doesn't make it alright

Forrest comes off as a talented, intense woman who knows she’s lucky to have had some high-caliber help in her struggle to make sense of it all. She acknowledges that she is privileged to be able to mine her suffering for material. Writing about an abortion, she admits, “I have the luxury to find inspiration in the pain because I am a middle-class girl with a tight-knit family.”

[warning: link goes to New York Times (which now enforces a monthly limit), and it should also be pointed out that the reviewer of the above is also a memoir writer with those same privileges and with the same power to ensure that more of these books get put out there to glamorize mental problems, prioritize psychiatry or psychology that devalues actual mental health problems, and other such issues.]

I would hope that recognizing this privilege would result in a different kind of book, one that uses those benefits to explore others who don't have such luxuries as treatment or even the luxury of defining their problems as "mental health issues." Instead, this woman chooses to write about herself, and as far as I can tell, how fabulous it is to date famous people, but also how hard it is.

I prefer this review of the book because it really helps me understand how tough it must be to live with those privileges.

Dr R is furious with himself that he did not recognise the intensity of my pain immediately and could not prevent my suicide attempt, but I decide to forgive him this once. "I am like a broken doll," I said, "and I need you to put me back together again." "A broken doll I can mend," he replied, "but a broken record is beyond help[. . .]" I seek out one of his colleagues and ask her what she thinks of me. ''I know I ought to be moved by your story, but I'm left cold," she replies. "You are a high-maintenance narcissist who appears to have learned almost nothing about herself, despite eight years of therapy." I decide she wasn't quite the person I was looking for and find another who tells me I'm wounded and wonderful.