Through the Unknowable: Family Life with Depression, Alcohol,and Love

by Elsa Campion M.D.

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Author: Elsa Campion M.D.

Publisher: Vantage Press

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 0533164974
ISBN 13: 978-0533164974

From a psychiatrist specialized in helping patients who struggle with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, comes the tremendous and heartbreaking memoir of a doctor who must reexamine the meaning of these same psychological diseases when they strike her own daughter. Now, rather than helping her patients learns the tools of coping and survival, Elsa must look inward and discover this kind of strength and courage within herself. As this brave author fights to employ all of her expertise, motherly love, and endless empathy, she is still left with facing the hardest questions a parent can ask. What do I say to reach my daughter? How do I help her? Can I help her?

Through the Unknowable is an intimate and fiercely honest look inside a family falling apart and a mother who never stops trying to pick up the pieces. This book is a must-read for anyone who knows how it feels to wander through the unknowable.

Review

I can't imagine any parent who could turn away from the power of this memoir. With fierce honesty, Dr. Elsa Campion explores the complicated ways that we love our children, the inherent flaws and foibles in expressing and acting out that love, and the most painful, most heart-wrenching turn that we all come to in one way or another, and that is letting go."

-Debra Gwartney author of Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir

I read Elsa Campion's elegiac memoir about her daughter's suicide with my breath half-held. Campion recalls Luce's journey into depression, addiction, and suicide with a mother's unswerving gaze and unflinching honesty. As she tries to understand what might have been done differently by everyone, including herself, she both mourns and celebrates the strong, magnetic young woman her daughter was. At the end I wept for us all.

-Cai Emmons, author of His Mother's Son

In this brave memoir, Elsa Campion portrays herself and her family members with dignity and without indulgence. There are no villains, no heroes. The story proceeds with the awful inevitability of Greek tradedy, its only mystery the most ancient of all. How is it that good human beings can mean well, act in good faith, and yet come to almost unbearable grief?

-John Daniel, author of The Far Corner

From the Author

I woke one morning with the conviction that I must write everything I remembered of the years of my daughter’s adolescence, when depression wreaked havoc with her life. The fact that I had fully recovered from a suicide attempt in my youth, and that I made a living helping others do so, increased my empathy. This, however, didn’t allow me to take away her suffering.

Putting pen to paper brought back events and feelings I dreaded, yet I was compelled to continue and examine every aspect of our family life during those years. Writing this book has given me peace, and I greet most new days with curiosity and a smile.

-Elsa Campion, M.D.

About the Author

Elsa Campion, M.D., born into a farming family in France, studied and practiced medicine, then statistics in medical research. After marrying an American and moving to the United States, she obtained a degree in psychiatry for adults and children. She worked first in a hospital, then in private practice, until retirement.

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Mental Illness

Through the Unknowable: Family Life with Depression, Alcohol,and Love