Summary

A mother’s memoir that reckons with her son’s descent into severe mental illness. What appears to be substance use disorder in high school later becomes a dual diagnosis as bipolar disorder emerges. Her son soon grows disillusioned with prescribed pharmaceuticals and participates in a residential treatment program that assists people in forgoing medication altogether. However, the program ultimately ejects him from the community for the very behaviors that the medication once managed. The book chronicles Sandler's initial denial of her truth, her painful awakening to mental illness in her family, and her eventual acceptance that she cannot save her son—only he can save himself.

Contents

n/a

Author

Judy Sandler is a writer and educator living in mid-coast Maine. She holds an MLA from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from Stonecoast, at the University of Southern Maine. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times’s “Tiny Love Stories,” The Atticus Review, The Perch, Pangyrus, and the Treatment Advocacy Center blog. Sandler previously taught in Baltimore area independent schools for over twenty-eight years. She is now the creative nonfiction editor for both The Stonecoast Review and The Awakenings Review. Sandler and her husband are the parents of three adult children, Alex, Lucy, and Noah.

Praise

“Incredibly warm and funny and tender, this is a riveting story about what happens when we have to face our worst fears—about ourselves and the children we love. With wry humor and a wildly compelling voice, What Kind of Mother dares to do the taboo: to talk about what happens when things don't go at all according to the plan. It’s a book about taking the blinders off and a very moving love story. I could not put it down.”

—Susan Conley, author of Landslide

"Sandler's memoir delves into the poignant realization of a mother’s limitations in shielding her family from life's hardships, offering a raw and honest exploration of love, mental illness, and the struggle for redemption. What she believed she could not control she can and has controlled this narrative in a direction of pure heart. What Kind of Mother is a gem…this is art, this is literature with a capital L, literature built on the foundation of emotion, the very thing that allows any reader to connect to.”

—Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez: Stories and Fire Exit: A Novel

“What Kind of Mother is a heartbreakingly vulnerable and sobering portrayal of what it is like to watch your child spiral into addiction and reckon with the life-altering effects of mental illness. With searing honesty, Judy Sandler takes us into her complex journey of retracing the family history and parenting decisions that might make her culpable in the ongoing story of her son’s struggle to find equilibrium.” 

—Melanie Brooks, author of A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith when HIV/AIDS Changes It All

“The narrative becomes a source of solace, forging connections among those who share in the silent struggles of nurturing and supporting adult childern with mental health challenges.”

—David Goodman, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine