Title: Through
the Withering Storm
Author: Leif Gregersen
Publisher: Createspace
Genre: Self-Help Memoir
Pages: 186
Author: Leif Gregersen
Publisher: Createspace
Genre: Self-Help Memoir
Pages: 186
Language:
English
ISBN-10: 1480205346
ISBN-13: 978-1480205345
About the
Book:
Mental
illness is something that is a great deal more common than many think.
Statistics show that 1 in 5 North Americans will require treatment for a major
disorder at some point in their lives. This means either you or a family member
or friend close to you are very likely to be stricken down by a failure of our
most essential and complicated organ in our bodies.
When
I was first treated for a mental health issue there was so much stigma and
misunderstanding about mental illness that I completely denied I had a problem.
Despite that mental health issues ran in my family, no one talked about them,
everyone shunned those who were different, and as a result I wasted years of my
life not understanding that there was help available and that I didn’t just
have to ‘tough things out’. My denial and pain was so bad at one point I tried
to join the military during the first Gulf War just to find a way out of life,
I thought I would either gain the discipline needed to overcome my illness or
die trying. I needed neither.
Some
find my story funny, some find it sad, but it is a story that is being played
out among more people than you may think right now, right around all of us.
Depression,
Schizophrenia, Anxiety, Addiction. It‘s something we can no longer avoid,
especially with America now deploying and redeploying troops en masse to combat
zones where even the strongest among us can succumb to the pressure of such a
situation. It is my hope that those who read this book can walk away from it
having had a look inside the mind of someone who lost his mind and one day
regained it, but not without first going through incredible pain and suffering.
This suffering doesn‘t have to happen. What has to happen is that attitudes and
knowledge have to improve.
.
Purchase your copy:
About the Author:
From a young age I
showed promise in writing and poetry, and did well in school. Even in grade
five I used to draw and write stories for my own comic books and post them on
the bulletin board in class. When I got to high school, I began to read
voraciously, and though I failed my first academic English course, I took
continually more advanced courses and got higher and higher grades in them. I
was hopeful to attend University and study English, but before I finished
school I was stricken with a severe breakdown and had to be hospitalized where
I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. From that point, family and friend
relationships broke down and I ended up sort of drifting until I signed up for
Flying School in Vancouver, BC. In the middle of this training, I took off for
the US with a friend and tried to join the US Army as a helicopter pilot. All
of these adventures are detailed in my memoir, which covers my life from the
age of 13 to 21 which was the point at which I decided I had to stay in one
place (I had returned to Edmonton near my home town and where my parents lived)
and I took treatment for my disorder and began to write seriously. I spent some
years just studying and writing poetry and then moved on to short stories, and
my book, “Through The Withering Storm” is actually partially short stories I
wrote and collected at that time. Now, since I turned 30 I have been living in
an assisted-living house for males with Psychiatric Disorders and life has gone
quite well. I landed a great job doing labour work/stage hand/security work for
the stage and screen Union, IATSE. I have seen many concerts, worked closely
with some big stars, and made enough money to continue writing and
self-publishing my books, which have already paid for themselves in sales for the
most part.
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