FINDING HOPE

Bystrom tells the story of her seven-year battle against functional neurological disorder.

In this emotional work, the author, a Canadian mental health advocate and school counselor, takes readers through her excruciating struggle. In 2013, when she was in her late 40s, Bystrom was a seasoned, successful educator of gifted children. She began experiencing debilitating seizures and unpredictable bodily jerking that started in her lower back. She vividly describes one seizure, which came on suddenly in 2021 as the author and her husband, Dale, were strolling through a specialty gift shop on Vancouver Island: “My arms and legs thrashed. Each time one movement stopped, and I prayed it would end, another started. I was terrified. My head jerked back and forth…then my head crashed back into the glass countertop of the cashier’s desk.” These traumatizing experiences set Bystrom on a multiyear quest to find the sources of her illness—a journey that included many incorrect diagnoses and ineffective medicinal therapies. The answer, when it finally arrived, was that Bystrom was suffering the effects of a little-understood neuropsychological condition that interferes with the brain’s ability to direct the body’s movements. Because FND has been characterized as a response to childhood trauma, Bystrom explored her early life and discovered that she’d internalized anxiety and rejection; her alcoholic father, she says, abandoned her when she was just 2 years old, leaving her to be cared for by her overworked and often distant mother. As result, she says, she never learned how to process difficult emotions and instead stored them in a mind and body that ultimately broke down.

This book is divided into five parts, each covering a “season” in Bystrom’s long journey toward healing and hope. In the seasons of “Trauma” and “Reflection,” she effectively introduces readers to the terrible symptoms of her disease and begins to explore some of the emotional and psychological sources that help to explain their onset. The most difficult section to read, but perhaps the most important one, is “Waiting”; as she was unable to drive, work, or find answers about her condition, Bystrom reveals how family, faith, and a determination to remain hopeful sustained her, even during the very worst of times. The author’s prose is clear and honest throughout, and it bravely invites readers to experience her difficulties in detail, as well as her remarkable resilience. There are parts of the book that might have been omitted or condensed for the sake of a more direct, well-structured story; for example, chapters 18 and 19 could have been combined into one that more clearly and directly explored the dynamic between the author’s FND struggles and her deepening religious faith.That said, the disjointed and sometimes-halting narrative is a chief source of the work's emotional power and feeling of authenticity. As Bystrom tells of waiting for signs of recovery, readers will feel her anxiety and frustration, and it’s difficult not to feel relief for her when her life starts to improve.

An intimate memoir of illness, hope, and self-discovery.