JOURNEY BEYOND DESPAIR

A memoir about overcoming mental illness—and much more.

In her first book, Parker, whose varied career has included stints as a French teacher, yoga teacher, and therapist, offers a memoir that is, on the surface, about mental illness—but it encompasses much more. Most of the book, in fact, focuses on the different phases of the author’s life, before, after, and in between mental health episodes, from ambitiously studying abroad in France to becoming one of the first yoga instructors in America. The author has plenty to say about her sometimes-turbulent but ultimately enduring partnership with her college sweetheart, as well as her spiritual journey from yoga to a return to her church, and how these experiences intersected with her mental health history. The book also includes a chapter describing Parker’s unsuccessful effort, undertaken as a therapy student, to persuade her mother to tell some painful secrets about her early life; the anecdote does not name but describes intergenerational trauma (“It could not help but affect us children, along with the genes we inherited from the pool of humanity”). The author offers readers a moving and at times fascinating life story, but the narrative can seem unfocused at times. Throughout, she makes references to the “Daemon” and the “Cerulean Fairy” that may not always be comprehensible to the reader. The text also includes a reference to a now widely criticized theory of Freud that Parker appears to take seriously (“Had I, at age three perhaps, when baby Jay entered our family, developed a pernicious case of penis envy, buried at my core? Surrounded with brothers, did I worry my mother loved them best?”). Even with these limitations, the memoir inspiring, demonstrating the possibility of living a full life and having a lasting partnership even when battling mental illness.

A sometimes-meandering journey, but one that offers much along the way.