Author Description

To this day, Alice still thinks of her childhood home as "the crazy house." Like Alice, millions of adult Americans are living with the effects of the precarious childhoods they experienced as offspring of mentally ill parents. If you are one of them, you can no doubt relate to this book. As a child, you most likely lived in a crazy house of your own. As an adult, you've probably retained and may even relive memories of your tumultuous upbringing. Crazy Was All I Ever Knew explores the impact of maternal mental illness on children through memoir and research. Alice intersperses episodes from her life with research on the risks faced by children of mentally ill moms, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in general, and the science of resilience. In her memoir, Alice divulges secrets and embarrassments long hidden due largely to the stigma of mental illness. She shares the abuse she suffered as a child and the anxieties and self-doubt that still linger. What happened to Alice as a child and later as an adult mirrors research findings in many ways. Importantly, the developing science of resilience sends a resounding message of hope. Resilience can be built at any age. Researchers at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University have found that having a single supportive relationship with a caring adult can make all the difference in a child's life. For adults, the key to healing is learning to forgive--yourself. As Dr. Philip R. Muskin of Columbia University Medical Center says, "You have to be able to say, 'It's not my fault.'"