#REVIEW: It's Not Your Journey by Rebecca Lombardo

In her first published work, Rebecca Lombardo collects her internationally followed blog into the pages of It's Not Your Journey. Rebecca shares her struggles with bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, self-injury, and recovery from a suicide attempt. Rebecca candidly reveals her real and raw feelings on these subjects, as well as addressing other issues that have contributed to her downward spiral and eventual climb out of her own pit of despair. Issues such as the loss of her mother to lung cancer, the death of her brother, abandonment from friends and family members due to her hospitalization, and more. Purchase on Amazon

My Rating: 4 stars

My Review: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This was a tough book to get through. Not necessarily because it's a bad book, or that it is written badly, but because it opened my eyes to a world of mental disorders that I don't understand, even while I struggle with my own mental disease. Opposite my own relatively under control anxiety, depression and PTSD, the author writes brutally of her struggle living with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, self-injury, and recovered suicide attempt. This opened my eyes in a way to the struggle that people with mental disorders have just to live a "normal" life. It's that gray area between people with mental disorders, like me, who are relatively under control and lead a "normal life" with kids and family and a full time job, and those who are so disabled by their mental disorder they are completely unable to have a normal life, who have no one to take care of them and end up in long term care facilities. This book spotlights those of us whose mental disorders are so uncontrollable that a normal life is not possible.
Mental disorders are so hard to understand for someone who doesn't have them, and those of us who have them whose disorders are "under control". This book was raw, and painful, one that I wanted to both read through gently as to not make any more ripples in this pool of anguish, and one that I wanted to steamroll through because it started triggering my own anxiety. Yes, this may be a short and quick read, but it took me a good two weeks to read to get through without ending up as a useless puddle of anxiety.
To the author, thank you for being so brutally, harshly honest about the struggle of those with mental disorders go through. It may be invisible, but it affects everyone's lives around us.

 I'm 43 years old and have been happily married for nearly 15 years. I enjoy reading, writing, music, watching movies and sports. I live in Michigan with my husband and our cats. At age 19, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I have struggled with mental illness in many forms for more than 20 years. I'm a published author, bipolar blogger, and a mental health advocate. In addition, I am about to become a contributor for the Huffington Post.

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