49 pages • 1-hour read
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
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Themes
Humanizing Mental Illness and Improving Care
Humanizing mental illness and improving care is the primary purpose behind Meg Kissinger’s memoir and her career as an investigative journalist. Kissinger grew up in a family where mental health and illness were not addressed, and she and her siblings were taught to hide and bear their pain privately. Her mother, Jean, was so ashamed to admit to Holmer that she was medicated and saw a psychiatrist before she married him that she even wanted to call the wedding off. Holmer, meanwhile, had undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Medication in the 1950s was new and had unrecognized side effects, so while Jean was treated for her anxiety and depression, she was in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Holmer was not being treated, and his mental illness affected the family through his unpredictability and abuse. Kissinger’s siblings went through similar ordeals, as Nancy’s mental health was not to be discussed, Mary Kay kept her depression at college a secret, and Jake did the same. Later, Danny died by suicide. These tragedies affected not only the person with the condition but also Kissinger’s entire family, which she explains when she notes, “For every person with severe mental illness, there are dozens of others whose lives are upended by their disease” (206). Through her own complex family history, Kissinger came to understand how multifaceted and human mental illness is. When she made her family’s struggles public through journalism, she discovered that the key to engendering change in societal attitudes toward mental health involved showing her readers the humanity of people with mental illness.
Once she discovered her journalistic purpose, Meg pursued a more complete understanding of mental health through meeting people with mental illness and their families. She discovered that her family was not the only one who experienced inadequate care, shaming, and tragic loss as the result of mental illness and the stigma surrounding it. She noticed how people with mental illnesses were often cast aside, forgotten, blamed, or incarcerated rather than given the support they needed. She constantly asked herself, “Why are people with serious mental illness so misunderstood, and how can we treat them better?” (194-95). She decided that the answer lay in the exposure of these failures. Because so many Americans “are being abandoned by the very institutions designed to protect them” (201), Kissinger felt an obligation to speak out and expose these injustices. She watched nearly every member of her family lose pieces of themselves because of ineffective treatment and wanted to help prevent other families from going through the same experiences. Kissinger believes that by humanizing people with mental illness and showing the effects of their treatment on their loved ones, she can effect change for this vulnerable population.
Loss and Hardship as Vessels for Purpose
Kissinger’s childhood and early adulthood were defined by loss, and this legacy began long before she was born, as both her parents came from experiences of great loss as well. The major losses that shaped Kissinger’s life and the person she became were the loss of her sister Nancy and brother Danny to suicide, both of which shook the entire family. As Kissinger grew up, she also felt the loss of her family unit, the loss of both her parents and grandmother, and the loss of the only type of life she knew. Nevertheless, she would eventually turn these losses to good purpose, though her closing reference to Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods” clarifies that this is an ongoing process: The poem expresses the pain and inevitability of losing what a person loves, suggesting that loss is a necessary part of life even if one struggles to find meaning in the experience.
Kissinger’s experience of trying to transmute suffering into meaning is complicated by the specific nature of her loss. She believes that there is a particular kind of trauma and grief associated with losing a person to suicide, as she had always wondered if there was something more that she could have done. At first, Kissinger was ashamed about her complex response to Nancy’s death, as she felt both relieved for Nancy and the family but also angry at the way that Nancy died and the lack of proper care she received. Throughout the memoir, Kissinger continues to wonder what her family would have been like if Nancy and Danny had been given the care they needed and had not died by suicide, and these reflections make it difficult to let go of the past’s pain.
Indeed, Kissinger’s breakthrough involved embracing the fact that more could likely have been done. With her decision to explore mental illness through her journalism, Kissinger gave her losses a meaningful and important purpose, both for herself and for the world she lives in. She decided that to heal from these losses, she would need to talk about them; she did this by writing stories, talking to a therapist, discussing the past with her siblings, and eventually writing her memoir. She also spent years investigating the state of the mental health system in her state, exposing injustices and poor quality of care, and connecting with others who had been through similar experiences. Kissinger illustrates, throughout the memoir, how she used the loss and hardship she and her siblings experienced to effect change in the world, all in the hopes that others would not have to go through what she did.
Kissinger also found personal meaning through this process. As she continued to effect real change, even at the state government level, she also realized a strength in herself she didn’t know she had: “If I could take on these authority figures, challenge the status quo, arm wrestle a radio announcer, and stand up to a misogynistic army officer, I could get past a ‘case of the blues’” (128). She also discovered that their collective loss and hardship gave her and her siblings another purpose: caring for and supporting each other. As adults, they rely deeply on one another and keep a close watch on each other’s mental health: “We have become our own pillars of light” (287), writes Kissinger about the strength she and her siblings give to one another. In the memoir, Kissinger also offers a piece of advice from each of her siblings, giving them a sense of journalistic purpose as well, from giving therapy the chance to work to carving out a place for peace and having the humor and patience to endure what life throws one’s way.
The Dangers of Concealing Pain
Throughout her memoir, Kissinger illustrates how the tragedies and hardships that occurred within her family were often the result of concealing pain and avoiding difficult issues rather than exposing and dealing with them. Growing up, Kissinger and her siblings were taught through their religion, as related by their grandmother, that suffering is positive and a gift and that enduring suffering increases a person’s chances of getting into heaven. They learned to hold their pain privately and endure what they felt and experienced without expressing it or seeking support. Kissinger’s parents concealed their pain with alcohol and jokes, and their children behaved accordingly as they grew up. Kissinger’s mother also took medication to quell her anxiety, but she was in and out of hospitals throughout her life, indicating a need for more than just medication. Meanwhile, Kissinger’s father expressed his pain through anger, often lashing out at his children and family, and his bipolar disorder went undiagnosed for decades, partly because he refused to discuss it or seek treatment.
Kissinger offers many specific examples of how her family members concealed their pain and the way that decision resonated throughout the rest of the family. When Kissinger’s mother disappeared for periods of time, Kissinger didn’t know why and so blamed herself, believing she did something to cause her mother to leave: Kissinger recalls going into her mother’s bedroom one night and longing for her so deeply that she cannot remember any worse suffering. Similarly, when Nancy’s depression was most severe and she attempted to die by suicide, nobody discussed her problems. Kissinger even resented her sister for taking up her parents’ attention and money. When Nancy died, the children were told to tell people outside the family it was an accident; similarly, when Grandma died, it was just another loss to be dealt with privately. In this environment, Kissinger and her siblings would often create physical ailments or injure themselves just so they could experience the emotional comfort and attention that they so desperately craved. Meg even did this as an adult: “I called my parents at 1:30 am, crying that my stomach hurt, when, really, I was worried about them. Of course, I never said that to them. I didn’t want them to worry that I was worried” (120). This anecdote illustrates the complexity that results from trying to conceal pain, as Kissinger struggled to alleviate her worries without openly saying what she needed.
In adulthood, Kissinger began writing about her siblings and realized that this openness was the key to her healing and may have prevented family tragedies if they had embraced it sooner. She realized, for instance, that “Nancy deserved to be remembered for the way she really was, not for how we wanted her to be” (157). She realized, too, that if Nancy and Danny had been given more opportunities to talk about what they were going through, they may not have died by suicide. As Kissinger and her siblings grew older, they slowly began opening up, no longer willing to hide how they felt or risk losing another sibling. In writing her memoir, Kissinger took the final steps away from concealing her pain, opening up not just to her family but to the general public as well. She understands that this openness is crucial to the effort to break through stigma, barriers of silence and shame, and dismissal of people with mental illness.
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