Blinded by Hope

One Mother's Journey Through Her Son's Bipolar Illness and Addiction

Meg McGuire

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781631521263
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

One day a teenage boy gets on his bike and rides forty miles up California’s Pacific Coast Highway to avoid causing an earthquake he fears will endanger his mother and sister. But the quake he is experiencing is not coming from beneath the earth; it’s the onset of bipolar illness.
Blinded by Hope describes what it’s like to have an unusually bright, creative child—and then to have that child suddenly be hit with an illness that defies description and cure. Over the years, McGuire attributes her son’s lost jobs, broken relationships, legal troubles, and periodic hospitalizations to the manic phase of his illness, denying the severity of his growing drug use—but ultimately, she has to face her own addiction to rescuing him, and to forge a path for herself toward acceptance, resilience, and love. A wakeup call about the epidemic of mental illness, substance abuse, and mass incarceration in our society, Blinded by Hope shines a light on the shadow of family dynamics that shame, ignorance, and stigma rarely let the public see, and asks the question: How does a mother cope when love is not enough?

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• author’s note
• Dedication
• contents
• prologue
• chapter 1: how did it come to this?
• chapter 2: warning signs
• chapter 3: the bike ride
• chapter 4: bipolar illness
• chapter 5: the twenties
• chapter 6: new year's day 1998
• chapter 7: the early thirties
• chapter 8: leaving new york
• chapter 9: the late thirties
• chapter 10: endocarditis—everything changed
• chapter 11: the pietà
• chapter 12: the second letter
• chapter 13: reducing harm isn't easy
• chapter 14: mothers don't let go
• chapter 15: a constellation of crises
• chapter 16: the seduction of hope
• chapter 17: the waiting game
• chapter 18: almost forty
• chapter 19: can we help him or not?
• chapter 20: the pietà redux
• chapter 21: reflections from san quentin
• chapter 22: dawn
• resources
• selected readings
• acknowledgments