Embracing the Shadows: Navigating a Family's Mental Illness is an important contribution to both memoirs and literature on family mental illness. Marlene Dunham explores not one, but a family pattern of mental illness that included a bipolar father, a sister with schizophrenia who committed suicide, and a severely mentally disabled brother who spent 15 years at Willowbrook State Hospital on Staten Island.

Her survey of her childhood, family relationships, and the overlay of mental illness which affected her and other siblings not diagnosed with such ailments makes for a thought-provoking, revealing account of how families can struggle with multiple mental health challenges.

From the start, Dunham embraces a frank tone about how she and her siblings were raised and, as adults, faced their past differently. Her intention of 'doing justice' to their lives via this story does more than validate their connections and experiences. It educates readers about the impact of multiple mental illnesses under one roof, revealing many insights and facets of adaptation and survival that most singular mental health memoirs do not hold.

The family's dynamics are related not just from Marlene Dunham's perspective, but from the experiences of her surviving siblings. This lends a multifaceted perspective to the family dynamics and their perception, making the narrative especially wide-ranging and valuable.

Medical considerations of DNA, family legacy, and the promise of future technology in helping families suffering with inherited mental illness round out the personal reflections, adding value with their insights and considerations of the future.

 The story opens with an especially powerful reflection:

"Why not me? This question has plagued me for years. It’s been the unspoken punchline of many a conversation about my family history: Suspended in midair like that final silk thread from a spinneret. Hanging fragile and vulnerable. My comeback, always: “But I’m fine,” and we all would laugh. The conversation would move on, but I would always wonder why. Why not—me?"

From the irony of genetic rolls of the dice to the sadness of a broken family with siblings lost that will never know each other, Dunham pulls no punches in revealing the realities of coping with family mental illness.

Libraries and readers seeking memoirs steeped in the personal experience of not just one mental challenge, but a host of them, should place Embracing the Shadows at the top of their reading lists. Hauntingly passionate, its study in contrasts of how different family members coped offers invaluable insights.

“Embracing The Shadows” shines a light on the mental illness landscape. From the past to the present, and the impacts it has had, the research within oscillates from a medical standpoint, genealogical standpoint and that of the author’s own family.

Author Marlene Dunham didn’t set out to simply entertain with her family’s story, but to educate and inform in a way that brings to light the conversations surrounding mental illness. Coming from a family with their own diagnosed mental illnesses, I was drawn to Marlene’s story. “Embracing The Shadows” is laid out in such a way that provides background on the diseases within, as well as the history of treatments and their impacts. Additionally, Dunham provides prospective from each of her surviving siblings as they reflect on their upbringing and lasting effects of living in a family with members suffering from mental illnesses. Starting with the union of her mother and father, readers get a sense her father brought with him some baggage. At one point it is detailed that even his psychiatrist told her mother to run prior to their union. Regardless, the marriage took place and six children resulted over the years.

From prolonged hospital stays to various medical treatments and the introduction of lithium, the ups and downs of her father’s manic periods and depression took its toll on the family. As each sibling recounts their childhood, the love or lack thereof they felt, and the reverberating repercussions of living in a family with prevailing mental illness, readers are given a front row seat to the impacts it had on each of their lives. Even our author recounts her own experiences incidentally joining a cult, which she traces back to likely stemming from her upbringing.

I related to Dunham’s story, her family and their fears and experiences. Mental illness is rarely discussed in families, there is a negative stigma that can persist around it, but Dunham cracks the door open and allows for a dialogue to help embrace topics often kept in the shadows. Providing both research and her own experiences Dunham has created a read that validates, verifies, and vindicates for all living with, or loving someone with mental illness.