A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention
Discovering the Beauty of My ADHD Mind—A Memoir
by Rebecca Schiller
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Pub Date Apr 26 2022 | Archive Date May 10 2022
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Description
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As propulsive as Brain on Fire and as poetically candid as The Collected Schizophrenias, one woman’s quest for the truth of her neurodivergent mind
It should have been Rebecca Schiller’s dream come true: moving her young family to the English countryside to raise goats and coax their own fruit and vegetables from the land. But, as she writes: The summer of striding out toward a life of open fields and sacks of corn, I brought a confused black hole of something pernicious but not yet acknowledged along for the ride.
Rebecca’s health begins to crumble, with bewildering symptoms: frequent falls, uncontrollable rages, and mysterious lapses in memory. As she fights to be seen by a succession of specialists, her fledgling homestead—and her family—hang by increasingly tenuous threads. And when her diagnosis finally comes, it is utterly unexpected: severe ADHD.
In her scramble for answers, Rebecca’s consciousness alternately sears with pinpoint focus and spirals with connections. Childhood memories resurface with new meaning, and her daily life entwines with the history of intrepid women who tended this land before her. Her family weathers their growing pains where generations of acorns have fallen to rise again as trees, where ancient wolves and lynx once stalked the shadows.
Written in unsparing, luminous prose, this is an all-absorbing memoir of one woman’s newfound neurodivergence—and a clarion call to overturn the narrative that says minds are either normal and good or different and broken.
Advance Praise
“A beautiful memoir of a scattered mind and how it can find peace in the soil. Rebecca Schiller’s gaze is unflinching and full of truth. So many readers will find themselves in these pages.”—Katherine May, author of the New York Times‒bestselling Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Uncertain Times
“Wow! A beautiful memoir of one small plot of land and one complex human mind. A story of our interconnection and an ambitious search for the truth.”—Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun
“So honest, so raw, and so vulnerable. This much-needed story of resilience integrates history, myth, and folklore, drawing on the histories of the people who have gone before and to whom this land once belonged.”—Dr. Pragya Agarwal, author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias
“A stunner. Full of wisdom about the world we are all looking at with new eyes.” —Emma Freud
“A courageous and luminously written memoir.”—The Bookseller
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781615198801 |
| PRICE | $25.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 304 |
Featured Reviews
Rima J, Librarian
Great story. I really got her & what she was saying. Very interesting perspective on mental health. Definitely recommend.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.
Amanda W, Educator
I am still thinking about Rebecca Schiller’s A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention: A Memoir of Coming Home to My Neurodivergent Mind (The Experiment, 2022) days after completing the last chapter. Mulling it over like so many pieces of writing, or perhaps film, where one is not sure what they digested, but the pondering is part of the journey itself.
Compared to my memoir intake, my nature reading is slim, but Schiller’s sumptuous sensorial descriptors of her family’s smallholder farm enmesh the reader in the landscape of its mucky, weather-beaten, seasonal wonders. Interwoven with this ecological narrative is the history of former owners of their two-acre property, including interpretive retellings of their experiences supported by primary documentation and literary device.
Schiller’s mental health is addressed through the first two-thirds of the book via her interactions with her children and spouse, her foggy memory, her clumsiness, and her heightened anxiety and depression since moving to the smallholding. Her diagnosis, and understanding of her neurodivergence, encompass the latter third of the book and feel a tad rushed.
Part of the joy, and potential conundrum, of A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention is the sheer amount of content all wrapped in a book that contains too many gifts: first years on a small family farm, obtaining a health diagnosis, and researching and reinterpreting the history of the land around her.
Thank you to NetGalley, The Experiment, and Rebecca Schiller for the e-ARC.
breanna p, Reviewer
This was an eye opening read on the author’s mental health struggles and acceptance of her neurodivergence. It is a wonderful read and reminder that everyone is different and there is more than one way to consider things. I loved the themes, concepts, and format of this book as well and it was a memoir I couldn’t put down. Thanks for the ARC!
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