Health

Making Friends with Guilt: A Path to Healing

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment
Book cover of 'The Power of Guilt' by Chris Moore, PhD, featuring the subtitle 'Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal' and a quote from Dr. Samra Zafar.

I’m a firm believer that every emotion humans have, even the ones that feel difficult, is the result of evolution—like every other aspect of human biology and psychology, emotions are adaptive. They have survived because they’ve helped us survive. So, unpleasant feelings like guilt, remorse, sadness, jealousy, and grief have purposes that have helped keep the human species going. 

That’s an important aspect of The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal (HarperCollins, 2025) by Chris Moore, PhD (class of 2024). I’m what Moore would likely refer to as guilt-prone; anytime things aren’t going well in a relationship, I tend to blame myself and feel guilty until I find something about it that I can apologize for. 

I always know when guilt is making my brain chatter worse because I’ll start to ruminate—whatever it is I’m feeling guilty about, I will go over it ad infinitum. That’s how I know that what’s bothering me is guilt. Once I figure out what I’m feeling guilty about, I’m able to do whatever is necessary to a) make amends and seek forgiveness, b) forgive myself, or c) realize I don’t have any real reason to feel guilty and there’s nothing to forgive myself for.

The Power of Guilt is a thorough examination of the role guilt plays in child development, adult relationships, parent-child relationships both during the growing years and with adult children, and how guilt can go awry and cause various mental health issues, as well as broader social guilt—guilt in religion, guilt in criminal behaviour, and the collective guilt some of us feel for social wrongs such as racism and the climate crisis.  

But it’s his final chapter, Making Friends with Guilt, that I want to quote from:

“No one wants to feel guilt because it is so unpleasant. It is part fear and anxiety, part sadness, and part anger. On their own, each of these emotions us unpleasant; together, they’re awful. But there’s a good reason we feel negative emotions: they move us to act to protect ourselves and to protect others. Think about pain. No one likes to be in pain, but pain is important and helpful—it signals to us when there might be tissue damage. If we didn’t feel pain, we would suffer many more bruises, cuts, burns, and all forms of bodily damage. Pain motivates us to protect our bodies form injury and repair harm that has occurred. In the case of guilt, its purpose is to signal that we may have put our relationships at risk, and we should do something to protect and heal them. …

“We all need a network of relationships to lead happy and fulfilled lives. At the core of this network are those communal relationships that are most meaningful to us—in most cases, our natal family, the family we may acquire through romantic relationships, and a circle of close friends. Beyond that core, relationships characterize the human condition, from individuals to nations. Some of these relationships are given to us, some we choose, but all can be at risk of damage when we act, as we almost inevitably will at some point, in ways that are selfish and uncaring. 

“Guilt is the best signal we have that we need to work on our relationships. When we feel it, we should pay attention and use it as a guide. Sometimes, this means owning up to a transgression and apologizing. There’s no better way to restore a relationship than to make an authentic apology—sorry really shouldn’t be the hardest word! Even if we didn’t do anything wrong or hurtful, guilt can mean that we just haven’t put in the effort to nurture the relationship. Sometimes, dealing with guilt just means showing the other some TLC….

“If there is one lesson that I would want this book to convey, it is that guilt needs to shed its image problem. Yes, guilt is horrible, but like the best medicines of old, it is good for you. It helps us to identify when our relationships may be at risk, and it guides us to work on them and to restore them. Caring for our relationships, from the intimate to the global, is the most important task we face in life. So, let’s welcome guilt into our lives and make friends with it. Our relationships, and indeed our society, will be stronger for it.”

Grief and Mental Health: Finding Strength in Loss

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Close-up of a tattoo depicting a girl's profile surrounded by flowers, with the title 'One Strong Girl: Surviving the unimaginable, A mother's memoir' by S. Lesley Buxton.

Grief is not defined in the DSM V as a mental health issue, but I’m including it in my thematic series on mental health for two reasons: First, during several episodes of profound grief in my life, I was never quite in my right mind; and second, surviving grief calls on deep mental health reserves, without which one is at risk of diving into the bottomless pit of mental illness. 

Lesley Buxton has been visited by more grief than most—enough to know that to survive and continue finding joy in life, she must have deep reserves of mental wellness. Buxton’s book, One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, tells the story of watching her only child die, over the course of years, of a rare neurological illness. Yet even amid her grief, she finds joy. 

One Strong Girl is a deeply personal and moving memoir of living with loss. It’s no wonder this heartbreaking yet inspiring book won the inaugural Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction. 

Book cover for 'A Cure for Heartache' by Mary Jane Grant featuring an open window with a view of a cityscape, a notebook and pencil, a cup of tea, and cookies on a table.

Mary Jane Grant is another person who has survived more episodes of grief than most. But when her husband suddenly left her after decades of marriage, something inside her demanded more attention. So, she went off to Europe and, in a tea shop one day, when taking in the fragrances of various blends, she started on the path that led to her book, A Cure for Heartache. 

This slim volume recounts how she worked through her grief by teaching herself to experience “life’s simple pleasures, one moment at a time.” After my marriage ended, given that I was the one who ended it, I was surprised at the depths of my grief. A big part of my path out of it was learning the practice of mindfulness through, among other things, a course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which teaches a secular approach to meditation whose effectiveness in mental and physical health is supported by decades of properly executive research. 

While Grant doesn’t write about attending any mindfulness programs or even use the word “mindfulness,” that is indeed what she describes. It is amazing to me that she learned to do this almost instinctively. That is mental health, and during Mental HEALTH Awareness Month, we need to be as mindful of using mental health to prevent mental illness as we are of specific mental illnesses like those discussed in last week’s post. 

Book cover of 'Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition' by Laura Pratt, featuring a wilted rose with smoke rising from it, and a red 'Canadian' label.

Laura Pratt’s Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition is another study in surviving the loss of a partner. After a passionate, six-year affair ends suddenly and without explanation, the author crawls through the rocky emotional terrain of her grief. What differentiates Heartbroken from many other books about grieving is the way the author has, in lyric prose, braided together the story of the love affair and her profound grief after it ends with psychological research and artistic depictions of love and loss. 

This is one of the most poetic grief memoirs I’ve ever read. It amazes me that Pratt didn’t win a bucket or two of awards for it. 

Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care, by Susan MacLeod, is less about the grief of losing a mother than of trudging day by day through the process of watching a mother die, slowly, while trying to find a safe and loving place for her to spend her final days. I remember this part of my mother’s life so well—her decline, searching for a nursing home, pushing emotions away until a more appropriate time. 

Book cover for 'Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care' by Susan MacLeod, featuring illustrations and quotes from notable figures.

After she died, it was as if each of those losses caught up with us one at a time; every time we thought we were finally adjusting to the permanence of her absence, another tidal wave of grief would wash over us. It was as if we were finally grieving each smaller loss in sequence over the year or two after her death. This is what I found myself reflecting on as I read MacLeod’s moving memoir, depicted in drawings that blended whimsical thoughts and self-deprecation with the pain of loss.

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel, is another story of losing a mother, about as different from the previous one as it could possibly be. The back cover reads: “For Maryanna Gabriel, the unexpected death of her artistic mother would change everything in her life. More than just overcoming this loss, she felt that she needed answer, not from other, but from within herself …. At times meditative yet punctuated with humour, the story takes place in a compelling European tableau where legends of saints and miracles abide.”

Book covers for 'One Strong Girl,' A Cure for Heartache,' 'Heartbroken,' 'Dying for Attention,' and 'Walking the Camino.'

Walking the Camino is not the first book I’ve read about this pilgrimage taken by thousands of people from across the globe every year. More than a decade ago, I edited a manuscript about an author’s years of long-distance hiking with his wife, part of which was completing the Camino walk in three stages over three consecutive years. I was compelled to want to do the same; I still haven’t done that, but Gabriel’s book is a welcome reminder that there are many ways to integrate life’s losses and move forward.

I’d also recommend: 

Still, I Cannot Save You: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Love, and Letting Go by Kelly S. Thompson. 

Many of us have sibling relationships that waver between love and tolerance (or worse) over the years. Most of us don’t have to face the tragic loss of a sibling far too young. Thompson’s memoir is a moving study in mental illness (her sister’s addiction) and mental wellness (integrating the loss of the same sister to cancer into her life). 

Mental Health Memoirs for Mental Health Awareness Month

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so my posts this month highlight the many ways we all experience and manage mental illness. While the World Health Organization tells us that one in four people have a diagnosable mental illness, I believe, as my mother did, that we all, at some point in our lives, go through periods of poor mental health, and must work hard to find our way back to mental stability. 

Book cover of 'Run Hide Repeat' by Pauline Dakin, featuring a blue backdrop with white text, depicting a suburban scene with a gas station.

I also believe that writing, for many of us, is about managing our mental health. It is for me, and I know I’m not alone. So when I went to my shelf to start pulling the books that dealt with mental health, I had a hard time stopping. Because so many of the books that have come out of this program have dealt with mental health in one way or another. 

For most of this month, I’m going to focus each post on specific ways of looking at mental health. Today, I’ll focus on diagnosable mental illnesses, but in future posts, I’ll look at the relationship between grief and mental illness, whether racism is a form of mental illness and, to finish the month, a review Chris Moore’s new book, The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal.

In an interview after publishing Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, author Pauline Dakin confessed that on pitch day she had two books in mind. While the rest of the class of 2015 was unequivocal about which one she should write, she waffled back and forth for two years. 

Dakin’s memoir tells of an unusual childhood with a stepfather who had a delusional illness that led him to believe he was being chased by the Mafia. He was so successful at convincing her mother of this that the family moved several times, without warning or explanation, to evade the danger this “threat” caused. 

Book cover of 'Scream Therapy' by Jason Schreurs featuring a close-up of a microphone on a white background

It’s hard to imagine the impact this must have had on a growing child, but in that interview, she talks about her relief at sharing the secrecy of her childhood. “The act of telling the secret, of being loud about the secret, undid some of the damage of the secret.… Eventually I came to feel that not holding secrets lets you let go. It’s the secrets that are so toxic.”

Jason Schreurs, author of Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health, lives with bipolar disorder, a chronic mental health condition characterized by intense mood swings from extreme highs to severe lows. It’s commonly managed with medication, but like all psychiatric drugs, these have adverse effects that can severely impact one’s daily life. 

Schreurs and tens of millions of others worldwide have taken a different approach. Growing up in a small town, he knew he was different and struggled to fit in. “In the punk scene,” he writes, “I found my chosen family.” A genre that might sound to others like tuneless noise is music to the ears for punk fans. 

Punk rock grew out of a desire for people like Schreurs to find a place where they fit. The raw-throated screaming that others shun is therapy for people of all ages, an outlet for intense feelings, a reaction to being cast as “weirdos,” a decision to embrace, in themselves and others, the gifts that go along with having a neurodivergent brain.

I’d also recommend:

The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, by Gwen Lamont. While not directly about diagnosed mental health issues, it’s hard to imagine that parents could be so emotionally unstable in their parenting without having mental health issues. 

Edit: On re-reading this last bit, I’d like to apologize to author Gwen Lamont. What I wrote in haste was a brusque and ill-considered way to express my thoughts. Lamont has noted that she didn’t see her parents as abusive or neglectful; “It was just my family.” Yet one of the back cover blurbs suggests her story is the Canadian version of Jeanette Walls’s The Glass Castle. And a blurb on that publisher’s website describes it as “truly astonishing—a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.” I haven’t read Walls’s memoir, but I would compare Lamont’s story with Tara Westover’s Educated, which I would describe in a similar way: The love was clear; it was the parents’ unique ways of expressing their love that left me wondering if they were influenced by some sort of undiagnosed mental health issues.

Next week: grief and mental health. 

Graphic Memoir Insights on Aging, Long-Term Care, and Dying

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

I remember all too well my mother’s dying process. My father predeceased her by almost 20 years. Five years after he died, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She went 15 years later, outlasting her doctor’s predictions by five years. 

Cover of 'Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care' by Susan MacLeod, featuring an illustration of a person in a wheelchair and various humorous sketches around the edges.

By the mid-1980s it had become apparent that she’d no longer be able to live on her own. It was her choice to move into long-term care; she didn’t want to be a burden and nothing my sister or I said could change her mind. And, it would have been difficult. I had two young children with chronic illnesses; my sister was working full-time and working on her bachelor’s degree. So, at our mother’s insistence, we began investigating nursing homes. 

We were going on tours of different facilities for four to six months before she found the one she’d move into. It was a newer facility in a lovely part of Vancouver, and the residents had private rooms. The staff were kind and competent and obviously cared about her. If she ever felt unhappy with the choice she’d made, she didn’t share it with us. 

As I read Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care (Conundrum Press, 2021) by Susan MacLeod (class of 2021) in a single sitting, I was reminded that not every older person receives the loving care our mother did. Not all families are attentive or involved, as we were, and not all facilities take particularly good care of their residents. 

A cartoon illustration depicting a frustrated individual with glasses, expressing anger and confusion about their situation. The text includes phrases like 'Sometimes, when I was alone, I felt like losing it!' and comments on nursing home care labelled as 'enhanced.' There are also smaller figures representing laundry care, highlighting a humorous frustration.
A cartoonish drawing depicting a person pushing a wheelbarrow near a cliff with swirling patterns in the air, accompanied by the text '...the personal and systemic whirlpools of weirdness were just beginning.'
Cartoon illustration discussing healthcare system issues, featuring a distressed hospital worker and an elderly patient. Text highlights problems with hospital bed availability and the term 'bed blockers' for elderly patients who cannot return home.

Perhaps because it’s written as a graphic memoir, MacLeod is able to draw an unapologetically stark picture of the problems not only with long-term care but with the ageism that seems endemic to our culture. (Chapter 1 is called “I’ve Always Disliked Old People” and Chapter 2 is “I’ve Always Disliked Death.) She’s also unflinchingly honest about the flaws in her family of origin, including her own merciless bullying of her younger brother when they were children and her realization that just because she’s ready to be forgiven doesn’t mean he’s ready to forgive her.

Yet Mac Leod periodically lightens the tone of what could be an unrelentingly depressing topic with self-deprecating humour. For example, about once per chapter, we see a motif of a banner framing a cartoon tile that says, “Susan Seeks an Expert” or “Solution Susan Strikes.” My personal favourite: SYSTEMS THAT MAKE HUMANS INHUMANE. This comes up several times in the book and reminds me very much of the problems my sister and I have had with the care home our older brother is now living in. 

With such a visual medium, it’s impossible to insert an excerpt of text and make it make sense, so instead I’ve included some of MacLeod’s full-page drawings to give a sense of her story and her skills as an artist/author. 

Dying for Attention is such an easy read yet at the same time such honest and compelling reading that I think it should be available to anyone who’s considering a nursing home for an older loved one. At the very least, it should be required reading in programs for care aides. 

Reviews of other books on family and loss:

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable — A Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton

Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, by Pauline Dakin

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel

Still, I Cannot Save You: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Love, and Letting Go, by Kelly S. Thompson

Essential Feminist Reads for International Women’s Month

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

March 8 was International Women’s Day, and the month of March is International Women’s Month. With a nod to both, with this post I acknowledge several books from the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program that further the cause of justice and equality for women. 

Cover of the book 'Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America' by Sheima Benembarek, featuring ripe figs and a 'Staff Pick' label.

It’s hard to pick just a few books. The program is dominated by women, all of whom I’d describe as feminist, and many of their stories are about women’s lives, whether their own or others. But if I’m going to stick strictly to books with a decidedly feminist theme, I’d choose these five:

Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America by Sheima Benembarek. This book was eye-opening for me. It honestly never occurred to me that a blue-haired, niqab-wearing, orthodox Muslim woman might be polyamorous. It doesn’t surprise me that a child from a Muslim family might be just as likely as a child from any other family to be transgender. But I have to admit some surprise—the good kind—in reading about a same-sex couple, both comedians, one a Palestinian-born Muslim the other a Jew from Montreal who perform individually and as a pair who starred in a Crave comedy special called Marriage of Convenience. The title of the book, Halal Sex, comes from a term for sex practiced within a heterosexual Muslim marriage. But Benembarek put a decidedly feminist twist on it by redefining it as “all consensual sex between adults.” 

Book cover featuring the title 'Every Boy I Ever Kissed' by Nellwyn Lampert, with a graphic design showing a woman in a red dress and hands embracing her.

Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir by Nellwyn Lampert. I started calling myself a feminist at the age of 13. I was in way too much of a hurry to lose my virginity, which I did at 14. I had no idea of the connection between the two. But there is a connection, a pretty important one. And that connection is a major part of what Lampert wrestles with in this coming-of-age memoir. As the cover blurb says, “for Nellwyn Lampert, losing her virginity would turn out to be anything but simple. Her chosen partners struggled with porn-induced erectile dysfunction and other crises of masculinity. And in the bedroom, nothing went according to plan.” So, in that regard, our experiences were entirely different. But in terms of “the realities of sexual liberation, female empowerment, and masculinity,” the issues are not that different at all than the ones I was too young to realize I was doing with more than 50 years ago that sexual freedom and gender freedom are two very different concepts. 

Cover of the book 'Highway of Tears' by Jessica McDiarmid, featuring an illustrated mask and a striking orange background. The subtitle highlights themes of racism and justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid. It’s a grim fact that Indigenous women make up only about 4% of the female population in Canada but accounted for 16% of all female homicides between 1980 and 2012. And a disturbing number of those women are abducted, raped, and murdered along a strip of highway in northern BC called the Highway of Tears. From the back cover: “Journalist Jessica McDiarmid investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate where Indigenous women and girls are over-policed, yet under-protected.” As difficult as this book was to read, it was just as difficult to put down. I can’t imagine a better lens through which to examine the intersection of racism and misogyny than through the horrific impacts of colonization by patriarchal white, European culture on Indigenous women and girls. 

Book cover of 'F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism' by Lauren McKeon featuring bold black text and a pink graffiti-style accent.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism by Lauren McKeon. It’s always surprised me that when I say I’ve been calling myself a feminist since I was 13 but I haven’t always felt that feminism welcomed me, what many people seem to hear is that I don’t think feminism is necessary or relevant. In fact, I’m saying exactly the opposite—that feminism remains as relevant today as ever and that’s why it’s so important to ensure that ALL sorts of women feel a sense of belonging within the movement. That was my read on McKeon’s book. She recognizes that too many women have moved in the wrong direction instead of understanding that feminism is for every woman—that, indeed, until we are all free, none of us are free. Why has this happened? That, as McKeon points out, is a question for feminists to answer. And as women’s rights are being eroded daily, it’s becoming increasingly urgent that we answer it and ensure that all women feel that the arms of feminism welcome them. 

Book cover for 'Conspiracy of Hope' by Renée Pellerin, featuring stylized illustrations of a woman's chest with highlighted areas, and subtitle 'The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening'.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening by Renée Pellerin. No woman in the western world isn’t familiar with the unique joy (she said sarcastically) of having her breasts pulled and twisted and squished between cold metal plates for their regular mammogram. In this book, Pellerin, an award-winning producer with the CBC, does a deep dive into the evidence supporting and opposing regular mammography screening. And her conclusion is that the evidence weighs strongly in favour of less screening. It’s supported by vested interests, false positives can lead to invasive overtreatment, false negatives can give women a false sense of security, its effectiveness differs significantly for different age groups, and regular exposure to radiation can, in a small number of cases, increase risk of cancer. It’s an eye-opening book that every woman should read and consider carefully before assuming that doctor’s orders should never be questioned. 

Happy International Women’s Month and enjoy the reading!

Finding Joy in Simple Pleasures: A Path to Healing

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

On May 29, 2016, I tried to end my life. It wasn’t the first time I’d tried, but it was the closest I came to succeeding. My reasons are not the point here. The point is that, during my long, slow climb back to mental health, I learned that I needed to stop living my life in the past and the future. If I was going to stay alive, I needed to live my life one moment at a time. 

Cover of the book 'A Cure for Heartache' by Mary Jane Grant, featuring an open window view of a cityscape with greenery, an open notebook and a cup of tea on a table, accompanied by cookies.

That is the key message of Mary Jane Grant’s (class of 2016) A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time (hard cover, Hodder, 2019, sold in paperback as Happier Here and Now: The Restorative Power of Life’s Simple Pleasures). Struggling with grief after a sudden divorce, Grant moved to England where she slowly learned to live her life moment by moment, soaking in the joys of each minute, and learning that life can’t be lived in the past or the future. It can only be lived here and now. 

The therapist I found to help me through that period of my life is trained in a well-researched and fully secular practice of meditation called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). One of the techniques she taught me for pulling myself out of depression and anxiety, though not meditation, is a simple practice, of going through the five senses, one at a time, and noticing five things I see, five things I feel, five things I hear, taste, and smell. It’s meant to break the cycle of rumination over past experiences one finds depressing and anxiety over future experiences.

It’s meant to bring the person back to the physical world around them in each moment. 

This is what I thought about as I read Grant’s book, as she explained her process of minding her senses, learning to wander, learning to let go, loving what you do, and learning to appreciate and to connect. Here’s how Grant describes her experience of getting reacquainted with her five senses:

I entered the reading room. Morning light streamed through tall windows. The walls were filled from floor to ceiling with books, and a dozen or more freestanding shelves took up the remaining space. To the left of the entrance door were counters with computer stations. Above, a bulletin board was covered in notices, local advertisements and sign-up sheets for local classes and lectures. A couple of round wooden tables filled the rest of the space. People sat here and there, reading books and newspapers. I went to an empty table, quietly unpacked my things, sat down and closed my eyes.   

Book cover of 'Happier Here & Now' by Mary Jane Grant, featuring a hand holding a colorful bouquet of flowers, with the title and subtitle prominently displayed.

I could hear the occasional rustling of a newspaper and the soft hum of the heating system. 

I took a deep breath through my nose. I detected a faint floral hint from the hand lotion I’d applied before leaving my room. Lately, I’d switched my allegiance from lavender to rose. Maybe it was the influence of England. After all, what was more English than a rose? 

I settled into place, connected my laptop, opened the internet and started my search. My first question was simple: why, when I immersed myself in the present, did I feel so much better? By pulling my attention to the five senses, I gave myself no choice but to focus on what was happening in the moment. I was not stuck in the past or worried about the future. Yesterday, I had learned first-hand that the senses held the key that opened the gate to my present experience. They admitted me to the garden of earthly delights—sights, sounds, smells, tastes and physical feelings—right here, right now. By being in the body, I could calm the mind and soothe the spirit. It felt neither self-indulgent nor hedonistic. It felt beautifully, blissfully ordinary. 

When I was recovering after my suicide attempt, I read Full Catastrophe Living, a 650-page volume by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a world-renowned mindfulness researcher and originator/teacher of MBSR. I took the MBSR course twice, and underwent a one-year program called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. 

If I ever encounter someone going through a rough time, I might tell them, instead, to buy Grant’s 200-page A Cure for Heartache and read it slowly, mindfully, savouring each syllable, and then maybe go back and read it again. Because everything I learned in that difficult time is what I learned all over again from this meaningful little book. 

For more on heartbreak and healing, read:

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, by S. Leslie Buxton

Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is, by Maryanna Gabriel

Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, by Laura Pratt

For more lyric essays, read:

Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and other dilemmas, by Gloria Blizzard

I Don’t Do Disability and other lies I’ve told myself, by Adelle Purdham

The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More, by Karen Stiller

No Such Thing: A Memoir of ‘Mild’ TBI and How You Can Help

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Almost every week for more than a year, I’ve been using this space to review and champion books by graduates of the prestigious Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction at University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Book cover of 'No Such Thing' by Lynne Melcombe, featuring a blue background and white text.
To read excerpts, click on the image.

I’ve been mostly absent for a couple of months, first because I was on a much-needed vacation, and since then because I’ve been devoting my time to a book project of my own.

I undertook the MFA program so I could learn to write, not just any book, but this book.

This book recounts my experience of and research related to a “mild” TBI (concussion) that I had over 20 years ago and from which I’ve never fully recovered.

My experience taught me that there is “no such thing” as a “mild” traumatic brain injury. That’s why I’ve called my book No Such Thing: A True Story of “mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery.

Most people recover from concussions in a few days—weeks at most.

But up to 30% of people don’t. Some go on having symptoms for months, even years. 

I’ve never fully recovered from my injury. I felt a need to write a book about it for a few reasons.

  • Brain injury is very isolating. The injury itself—pain, brain fog, memory loss—can make it hard to communicate. 
  • Many people—doctors, lawyers, co-workers, friends, family—don’t believe you. That makes the pain and isolation worse. 
  • The stigma against people who pursue legal measures based on ongoing misperceptions about brain injury add stress and emotional trauma that complicate a person’s ability to recover.
  • There wasn’t much to support people going through this experience twenty years ago. Anyone going through it now deserves better.

At the time of my injury, I often felt like I was going crazy.

Doctors kept telling me I should be better. Lawyers put my life under a microscope. Family, friends, and coworkers acted—and sometimes said—I was just looking for attention and I needed to get over it.

But as years went by and social media exploded, I began hearing other people’s stories of not-so-mild traumatic brain injury. I began keeping abreast of current research that supported what they were going through.

Gradually, I stopped questioning my own perceptions.

When I wrote my book, I was writing the book I needed at the time. 

I wrote it for the people who need it now, for those who love them, and for those who want to better understand this underestimated injury.

I finished my book a couple of years ago and, full of hope, I started looking for a publisher.

Every one of them responded the same way: timely topic, great story, well written, but I lacked enough of an audience to justify their investment in publishing it.

One of the things I learned in the MFA program was the necessity of building an audience while writing my book.

But while I was writing, I was coping with a divorce, navigating health issues, and rebuilding a freelance writing and editing business.

I was also managing the symptoms of my injury every day.

I lacked the ability to do it all.

At first, when I realized that no “real” publishers wanted my book, I felt like I’d failed.  

But I also realized that if I gave up and left my book sitting in a virtual drawer, that would feel like failure too.

So, I turned to Iguana Books.

Iguana Books is a hybrid publisher.

A hybrid publisher retains the quality controls conventional publishers rely on but with a requirement that authors cover production costs, as they would in self-publishing. 

Iguana takes hybrid publishing a step further by asking their authors to crowdfund production costs. This ensures costs are covered and allows authors to test the market and build an audience for their book.

Iguana recommended Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform designed specifically for creators.

As I started building my Kickstarter campaign, an interesting thing happened.

I stopped feeling like I’d failed.

I realized that no matter how I publish my book, it will succeed based on same things as any other book—my research, my writing, and my promotional efforts.

That realization has renewed my confidence in my abilities, injected my efforts with energy, and restored my faith in the book I’ve written.

That’s where you come in.

I need your support to raise the $9,000 required to fund the production process—copy editing, layout, distribution. And I’m asking you to pledge whatever you can to help me get there. 

Please go to my Kickstarter campaign page and learn more about why I feel my book is timely, important, and necessary.

Then consider backing my project with a pledge in any amount you can manage.

What’s in it for you?

If you pledge $10 or more, you’ll receive a reward tailored to the size of your contribution—an e-book, a signed paperback with No Such Thing bookmarks, or a book club special for buying in bulk.

If you pledge less than $10—even only $1—I’ll give you a shout-out on social media and add your name to the acknowledgements in my book. 

If I don’t reach my $9,000 goal by March 15, my campaign will end and Kickstarter won’t collect any pledges. 

You have nothing to lose. 

What should you do next?

Well, you can click away to another page, if you want.

Or you can go to my campaign page, read more about my book, and consider making a pledge.

If you think my project is worth backing, click the button for a reminder when my campaign goes live on February 16. Then, if you still feel so inclined, pledge whatever you feel is right. 

If you change your mind before my campaign ends, you can change or withdraw your pledge. No questions, no obligations.

All I ask is that you think about it.

With gratitude,
Lynne

The Truth Behind Breast Cancer Screening: A Review

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I’ve never met a woman who doesn’t hate having her biennial mammogram. And why would any woman not hate it? It feels like the technician is trying to pull your breast right out of your chest and squash it as flat as a pancake between two very cold metal slabs. 

Regardless, every two years, I receive a reminder letter that I’m due for my mammogram and I dutifully make my next appointment and get it done. It’s become such a regular part of women’s health care regimes once they’re past 40 that almost no one questions it. 

Enter Reneé Pellerin (class of 2016), who questions it deeply in Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth about Breast Cancer Screening (Goose Lane Editions, 2018). Pellerin points out that, at best, research doesn’t clearly support screening programs, and at worst, it suggests they may cause harm. 

In a cover blurb written by Dr. Brain Goldman, host of CBC’s White Coat, Black Art, the veteran ER physician writes, “Pellerin knows the science better than many of the doctors in whose hands women have placed their trust.” On that note, I’ll let Pellerin speak for herself. The following passages are taken from the beginning and the end of the introduction:

Based on the knowledge of the day and her own decade of experience, [Maureen] Roberts [the clinical director of the Edinburgh Breast Screening Project] expressed serious misgivings about the nationwide breast screening program launched in the United Kingdom the year before she died. She acknowledged … research that showed mammography screening reduced deaths from breast cancer by 30 percent. But she urged her readers to also consider other research that did not find benefit….

Then she asked, “If screening does little or no good could it possibly be doing any harm? We are all reluctant to face this…. There is also an air of evangelism, few people questioning what is actually being done,” she wrote. “Are we brainwashing ourselves into thinking that we are making a dramatic impact on a serious disease before we brainwash the public?” …

Toward the end of the introduction, Pellerin concludes:

The story of mammography screening is a story about science and medicine. It’s a story about hundreds of thousands of women who were participants in screening studies around the world. It’s a story about honest differences and sincere efforts to do good. It is also a story about vested interests, money, and greed….mammography is a multi-billion dollar industry that provides employment to radiologists, creates markets for the latest in imaging equipment built by multinational companies, and perpetuates the bureaucracy and infrastructure of government-run screening programs. Pink ribbon charities that benefit financially from our fear of breast cancer take advantage of paternalistic messaging around early detection. The desire to believe in early detection is intuitive and compelling with the result that women and their doctors become complicit in the conspiracy, if unwittingly.

It’s not unusual for scientists to disagree, and controversy in medicine is not surprising…. But nothing in medicine has ever generated as much controversy or conflict as mammography screening. The mammogram story is about much more than argument. Sadly, it is often about backstabbing, bullying, and deliberate suppression of information. These are the by-products of fear and hope.

If you’re a woman, or if you’ve ever loved a woman—partner, mother, daughter, sister—read this book. You may still go for your regular mammograms—I do—but with just a little more doubt in my mind than I ever used to have. And that’s not a bad thing. 

Other books for women: 

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton.

Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America, by Sheima Benembarek.

Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir, by Nellwyn Lampert.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, by Lauren McKeon.

How Punk Music Saves Lives

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

I live with depression and anxiety. I do All The Things to reduce the extent to which they affect my daily life but, regardless, they are my companions. So, I know, on a personal level, what it is to look for a community where I feel accepted and understood as I am.

Cover of the book 'Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health' by Jason Schreurs, featuring a microphone with a tangled cord and the book's title prominently displayed.

Jason Schreurs (class of 2022) wrote Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey Through Mental Health (Flex Your Head Press, 2023) to reach out to his community. Schreurs lives with bipolar disorder. Depression and anxiety are not fun, but the roller coaster ride of bipolar disorder? As my mother used to say, “Thank the lord for small mercies.”

Scream Therapy is what Schreurs promises to be: a message to people who, at some point in their lives stumbled into punk music, often by way of skateboarding, and found their community. Punk concerts are always screaming loud, the mosh pits are nothing I could ever trust, and sometimes the live performances are improv’d by musicians who assembled just that evening, for that evening only.

I’m the first to admit I don’t like hard core music. The heaviest metal bands I’ve ever enjoyed are the likes of Steppenwolf, Rush, and the Doors—easy listening compared with punk. But the thesis of Scream Therapy is not that everyone should like punk. The thesis is that an inordinate number of punk rockers feel strongly, as Schreurs does, that punk music saved their lives. Without the community they found in punk—a community that gave them a sense of belonging for the first time … well, ever—they would have ended their own lives. 

Consider this passage about a man named Brian, now a middle-aged husband and dad with a day job that wouldn’t suggest anything about him as a person, much less how deeply he relies on punk music and the punk community for his mental health:

For Brian, leaving his parents’ house for a more stable environment allowed him to focus on turning his pain into positivity. Brian poured all he had into screaming in bands and organizing shows. At age 16, he booked a West Coast tour for Ashes, his first serious band. At 17, he went to Europe with Battery, the straight edge hardcore band his name became synonymous with for the next eight years. Between tours, Brian moved to Boston when he was 18 and set up one of the most popular recording studios of the ‘90s and ‘00s….

But depression creeped back into his life after opening the studio. He buried his internal turmoil and poured everything into the music, surrounding himself with a support network of bands like Gainesville, Florida’s Hot Water Music—unwavering rays of positivity with members that would do anything for him. It was the most amazing time of his life, but he kept his struggles hidden, stifling his inner doubt and emotional pain. “I was one of the most sought-after record producers for bands all over the world, and I felt like a failure.” Brian digs deep for the right words to make sense of that time. “The thing about depression is it’s not fucking reasonable. It doesn’t make sense.” 

(Boy, do I understand that sentiment.)

Years later, Brian’s nervous system refused to hold back his depression any longer.… “I remember my wife saying to me, ‘You need to be doing music. You need to be writing.’ I had to force myself to think about my issues and acknowledge them and not let them grow and become corrosive.” One evening, Brian picked up a guitar in his basement. Less than 10 minutes later, he had the first song he’d written in 20 years. I picture his song as a battering ram, bashing the pain trapped inside. “I can’t express to you the weight that came off my shoulders.” Brian sighs and tells me singing and songwriting for his new melodic hardcore band Be Well is his daily therapy….

“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt such gratitude as I feel toward punk and hardcore,” he says. “It gave me a family and an avenue to find myself at multiple times in my life when I needed a community to hear me, and see me, and appreciate not only my strengths but my weaknesses.” Brian chokes up and pretends to clear his throat. I do the same. His words could be mine. 

Not every type of music, or any art form, is for everyone. (I look at Jackson Pollock’s paintings and think What?) But there is a body of research on the importance of community to mental health, some of which Schreurs cites in Scream Therapy. It doesn’t matter what bring people together around as long as the community they create provides its members with a feeling of belonging, a feeling they have people to turn to as much to celebrate their victories as to seek support and reassurance when life sucks. 

I don’t imagine I’ll ever care for punk music. But if Schreurs and his peers find in the punk community what they need to get through life, more power to them. And more power to Jason Schreurs for reaching out to whomever he can reach through his book as well as his podcast, also called Scream Therapy, and letting them know there are people out there that they, too, can turn to for support, laughter, joy, reassurance—or maybe just to have a really satisfying scream. 

October 10 is World Mental Health Day. Here are some other books by MFA grads relating to mental health and the role of community in maintaining it: 

About mental health and its impact on one family:

Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, by Pauline Dakin.

About the importance of building community around almost anything:

The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest, by Helena Moncrieff.

Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, by Jen Powell.

The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students, by Jennifer Robin Wilson.

About the power of community, as well as the challenges it can present:

The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More, by Karen Stiller.