Books in my mailbox from Scottland in Slovenia

Yes, aaallll the way from Slovenia and Scotland. All because these two lovely ladies read about Firewalkers and got in touch.

I love it.

It is most delightful to see more and more people coming out of the closet with their schizophrenia, with manic depression – nowadays called bipolar disorder, or with a similar disorder such as schizoaffective disorder. In my book I write about my experience with schizoaffective disorder, which I perceive as a mixture of schizophrenia and manic depression. There are many books about mental illness written by authors first hand. My contribution to the subject is the bright approach I chose in order to make mental illness more casual and less frightening. Next to my optimistic style of writing, there are also humorous illustrations by Leon Zuodar, making the whole trouble with mental illness more bearable.

http://www.helenasmole.com/balancing-the-beast

"The Journey Home" is a collection of poetry, artwork & photography creating a new narrative embracing the theme of recovery from severe depression. 

 

	Caption : Book Cover

The all encompassing theme of my book "The Journey Home" is fittingly therefore one of HOPE without which recovery cannot take place. 

 

This work, comprising 76 poems, illustrated by all my own artwork and photography, first found its footing as a series of streams of conscious thoughts which surfaced spontaneously and were an attempt to make sense of what I had been through in terms of severe clinical depression and emerging from it.

The book opens with the all encompassing despair that is depression where we rely on others to carry that hope for us and continues via the metaphor of weather to trace the recovery process over time, unfolding the innate ability we all have to heal ourselves once the clinical symptoms have been treated.

http://www.hope4recovery.co.uk/