What Kind of Mother
A Reckoning
A mother’s memoir that reckons with her son’s descent into severe mental illness. What appears to be substance use disorder in high school later becomes a dual diagnosis as bipolar disorder emerges. Her son soon grows disillusioned with prescribed pharmaceuticals and participates in a residential treatment program that assists people in forgoing medication altogether. However, the program ultimately ejects him from the community for the very behaviors that the medication once managed. The book chronicles Sandler’s initial denial of her truth, her painful awakening to mental illness in her family, and her eventual acceptance that she cannot save her son—only he can save himself.
“What Kind of Mother is a poignant, brilliantly-written evocation of what it means to come to terms with a child’s addiction and mental illness, and in the process one’s own struggles and history overcoming secrecy and shame, and how they conspire to destroy families from within. Absolutely unforgettable—this is a story that will stay with me forever.”
—Elissa Altman, author of Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, and Motherland
“Incredibly warm and funny and tender, this is a riveting story about what happens when we have to face our worst fears—about ourselves and the children we love. With wry humor and a wildly compelling voice, What Kind of Mother dares to do the taboo: to talk about what happens when things don’t go at all according to the plan. It’s a book about taking the blinders off and a very moving love story. I could not put it down.”
—Susan Conley, author of Landslide
“Sandler’s memoir delves into the poignant realization of a mother’s limitations in shielding her family from life’s hardships, offering a raw and honest exploration of love, mental illness, and the struggle for redemption. What she believed she could not control she can and has controlled this narrative in a direction of pure heart. What Kind of Mother is a gem…this is art, this is literature with a capital L, literature built on the foundation of emotion, the very thing that allows any reader to connect to.”
—Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez: Stories and Fire Exit: A Novel
“What Kind of Mother is a heartbreakingly vulnerable and sobering portrayal of what it is like to watch your child spiral into addiction and reckon with the life-altering effects of mental illness. With searing honesty, Judy Sandler takes us into her complex journey of retracing the family history and parenting decisions that might make her culpable in the ongoing story of her son’s struggle to find equilibrium.”
—Melanie Brooks, author of A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith when HIV/AIDS Changes It All
“The narrative becomes a source of solace, forging connections among those who share in the silent struggles of nurturing and supporting adult children with mental health challenges.”
—David Goodman, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
“Where can one find meaning in addiction? The real story? The truth? In What Kind of Mother, Judy Sandler illuminates this terrible, beautiful path through a mother’s lens. She is there for each moment as her son flickers between chemical dependency, mental illness, and recovery. We hear both mother and son, not just in Judy’s words, but through documentary evidence: emails, journal entries, and telephone transcripts. Those little scraps of paper that build worlds. She doesn’t have to tell us where to look, how to feel, or what to find—before we realize it we already know.”
—Stacy R. Nigliazzo, author of My Borrowed Face and Scissored Moon
