Alison Failure

My current project, Alison Failure: My Search for a New Story about Mental Illness, is a memoir about my search for others in my family with mental illness, and incorporates the experiences of those others in the “system.”

Alma Bergblom, my grandmother’s aunt, is among those others included in the memoir.

According to her obituary Alma first became ill in 1919. This means there are almost 90 documented years of experience with mental illness in my family.

I know my family is not alone in this, neither in having a hidden side nor in having experienced mental illness.