“It all started to unravel the night she lost her dress in Connecticut. In fact, that was the first time I felt needed. Truly needed. Mental illness is a tricky thing. It manifests itself differently depending on decades. And if the mentally ill make it through their twenties medicated improperly, alive and unscathed, it just becomes more complicated. Many end their contracts there, but those who continue life beyond that decade have a mission, just one that can’t quite be grasped at such an early stage.” —Gabriel
Ana Guida, plagued by confusion due to bipolar/schizoaffective disorder, has decided that the only way to allow her loved ones to live life to their fullest is to take herself out of the equation. With her untold story recorded in letters kept in her coveted backpack, Ana makes her escape from a Rhode Island State Hospital to the crystal blue waters of the Florida Keys to meet her romantic demise, unaware that there are other forces at work, helping or hindering her as she goes. It all depends on what is needed to unravel the knot in the tapestry.
Sprinkled with illustrations by artists and photographers Angel Soto and Professor Audrey Sedlak-Barbati, and special artistic contributions by Michelle Giles, Jean Melancon, and Sean Tiernan, Paging Dr. Freedman braids hope, love, and purpose to show the resilience of the human spirit. The scientific meets the metaphysical, and the spiritual dance with the bodily in this untamed symphony defying time and space.
A. Grieme, author and educator, lives with bipolar disorder and writes and advocates for the mentally ill, sharing that there is contentment in discontent. It exists.
