I started following Kerry Neville on Fb greater than a decade in the past when she took a solo journey to Morocco, saying it was the beginning of her reclaimed life. Since then, her social media posts have allowed us to journey together with her to Georgia, the place she’s now an affiliate professor at Georgia Faculty & State College, and on a number of journeys to Eire, the place she has been a Fulbright Scholar.

Like most social media posts, hers didn’t inform the entire story. Her new memoir, Momma Might Be Mad: A Memoir (Madhouse Publishing; 2025), chronicles her journey again to life after years spent making an attempt to die. Regardless of shedding a lot of her reminiscence to electrical shock remedy, she reconstructs her previous with candor, writing in lyrical prose utilizing an creative, nonlinear construction.

Beforehand the creator of two revealed quick story collections, Neville now tells her personal story in a shocking memoir that’s at occasions troublesome to learn, however in the end transcendent. Recognized with bipolar dysfunction, she struggled with alcoholism, anorexia, and self-harm. A number of hospitalizations and 25 rounds of electrical shock remedy didn’t assist her. Sooner or later an irresponsible psychiatrist labeled her “hopeless,” and Neville — then the mom of two kids — walked out of his workplace decided to show him mistaken.  Following her therapist’s encouragement to “do no matter it takes to have the life you need,” Neville rebuilt her life.

I spoke with Kerry as she ready to make one other journey to Eire. This interview has been edited for size.

Vicki Mayk: You start this memoir by asking, “How do you write a memoir when you possibly can’t keep in mind?” You place your self as an unreliable narrator. But I’m impressed with the boldness of your narrative voice. How did you obtain that?

Kerry Neville: One factor that occurred after my divorce was that I spent vital time alone. Over the course of my life, I hadn’t carried out that earlier than. I grew up with an intact household, so I lived with my mother and father. I went off to school and had roommates, then a boyfriend. I went to grad faculty and met my now ex-husband, and we moved in collectively virtually straight away (too quickly!) after which had kids. After divorce, I found that I didn’t need to hearken to what different folks have been telling me was essential about me or what was mistaken about me or mistaken about what I used to be remembering. I might decide what reminiscences or occasions have been those that outlined who I used to be. Tomorrow? They could shift. So we’re unreliable narrators as every day we reconstitute ourselves with new understandings, priorities, longings, and regrets.

VM: How did you start to belief your self to inform the story?

KN: I’m in a 12-step program and the tenets are honesty, open mindedness, and a willingness to get sincere with myself. Beneficial tenets for writers, particularly of artistic nonfiction. I realized to belief my understanding now not muddied by substances or bipolar’s highs and lows. After I’m uncertain about factual accuracy? That’s straightforward to verify on. Once more, honesty, open mindedness, and willingness to speak to individuals who lived with me or surrounded me in these occasions…. We’re not solely after the simple, factual reality of occasions as they occurred, as a result of that’s simply an inert timeline. All of us have gaps in our timelines. So I verify in with my intestine, mind, coronary heart, and trusted long-term mates — mutual  memorykeepers—and alter or increase what I’m studying about self-in-time-in-the-world as I’m writing… Over time within the rewriting and revising, I gained readability: a extra incisive and maybe generous-to-all emotional reality.

VM: Whereas we’re speaking about emotional reality, I used to be actually impressed with the best way you handled your relationship along with your ex-husband. It might have been pure to be offended about some issues that occurred when your marriage ended, however I discovered your therapy of him so balanced. How did you handle to realize that?

KN: A reduction and a present to listen to you say that! I gave the manuscript to individuals who knew each of us throughout these occasions, and I mentioned, ‘Please learn it and flag something that looks like I’m not extending empathetic understanding towards him of what it should have been like residing with me.’ What if the tables had been turned and I had a associate who was actively making an attempt to die for thus a few years? I don’t know if I might have had the fortitude to remain. For no matter occurred in the long run, for a few years, he did attempt to preserve me alive, and our household collectively. My children learn the e-book earlier than publication and gave me the inexperienced gentle as a result of they noticed that I wasn’t making an attempt to justify myself or assign blame. Writing artistic nonfiction requires circumnavigating the prism: we attempt to see as many sides, angles, reflections and refractions as potential.

VM: You selected a construction that accommodates gaps in reminiscence. It’s episodic and nonlinear. I particularly love the system you used: push pins to mark dates and moments. How did you give you that concept?

KN: When you might see my board behind my pc—pushpins with notes on prime of notes on prime of notes. A collage whose solely order is the one which I’ve given it…at the moment. Images, printouts, lists, pictures – all movable. Pull one out and pin it someplace else, rearrange for suggestion, affiliation, and which means. As I discussed earlier: Daily we rearrange the significance of previous occasions and reminiscences in several ascending or descending order of significance. It’s how reminiscence works. One thing was there, and perhaps we are able to’t totally entry it, however we get a flash of that one thing. I additionally saved fascinated with the precise pinning and its connection to self-harm (in my story). Pins pierce and go away their marks.

VM: On this memoir you’ve created an intimacy between your self and the reader, partly due to your honesty in telling your story, but additionally in the best way you communicate to the reader. I really like this line: “I’m reaching by way of the web page for you, nearer, nearer nonetheless, imagining you beside me now.’ You deal with us as “pricey reader” all through. In theater, they name that breaking the fourth wall, instantly addressing the viewers. Why did you select that form of direct deal with?

KN: There’s this assumption that once we’re studying a memoir, that in some way it’s not efficiency, that it’s in some way not premeditated, not filtered like the development that we carry to writing fiction or writing a poem. But it surely’s a efficiency, proper? I inform my college students, whenever you write, you are attempting to intentionally steer your reader into figuring out issues and feeling issues. We wish to have a sure impact. So it’s a curious area for these of us who write artistic nonfiction and memoir, that we current ourselves as accessible, as intimately linked to our readers, no dissembling, akin to automated writing of the nineteenth century (which after all, was a parlor trick!). It might be disingenuous to say we’re not being deliberate in our authorial directives through language and presentation of scene and thought. Pushpins within the reader. That’s why I break that fourth wall on this e-book and let the reader know up entrance, due to what’s occurred to my reminiscence from electrical shock, that this can be a building. It might’t be something however that.

VM: My favourite place the place you deal with the reader instantly is within the pivotal scene when your terrible psychiatrist — who you title “Dr. Disregard” —  tells you that you’re hopeless. You write “Pricey Reader, bookmark! Right here now’s the turning level.” You bought good and pissed off sufficient to make a change in your life. It’s onerous to imagine a physician would say that.

KN: It’s actually what occurred. And I did get good and pissed off… I advised mates who’re medical doctors and therapists about that second, and so they mentioned, horrified, “That’s so unethical. How might a physician treating you say that?” Many sufferers within the psychological well being care system really feel powerless and are prepared to imagine how different folks, authorities, in that system outline them. I’m very conscious of inequity within the psychological well being care system. That physician tried to outline me as “hopeless” however what did he know, actually, in regards to the me that didn’t “current” in his therapy notes?

VM: You write very eloquently and insightfully about these experiences.

KN: I wrote about my first hospitalization, proper after my son was born, and I landed within the hospital. One workers psychiatrist mentioned to me, ‘Why are you right here? You’re younger, you’re fairly, you have got a PhD, you’re profitable. Why are you right here?’ They tried to get me out of there. They advised me, ‘you don’t belong right here with these folks.’ However at that second? I didn’t belong anyplace else however there. I wanted assist. And by “these folks,” he meant fellow sufferers who weren’t white/educated/employed. And I do know that as a result of I’m white/educated/employed, I used to be given grace, leeway, and particular issues within the psychological well being care system due to this.

VM: In your e-book, you’re not simply telling your story: you inform it by bringing in all types of different materials. You’re sharing the etymology of phrases. You’re bringing in items of historical past. You quote Thomas Merton. Whenever you write about messaging your kids whenever you’re separated from them, you reference the historical past of wi-fi communication. My favourite was the story that you simply return to many times about Captain Scott’s disastrous Antarctic Expedition. What’s the worth of bringing in these references?

KN: I’m a really curious particular person. I really like studying about…every thing! What I’m taken with outdoors of myself additionally tells me who I’m. However the bigger concept for the e-book? I used to be making an attempt to reconstruct, within the infinitude of a millisecond, all that I’m and all that introduced me to the second of scripting this understanding, this model. What would that appear like? Hopefully this e-book. This e-book tries to emulate that infinitude of a millisecond (clearly can’t be learn in a millisecond). A flash of understanding — what makes us who we’re proper now — reminiscences, sure, however books we’ve learn, prayers we are saying, ephemera collected on the thoughts’s dusty bookshelves.

VM: Your prose additionally displays your inside life. The language is gorgeous all through. However whenever you transfer out of the darkish occasions in your life, the writing turns into much more lyrical. The character imagery is such a marked a part of your prose within the second half of your e-book if you find yourself recovering.

KN: Sure, Persephone emerges from the darkish underground into spring, lusty and hungry. That’s what occurred to me. When the annihilating darkish lifted, I immediately and urgently felt 3-D/HiDef linked to the world. I discover particulars and I listen, as a result of I’m making an attempt to recollect, to retailer issues up as a result of I’ve forgotten a lot. When reminiscences are stripped away, as by electrical shock, and then you definately survive that decimation and are available again to life? I mentioned to myself, “Okay, I’m developing from underground. Bare. Now, what do I wish to put again on? What am I going to encompass myself with? The place will I focus my love and a focus and keenness?” For me? Loam, sky, birds, timber, horses — what’s alive with me.

VM: Your memoir ends with you in a great place, with a reclaimed life. However you remind us that you simply’re nonetheless coping with the truth that you have got a bipolar mind that tends to go to the darkness. You remind us that it’s nonetheless a part of your life.

KN: Sure, this isn’t a “restoration memoir,” however a “recovering” (gerund) memoir. Restoration is just not carried out. It’s by no means going to be carried out. The 12-step program tenet: ‘at some point at a time,’ proper? You possibly can’t assure ahead self-in-time. None of us can assure something, actually. I believe on this sub-genre of memoir, it will be false to simply say it’s solely ascending gentle, there are shadows and I’ve realized to dwell with these.