ZIG-ZAG BOY

A mother chronicles how her youngest son’s struggle with mental illness affected her understanding of what it meant to be a mother.

When Frank found her 19-year-old son Zach “tracing the wires of our defunct telephone circuit board” in their home because he believed they were under surveillance by “bad people,” she knew something was wrong. Until that moment, Zach had been a well-liked, highly intelligent teen who had never showed any predisposition to mental illness. The doctors who examined him eventually settled on a diagnosis of schizophrenia, while Frank scrambled to find her otherwise high-functioning son the help and medication he required. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the antipsychotics meant to control his condition made other parts of his life much harder. While Zach contended with the difficult side effects—e.g., blurry vision, muscle spasms, and decreased cognitive capability—Frank dealt with the “mental illness trauma” of witnessing her son’s decline. When he went off medication, the author supported his decision, not knowing that Zach was at the beginning of a stop-start drug cycle that, like homelessness and hospitalization, would continue through his adult life. Desperate to “fix my boy,” Frank did everything she possibly could to assist him, including moving back to their native England in hopes that his father and the British health care system could look after him better than the American system could. The author’s efforts only made her realize that sacrificing for Zach put her relationship with her beloved American wife at risk of rupture. Eventually, she found a measure of solace in a support group. “We agree that we are all mad, all disordered, all traumatized,” she writes, “and our loved ones are no different than anyone else.” As she explores the sometimes-painful limits of mothering, Frank candidly discusses the wisdom of letting go what cannot be healed or made whole in exchange for the gift of acceptance.

A heartfelt memoir about family, mental illness, and unconditional love.