usher while he pretended to be fumbling for the tickets. But the team disappointed him more often than not. A season ticket holder, he once threatened to sue them for a breach of fiduciary duty, claiming they were only “masquerading as a professional football team” to bilk fans like him out of their hard-earned cash.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Scott was on death row in Texas, waiting to be executed for killing his in-laws while in a psychotic trance. Scott’s wife had tried to turn his guns over to the police the day before, but the officer refused, saying, “Ma’am, a man’s guns are sacred property.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Scott was on death row in Texas, waiting to be executed for killing his in-laws while in a psychotic trance. Scott’s wife had tried to turn his guns over to the police the day before, but the officer refused, saying, “Ma’am,”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“With the help of a drug called scopolamine (also known as the date rape drug, “the Devil’s Breath”), women felt the pain of giving birth; they just couldn’t remember it.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Love is our greatest treasure. The sting of its loss is the price we must pay.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Police are not mental health care providers, nor do they want to be. Some underestimate the danger; others are too quick to reach for their handcuffs and taser guns.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“In headlines and news copy, we call them "the mentally ill." In truth, they are our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters. They are us.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“The mood at home grew so tense that it felt at times like our house had been doused in gasoline and could blow up any second.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“The worst days were the ones where she could not see a way out. That was an awful, scary feeling. One those days, just being alive seemed to be a chore.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Our father's sudden mood changes and our mother's melancholia made us tense, like little deer teetering toward the forest, vulnerable and unprotected.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“In steering me back to that time, I have been forced to look at the girl I was then and, knowing what I do about myself now, be able to reframe and understand why I did this,”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“If I was going to move on, I’d need to find a way to forgive my mother, just as she had forgiven me for my many faults and misdeeds over the years.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“I’d never paused to understand what it must have been like for my mother to raise all those kids more or less on her own, with her own paralyzing bouts of depression and anxiety and a husband who often was absent, drunk, or out of control.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“you can’t fast-forward through grief or read a CliffsNotes version of your life and expect to make peace with it.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“the crude disposal of my mother’s family belongings felt like another kick in the gut, like the things we valued were little more than garbage.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“some people who are too sick to realize that they are ill can be a danger to themselves or others and need someplace safe to stay until they are better. As uncomfortable as it is to acknowledge that, it’s equally irresponsible to ignore.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Despite the way they are often portrayed in popular culture, people with severe mental illness are rarely dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than to cause one.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“It’s not always easy to look past the label of someone’s illness to see the person they are inside,” I told the crowd in church that afternoon. “If you could do that with Georgia, you were in for a treat. She was one of the smartest, funniest, and most generous people around. I loved her.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“It was easier to gaslight me than own up to their own reckless acts.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“For every person with severe mental illness, there are dozens of others whose lives are upended by their disease”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

“Yet this kind of prejudice and discrimination is allowed to fester because the aggrieved are either too embarrassed to speak up or we choose to ignore them.”
― Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence