Resilient: Surviving My Mental Illness

By Liz Grace

Shortlisted as a Finalist for the 2024 Speaker's Book Award by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario

An inspiring and unforgettable memoir that provides hope to others who are experiencing depression, mania, or psychosis, RESILIENT is a deeply personal account about life with mental illness, hearing loss and resiliency. Liz's journey provides encouragement for patients, families, friends, and healthcare workers by showing that recovery is possible.

At seventeen, Liz's world collapses into a place of depression, psychosis, and a revolving hospital door. She is overcome with grief and a loss of reality. Despite this, she gets to university, only for bipolar disorder (later diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder) to return to threaten all that she has worked towards.

Written to encourage empathy in those without lived experience, Liz effectively shares her emotional rollercoaster of going deaf and losing her mind, giving the reader the gift of insight she needed then, and others need now. Experience the triumphs and tribulations of surviving the world of mental illness from the view of a healthcare professional.

Resilient: Surviving My Mental Illness is suggested for use in university courses, health education programs, and clinical workshops to promote deeper understanding of lived experience, trauma-informed care, and recovery. Through its honest portrayal of psychiatric hospitalization, disability, and resilience, the memoir offers a valuable perspective for students and professionals across mental health, healthcare, and disability studies fields.

Read and share this book with others to help fight the stigma of mental illness.

Content warning: This book contains content related to suicide, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and restraints

Liz Grace is an occupational therapist and first-time author who is in recovery from schizoaffective disorder. At age sixteen, she gradually lost her hearing and learned American Sign Language (ASL). At twenty-six she received surgery for cochlear implants.
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A Note on Voice and Style

"Resilient isn't written like a polished memoir or a formal essay. The voice you'll hear is the one I lived with-at times scattered, repetitive, unsure, or intense. That's on purpose.

I didn't want to clean it up too much or tell the story from a neat, reflective distance. I wanted readers to actually feel what it was like inside my head. Sometimes that means the writing loops around the same thought, or jumps from one idea to the next without warning. Sometimes it sounds clinical; sometimes it sounds chaotic. That's how it was.

Some people have said they weren't sure what to make of the style at first-that they expected something more "together." But this isn't a story about being put together-quite the opposite. It's a story about surviving.

If the voice ever feels too casual, too raw, or too off-track-I invite you to sit with that. That discomfort might be telling you something true about what mental illness can actually feel like, especially in the moment.

This is the story I needed to tell, and this was the way I wanted to tell it-honestly-even if it challenged dominant conventions of how illness is "supposed" to be told." - Liz Grace
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"inspiring and unforgettable... this is a remarkably honest, fearless, and selfless piece of writing, one that could help people facing a myriad of challenges, which could even be life-saving." - Self Publishing Review (4.5 stars)

"Liz Grace's unflinching account sheds much-needed light on these struggles, making Resilient an incredibly valuable read for anyone who knows someone battling mental illness." - Books That Make You

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1990533116
• ISBN13: 9781990533112
• Release Date: June 2023
• Publisher: Sisters Ignited Media and Publishing Inc.
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"