Meg Kissinger: The Power of Writing in Breaking the Silence of Mental Health and Addiction

Content Warning: While this episode does not contain explicit details, it has a heavy focus on mental health and mentions of suicide.

When we think about our childhood, we often remember both the joys and the silent struggles that shaped us. But what happens when generations of silence around pain, mental illness and addiction surface?

This week on Journeys Through Change, my guest Meg Kissinger, Pulitzer Prize finalist, nationally acclaimed journalist, and author, shares the courageous journey of how her family’s experience with mental illness and loss ultimately led her to write her groundbreaking memoir, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence.

Meg Kissinger, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and author, will help you see and think about people with mental illness in a new light. Her best-selling memoir, “While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence,” has been praised for its incisive reporting, boundless compassion and surprising humor. It was named as an Outstanding Work of Literature winner and an editors’ choice by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, Goodreads and Independent Booksellers Association. Audible chose it as the Best of the Year.  

Meg spent more than two decades traveling across the country for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to report on our nation’s failed mental health system, winning more than a dozen national honors, including two George Polk Awards and the Robert F. Kennedy National Journalism Award. She taught investigative reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is a trainer for the school’s Dart Center on Trauma and Journalism.

In this episode, Meg and I discuss:

• How Meg’s journalist instincts helped her both explore and process the family trauma of losing two siblings to suicide, and why she ultimately decided to turn that investigation into a memoir.
• The overwhelming challenge of unearthing family secrets and gathering records while honoring everyone’s unique perspective and place in the grieving process.
• Why giving readers “permission” to talk about mental health and family pain is so vital, and the profound stories readers have shared about how Meg’s book helped them finally break their own silence.
• The importance of acknowledging both the light and dark in family history, and how compassion deepens when we see our parents and ourselves as fully human.

Meg’s story is a testament to the resilience of family, the power of truth-telling, and the healing that happens when we let go of silence and step into the light.

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CONNECT WITH MEG KISSINGER:

Website

While You Were Out Book

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LINKS MENTIONED:

The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meg Kissinger: The Power of Writing in Breaking the Silence of Mental Health and Addiction
• 9:22 What Brought Meg into Journalism in the First Place.
• 14:25 Focusing on the Reader When Writing a Memoir.
• 19:19 Uncovering Family Secrets and Truths.
• 26:31 How Meg Learned Compassion for her Mother Later in Life.
• 31:06 Stories of How Meg's Book Impacted Readers.