Live Events this Fall

Tomatoes and eggplants and basil oh my

Hello readers!

After a few blissful months off, I did my first live appearance this weekend (and my 30th since the book launched). Thanks to the Spencertown Academy Arts Center Festival of Books for having me, and thanks to those who joined for our long and impassioned discussion. It was invigorating to once again be chatting with people whose lives are impacted by the shortcomings of our mental healthcare system.

After, a woman spoke with me about her friend's son, tears falling down her face continuously. A couple discussed their son — psychotic, in prison, they said. I had read from the part where Bob becomes a Mormon and is baptized over and over. This appearance felt like I'd been dunked right back into the waters of being this book's author. A bit of a shock but also a thrill.

I'll be doing several more live appearances this fall. If you're in or near any of the following places, I hope you'll come out (and / or tell people who may be interested):

George Mason Fall for the Book Festival - Fairfax, VA (10/12)

University of Iowa The Examined Life Conference - Iowa City, IA (10/25)

Texas Book Festival - Austin, TX (10/26-8)

Miami Book Fair - Miami, FL (week of 11/12)

More TBA. The paperback will publish 1/15/2019. I can't wait to show you all the cover; it's awesome.

I'll have glow-in-the-dark AKOMP guitar picks for anyone who comes to see me live (or you can send your mailing address to mirraculas at gmail dot com and my assistant Alex will mail you one). Visit my Events page for more details and dates as I figure them out.

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I've spent the last few weeks listening to a whole lot of Aretha Franklin, and reading and listening to tributes. Perhaps my favorite tribute was Wesley Morris' on Still Processing.

I've found myself thinking a lot about how Aretha was, in the truest sense, a diva. I've thought a lot about Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night, the best literary account of a diva I've read.

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I've lately been reading Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility. It's a book all white people should read — but especially the sorts of white people who don't think they're racist. I'm looking forward to giving this book to many white people I know. I also enjoyed this episode of Call Your Girlfriend, where Ann Friedman interviewed DiAngelo and the activist, artist and writer Rachel Cargle. "I was not raised to see the humanity of people of color," DiAngelo says during the interview, "I don't think white people are raised to see that."

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Finally watched the Mr. Rogers documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor. Cried a bunch. Highly recommend it. I'll probably never stop thinking about the moment he breaks open the dark soul of a senator and gets PBS $20 million of public funding. #goals

Take care,

Sandy

Resources page

Hello readers!

Since AKOMP published, I've received a steady trickle of messages from readers seeking my help. Sometimes someone I know is seeking my help for a loved one in crisis. I've been slowly figuring out how to respond to such messages.

For a while I've thought about building a Resources page. Today I've finally published one on my site. I'll keep it updated I'm sure. But I'm recommending some organizations, some podcasts, some videos, and some books that I think may be helpful to people who've read AKOMP and want to learn more. Feel free to write me if you think I should include something I haven't.

And you're welcome to write me, regardless. I appreciate your patience.

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I'm happy to report that since the summer began I've largely been in my garden. We've grown many greens and herbs and some radishes:

Three homegrown radishes on a red table

and some eggplants:

Two purple eggplant and some basil on a red table

and one tomato (as of today).

I've also baked lots of sourdough bread that's getting really good. My signature on the top is a Vonnegut butthole *, so I call my bread "butt bread."

A loaf of butt bread

I'm going to be announcing some fall tour dates soon. Hope to see some of you live!

Love,

Sandy

p.s. I finally read The Body Keeps the Score recently, hence it's on my Resources page multiple times. Wow what a book.

Why I Run

Illustration by Karl-Joel Larsson

During the two years that I worked with my book editors, one of the things we were constantly trying to figure out was how much of me to put into AKOMP. After all, the book isn't about me, it's about my Uncle Bob. Many interviewers have asked me questions about whether the book is also about me, or they have opined so. One said it right away: the book is about you as much as it is about Bob. I made a pretty big face when he said this. I am always a bit bothered when people refer to the book as a memoir. (Because, folks, I promise, someday I might write a memoir and it won't be 90% about my Uncle Bob.)

AKOMP, I feel, is a prism, and you can see all these people reflected inside it, and I'm one of them. And while I am literally a character in the book, I'd guess I'm the sixth or so most important one. I don't get as much airtime as many others. I often withheld my own perspectives on relevant matters, in part because of the overall need for concision. As I've described before, there's a lot on the cutting room floor here. Often my editors would identify that parts of the book that were too much me focused or me opinion weren't as necessary-seeming as everything else. Sometimes I wondered, though, whether I didn't have some obligation to talk about my own perspectives. That I must disclose, for example, my years of therapy, my own relationship with psychiatric language, my traumas, my voices, the worst nights and stretches of my life and the things that have helped me keep going.

What I've realized since AKOMP published is I get to continue this conversation. That it is only a beginning.

Since, I've begun to write broadly on the topic of how I've gone about taking care of my own head. Especially in the years since I began reading Bob's story, especially since reading that story has caused me to learn all kinds of things about all and everything we say when we say "mental health."

I published this essay on BuzzFeed a few months back about what I guess we could call "self care" and baking pie. This week I've published another piece in this vein, about the role that running has played in my life: "I Run to Silence My Demons".

I am not a good runner. I can’t go very long. I stop when I’m tired. I don’t stretch before or after; I’m sure that’s bad. My form is probably wrong. People have told me how to run the right way before, but I haven’t remembered.

I don’t calculate my distance. I’m guessing I do two or three miles, about 30 minutes. This is one of the many reasons I prefer running outside to running on treadmills: I don’t want to see stats on a display. I’m someone whose head monologues all the time about how I’m terrible. A good strategy, I’ve found, is depriving myself of information like numbers. It’s been a long time since I owned a scale.

Read the entire thing here. My friend Amanda Shapiro edited it and I'm grateful to her shepherding it. (Sheep pun absolutely intended. This essay contains one of my favorite sheep stories.)