Manic: A Memoir, by Terri Cheney
(originally posted February 29, 2008)
First of all, I’m a writer. PsychJourney is populated with PhDs and brainiacs and mystics. I’m just a keyboard jockey. Like I told Ms. Cheney, it’s not that I can’t appreciate a book on the merit of its information alone, but to get a memoir that reads worthy of the category ‘contemporary literature’, well, that was a treat I could maybe appreciate even more than the rest of the smartypants. I love words – the order they go in; the modifier chosen for its music; dependent clauses drawing us into a sentence with a tease; assonance, resonance, cadence, alliterati- oh. Okay. I should stop now. Anyway, it’s that sort of book. And it’s useful. And it’s human.
Manic: A Memoir is Terri Cheney’s eloquent purge of her struggle with bi-polar disorder. While hospitalized for severe depression, Terri stewed in frustration, watching all of the patients around her not getting better, not getting help, because they couldn’t say what was straining at their temples and battering at their skulls from the inside. They couldn’t communicate what it feels like. The pressure of self-imprisonment welled in her, too. Then she remembered that being a lawyer was her occupation, but there was a writer, by vocation, in her soul.
The book’s chapters have a randomness in their order and a richness to their description that not only gives voice to those so afflicted, but draws every reader in. You get the information that will demystify manic-depression, but even more importantly, you gain understanding, through the experience of the right words. It’s the next best (worse) thing to being there. And through 
information wed to experience,we get wisdom.
That’s the power of Terri Cheney’s book, Manic: A Memoir.
It’s one of the best pieces of autobiographical work I’ve ever read and it’s not just me. Manic: A Memoir has vaulted into The New York Times Bestseller list this very week. Terri graciously spoke with me for half an hour about the book, the bi-polar effect at work in the Entertainment Industry, and her upcoming projects. To hear us, click the play button below
For more information, visit www.terricheney.com
and these recommended sites:
www.dbsalliance.org (info and support for depression and bi-polar disorder)
www.nami.org (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
www.nimh.nih.gov (National Institute of Mental Health)
