THE SUNDAY REVIEW | MY LOVELY WIFE IN THE PSYCH WARD – MARK LUKACH

I’ve had this book sitting on my shelves pretty much since it came out. I was drawn to it because it’s about a woman suffering through some serious mental health issues, which strikes a chord with me, but also because it’s not written by her – it’s written by her husband. This is a perspective I’ve rarely (if ever) encountered, and one that I really wanted to hear. I’ve been on both sides of the equation – the person with mental health issues (though not as serious as the ones depicted here) and the one supporting someone with mental health issues. Both sides are terrifying, confusing, frustrating and painful. They have different elements, and different pressures, but are both unimaginably difficult and emotionally traumatizing.

This book was excellent, but also hard to read. The writing is easy, but the content makes it one that, particularly if it hits close to home, you may need to put down from time to time and step away from. I had to, and it has still put me into a somewhat fragile mental state. So I guess it would be fair to say it’s triggering.

There are a few things I loved about this book. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, I loved the perspective. I think it’s historically been hard to find a memoir written by a person with a mental illness, and those stories are only recently starting to become more frequently told. But I don’t think we hear much from the family members and partners of people suffering from mental illness – particularly the men. I think this is partly because of the stigma against men sharing their emotions (which, thankfully, is shifting), and partly because if you’re caring for someone with mental illness you don’t feel like it’s your story to tell. There are issues with privacy and concern about what is and isn’t okay to share, and balancing that with saying what you need to on a topic that is already hard to talk about is daunting. Reading this book, I kept coming back to how much trust Mark’s wife put in him in allowing him to share so much about a period of their lives that is his experience, but her story. It was brave of him to talk about, but even more brave of her to consent to. I think that in itself speaks to the love these two share.

I loved that it’s raw and immediate. The book talks about events that happened about ten years ago, so they’re recent and, at the time of writing, had only just occurred (and possibly were still occurring). Normally I find that memoirs suffer from immediacy. There can be a lack of perspective, a lack of objectivity or a lack of focus when the events are still too close. The writing can be repetitious or defensive, and it can be harder to step back and assess the writing itself when the events are fresh and emotionally charged. Time affords the author space to sort through and contextualize their writing. This was one of the very few times that the immediacy didn’t negatively impact the reading experience, and that’s saying a lot about Mark’s ability as a writer. It actually made it feel more real and gave it more emotional impact, and I think that was necessary to tell this story.

This is where you will want to head off and do something else if you plan to read this book and don’t want to know any of the plot – such as her diagnosis and how things go for the two after her hospitalization. I need to talk about a few elements that require mentioning some of the things that happen in the second half of the book, so SPOILER ALERT here.

—–

There were two parts of this book that deeply impacted me. The first is when the couple have somewhat returned to normal, but are left with a trainwreck in the middle of their relationship. They aren’t the same people they were before Giulia’s hospitalization, and they never will be those people again. And their relationship won’t be the same, either. There are new issues – Mark having made decisions for Giulia, having taken charge of her life in so many ways because he had to in order to keep her safe – that shift the dynamics and create issues when she is lucid and no longer suicidal. It’s so hard to come through this type of trauma and not be overcome by resentment and pain. It’s not an easy road. What I loved about this book is that Mark talks a lot about how they navigated this, how rocky it was, and that some things will never fully heal. It took a lot of conscious work and effort to re-build their relationship, and a lot of forgiveness. I think a lot of us have this idea of what a relationship should look like, and a situation like this breaks that ideal. It’s hard to picture what happens next if it isn’t an end to the relationship. How do you trust the other person again? How do you let go of the coping strategies that kept you safe during a crisis, but when the crisis is passed cripple you? How do you do all this when you know the crisis might repeat?

This book made me re-assess a lot of ideas I have about relationships and love. What it looks like to love unconditionally, what it takes to really stick with someone no matter what. It made me think about when you really do need to call it, and that that point might not be where we usually think it is. Maybe there is more effort that can be made, maybe it is possible to get through harder things than most of us have to confront in our lifetimes. Maybe sometimes it’s possible to just accept certain flaws and sore spots in a relationship and keep on going in spite of them. Of course, that breaking point is different for everyone, and for every couple. But I think this was one of the first times I saw two people fighting tooth and nail not to give up, and finding a way to hold on to one another.

The other part (and again, SPOILER) was when the two became parents, and Giulia has another psychosis. I felt for Mark through the whole experience – having to not only worry about Giulia’s care and well-being, but also balance a full-time, demanding job and a toddler who is missing his mom and doesn’t understand what is happening. I also felt for Giulia who was, through no fault of her own, forced to be physically separated from her baby and couldn’t trust herself to care for him. She had to deal with her own fear and pain at being back in the psych ward (a place that had deeply traumatized her the first time she was there) but her confusion and, I’m sure, feelings of having failed her son. It broke my heart, and broke it again. This is where I wished I could have heard Giulia’s voice. I wanted to know how she felt, because how Mark described her outward behaviour isn’t even the beginning of the story when it comes to what her experience must have been. I also loved the way her own experience of psychosis (as described by Mark, but I assume with Giulia’s agreement) shifted. At the end of the book she talks about how she no longer feels as afraid of recurring psychosis and the psych ward. She knows what it is like, she knows what is going to happen, and she knows how to deal with it and that she will come out the other side. This is absolutely huge. Her acceptance of her situation and ability to be angry and afraid but come to terms with it and deal with it as best she can is incredibly powerful. I can’t (and don’t want to) imagine what she went through, and the courage it took to face her husband and son when she was past the worst of it and see the pain her illness had caused them. It wasn’t her fault, and she was suffering even more, but it was because of her and that guilt is major. She must have wondered if her son would have been better without her, she must have felt undeserving, she must have felt like running away. But she didn’t, and my god the courage that must have taken.

Being a parent is a near-impossible task. I am struggling every day with the pain of feeling like I’m letting my kid down because of my mental health issues and physical limitations. I feel guilt and failure acutely. It actually helped to read about this family battling through together, making impossible choices and living with those choices. Every parent wants to be perfect. None are. The hardest part is forgiving yourself when you’re not, and trusting that the love only you can give your child is worth whatever mistakes you make. Allowing yourself to be human, and not to be broken by the weight of responsibility that comes with a tiny life being inextricably linked to your ability to make a thousand little and several big decisions every week. It’s so hard, and in a situation like Mark and Giulia’s, it is near impossible. Their example is one that I know I will reach for in my mind as a source of strength and hope when I feel like I’m not enough, when I’m tempted to give up, when I wonder if my family would be better off without me. Because the answer is no. They wouldn’t. Because no one will love my daughter or fight for her the way I will, and having both a devoted dad and a mom who will keep trying, no matter how many times she fails is a lesson in itself. (END SPOILER.)

—–

This book was deeply emotional. I think it would be for anyone, but if you have overlapping experiences, it will reach right into the depths of your soul and squeeze. Which isn’t a bad thing – I feel like I got so much from reading this book – but it isn’t easy. It is well worth it. It will give you a chance to consider your assumptions about mental health, love, family and partnership, and it might help to evolve some of your ideas on those topics. It might even help you deal with tough situations in your own life. It certainly has helped me. It will break your heart over and over again, but it will also leave you with a sense of hope, and more importantly, a feeling that it is possible to forgive and survive impossible odds. I’m not sure if I will ever read this book again, but I will never forget it, and I know I will recommend it far and wide. Starting here. Go read it. Please. And come back and tell me what you thought.

A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love.

Mark and Giulia’s life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended.

A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach’s is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife’s mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers’ faith in the power of love. – Goodreads

Book Title: My Lovely Wife In the Psych Ward
Author: Mark Lukach
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Harper Wave
Released: May 2, 2017
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Mental Health, Relationships, Family
Pages: 320
Date Read: May 9-12, 2019
Rating: 9/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.08/5 (8,011 ratings)