I'm sorry that Meg Kissinger and her family had to go through the trauma of losing a loved one to mental illness not once but twice. Most people won't be able to cope with one untimely death in family, but she had to push through two in addition to bunch of other instances where mental illness taking its toll on all family members. I'm glad that every sibling eventually found something that kept them grounded and connected.

We look at these missed opportunities to help people who struggle a lot usually from their family's and friends' perspective. But do we really understand how hopeless feel unless we went through something like this ourselves? I appreciated Kissinger's effort to show how debilitating it had been for her sister and brother before made the decision for themselves. All of that was a lot for a family to handle, but I think Kissinger family benefited from being a large family by having more shoulders to lean on.

When we started reading The Crucible in HS, the teacher asked us what would be the worst torture you could think of (what a question that was). As a person who manage to get papercuts frequently, my mind went there and I said probably paper cut on very sensitive skin, like eye. But I never thought, someone would be able to get it themselves. So tell me Meg Kissinger, how did you manage to get paper cut on your retina?!?!?

Title: While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Author: Meg Kissinger
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 4.50
Pub Date: September 5, 2023

I received a complimentary eARC from Celadon Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. #Gifted #Ad

T H R E E • W O R D S

Candid • Traumatic • Impactful

📖 S Y N O P S I S

While You Were Out begins as the personal story of one family’s struggles then opens outward, as Kissinger details how childhood tragedy catalyzed a journalism career focused on exposing our country’s flawed mental health care. Combining the intimacy of memoir with the rigor of investigative reporting, the book explores the consequences of shame, the havoc of botched public policy, and the hope offered by new treatment strategies.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I have a keen interest in books (particularly memoirs) that tackle and advocate for mental health issues, so I was grateful to be offered an advanced reader copy of While You Were Out. I was unaware of who Meg Kissinger was ahead of picking this one up, yet I quickly came to hold a special place for her and her siblings in my heart.

Meg tells her family's story in a moving, yet professional manner. She combines personal memories and experiences with steadfast research to deliver a heartfelt exposé of a system failing the most vulnerable of people. From a young age the Kissinger family was faced with continual heartbreak, and yet somehow Meg is still here to tell their story. This is a memoir that will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you empathize. And it will make you angry at a system designed to fail.

While You Were Out is an important and impactful addition to the growing list of mental health literature. I could not put it down. It's a memoir I won't soon forget, and will be continually recommending. If you do decide to pick this one up, I'd definitely suggest proceeding with care for yourself.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• memoir readers
• fans of Educated and/or The Glass Castle
• mental health advocates

⚠️ CW: death, death of parent, death of sibling, child death, grief, mental illness, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia/psychosis, panic attacks/disorders, self-harm, suicide, suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, addiction, drug use, drug abuse, alcohol, alcoholism, forced institutionalization, cancer, sexual assault, pregnancy, abortion, cursing, antisemitism, violence

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"This is what telling your story can do, she told them. It can bring the dead back to life - not in the same way but as a kind of transformation. It doesn't take away the injury, but it can give you a feeling of power when you are in control of the narrative. The balance is shifted back to you. There's new life, resurrected."

This is a difficult book to review since I can’t say the usual “I enjoyed reading this book because…”. Instead I can say this was an important book to read from someone who witnessed severe mental illness in her family.
I read the book in small pieces to avoid skimming through the difficult parts. There was only so much I could absorb and reflect on.
Kissinger’s focus seemed to be on how so many parts of the mental illness puzzle failed her family - society, family, law enforcement, and the medical community.
Thanks to #Celadon and #Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

This biography is the often heartbreaking story of Meg Kissinger's family and the mental illness that plagued them all. My father died by suicide---I wondered if this book would be a comfort or a dangerous path for me. It was a little of both. It brought back some painful memories but also many healing moments. Thank you, Meg for being so open with the issues that so many want to brush under the rug with shame. W But I think many readers will love it. We need more honest books like this.

“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.”

What a sad, sad book. Thank you Netgalley and Celadon Books for my copy of WHILE YOU WERE OUT by Meg Kissinger, an intimate family portrait of mental illness in an era of silence. Out now!

It follows the Kissinger family, who from the outside seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, they were highly involved with their Catholic church and spent summers at Lake Michigan and loved each other.
Behind closed doors, mental illness was rearing its head. The mother was heavily medicated and in and out of the hospital for anxiety and depression. The father was manic and prone to violence. Multiple children were diagnosed with bipolar disorder and chronic depression. Two children end up taking their own lives and Meg details her famiy’s shame and silence around these acts.

I think anyone who grew up in the late 1900’s and early 2000’s know the exact feeling. Sadness? Wanting to die? Wanting to give up? You just don’t talk about it. This book is incredibly intimate and a devastating portrayal of what not talking about it does to a family. Kissinger goes into details with her investigative journalism background about our country’s flawed mental health care system and the consequences of deep-rooted shame and ignorance of trauma.

I loved this book. It is so important and it is incredible that Kissinger found the strength to put it all out in the open to hopefully help another family find the courage to talk about it. What a thought-provoking memoir, highly recommend.

This memoir, by journalist Meg Kissinger, recounts growing up as one of eight siblings, in a family where both parents and many of the siblings suffered to one degree or another from mental illnesses, addiction, and suicide. Starting in the 1960s and continuing to the present day, the book details some truly wild things that happened in her family, and very sad ones, and how the culture of silence in a time where people simply didn’t talk about these things affected them all.

And wow, what a story it is, as her family was as colorful as it was troubled. I will say towards the back third or so the book started moving faster through the years, and focusing more on Kissinger’s journalism career where she did much investigative reporting on mental illness and treatment. However, the last chapter, in which she brings us up to speed on the current state of her family, how she decided to write this book with their cooperation and help, and how it was therapeutic for her, was incredibly moving and really tied the whole thing together.

While You Were Out by Meg Kissinger Interesting insight into a family plagued by mental illness. Some parts were hard to read but the book was well written and brought to light the many roadblocks into the treatment of mental illness.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

Thanks to netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

I appreciate how difficult this book must have been for the author to write. I also hope it was cathartic for them! It feels difficult “rating” a memoir so I’m going mostly on writing style here rather than the story (her family’s life). It was very journalistic and I was hoping to have more of an emotional connection to her story. I did find the discussion of mental health and advocacy for treatment to be a very important part of this book! Otherwise, it was just a slow start and difficult for me to get into.

I had put off reading this one, waiting for the right mood. I was expecting an emotionally heavy and draining story. I didn’t get that here at all.

We start out with excessive detail about the author’s family, going back to her grandparents’ lives, how her parents met, etc. Then we moved on to a list of her sisters and brothers, how they related—or didn’t— to one another. We were given lots of surface information that could describe any family. I’m sorry, but it wasn’t all that interesting. I wanted to go deeper.

Then we got to a point where something awful happened to one of her siblings, and I felt… nothing. I mean, I felt bad objectively, as I would for any family in a similar situation, but that’s it. Even worse was that I couldn’t tell if the author felt anything. Of course, I know intellectually that she did, but I didn’t get any sense of emotion from her writing.

And this was the problem throughout the book. The author is a journalist, and that background followed her into this memoir. The writing is a recitation of facts, minus the emotion. I read memoirs for the emotional connection, and unfortunately that’s entirely missing here.

But this is just my opinion, and the author is certainly entitled to tell her story any way she wants. Lots of people have loved this book, and you might as well.

*I received an eARC from Celadon, via NetGalley.*

I wonder how often people mentally corroborate family trauma with a lack of love? It's true that emotional abuse is not loving. It's also true that dysfunction in family can evolve from people not showing up at their best or being their most loving. In the case of the Kissinger family, though, I think abuse, trauma, dysfunction, mental illness, and love coexist. As an outsider, I can track where some of the dysfunctional behavior is rooted in love but isn't loving. I had similar thoughts when reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I appreciate the courage and work it took to write this memoir. I enjoyed the story portion more than the analysis and summary (that's how it seemed like the book was divided--either purposefully or not). I'm glad the author could come to conclusions about herself and her family, but felt like those conclusions could happen off the page or at least more nuanced in the story. I will forgive the journalistic style because the author, of course, is a journalist, and this is her first memoir. Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC.

While You Were Out is my new favorite book and memoir. The author is from my time and her story made me think I was reading about an old friend. This book made me examine my own life and was very relatable. I promptly ordered the print version.

A powerful memoir that delves into the kind of tragedies that no family should ever endure. It tackles complex subjects without feeling overly dramatic or sensationalized. With her journalist background, Meg Kissinger presents these events in a matter-of-fact style, but it never comes across as cold or uncaring.

Despite the pain and hurt life has thrown their way, her affection for all generations of her family shines through. This love and care add a poignant layer, making this not just a story of hardship but also a testament to the enduring bonds of family.

Kissinger's narrative style strikes a delicate balance between fact and emotion. There is a depth of research that underpins the family stories. Kissinger doesn't just recount her family's experiences; she also weaves in extensive research into mental health and other aspects of society that parallel her family's journey, providing a broader perspective on their challenges.

Is it just me or is fall going super fast? These past 2 weeks have just flown by. I blinked and it’s already the middle of October…and I’ve yet to share my favorite book from September!

I am fascinated by all books regarding mental health. Some mental illness runs in my family and so much of it was hush hush 🤫🤐 as I was growing up. When I read books like this I realize more and more that our family is not alone!

While You Were Out is written by one of the eight children of a young conservative Catholic family. The mother was besieged with anxiety and having eight hyper children sure didn’t help. It was the 1960s when this family began and you’re brought up to present day in the end.

If you’re into memoirs, family dysfunction and any and all information about mental illness, then this book is for you! This book was my top book last month and I highly recommend it. Glad I was able to fit it in around throwing ghost 👻 toys for Zoe and folding endless loads of laundry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the eARC.

This book was heavy. I find it very difficult to rate memoirs, but for the purpose of a review Meg Kissinger's work centered on a family grappling with mental illness it was an easy 5 stars. Heavy, sad, but poignant.

While You Were Out is a family memoir intent on breaking the silence and shining a light on mental illness in the family setting. Written in the voice of an immersive investigative journalist whose life’s work has been in the disclosure of the true state of mental health resources in the United States, it’s paradoxically deeply vulnerable and borderline impersonal. Meg, the narrator and third child of 9 children, tells the story of a family fraught with unresolved trauma in a time where there was limited understanding and resources available for healing. She tells the story as if she’s watching the story unfold before her eyes and she’s simply disclosing what she’s witnessing.

It is possible that this means of telling the story made it easier to grapple with for those who also have chronic trauma, but it’s a dark and hard memoir nonetheless. Meg is an excellent writer and even telling bits of the stories of four generations of a family fighting back against mental illness and its stigma, it was compelling and very well done. I appreciated the efforts she went through to thoroughly research her family’s run ins with psychiatric care, the law, the documents, the interviews with people who knew of her family members. To go through the Herculean efforts to relive a hard childhood and adolescence while maintaining an impartial commitment to the telling the truth of what happens behind closed doors and dealing with the aftermath of the effects of old traumas is not one I’d wish on my worst enemy, but her story is one that needed to be told and should be told. It’s one that doesn’t end with the fourth generation moving confidently forward with no struggles, but it’s not without hope. And the hope of what’s to come is what I’m taking away from this one. So much hope comes from speaking up and speaking out - you find you aren’t alone in this world after all. Though we are far from where we need to be in this country, there is no incentive to get better without bringing awareness to a problem. That’s what this book does in its telling.

I’d like to thank Celadon Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is a very very heavy book but was well written. There were several times that I gasped and I am in awe that this all happened and feel devastated for the family as a whole. Very sad but an important look at mental illness and the power it has. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Deeply moving and thought provoking. This intimate portrait of a family suffering from mental illness and loss is a must-read.

I have to say not only did I enjoy this book, but, I was amazed at what the author was able to accomplish and do with her life with all the adversity that she grew up with. She is definitely someone to be admired. I would not hesitate to recommend this read and it was a story that will more than likely stay with me. Than you so much for the opportunity to to receive this ARC.

very heavy subject matter where i had to put it down more than a few times. happy that the author was able to write it so that others have something to relate to if they are going through the same issues.

Wow! How much tragedy is too much for one family? The Kissingers got their share and more. If anyone doubts that mental health issues are hereditary, they need look no further than this book for proof. The author tells of the mental health struggles of her parents, her multiple siblings, and to a lesser extent herself. I found it very interesting to learn about how her journalism career went on to focus on the mental health crisis in our country, and the impact she was able to have on mental health services and policy in Milwaukee. The author skillfully intertwined policy with her family story. For fans of Hidden Valley Road.