The Long Shadow

Mental illness does not only shape the person who lives with it. It can shape the kids who grow up around it, the stories they keep silent, and the versions of themselves they build as survival.

We sit down with Suzanne Sherman, a writing coach, editor, and author whose new book, "Living in the Long Shadow: Surviving a Legacy of Mental Illness", traces what it was like to grow up with a mother experiencing sudden onset schizophrenia, recurring psychosis, and crushing depression. Suzanne shares the contrast between the early years filled with music, nature, and creativity and the later years marked by instability and lack of boundaries. 

Suzanne goes deep on memoir craft and the writing process, including why she had to “sneak up” on her own story, how she drafted 86,000 words in five weeks, and why revision is where meaning and structure finally click. If you care about mental health stories, suicide loss, schizophrenia in the family, or healing through writing, this conversation offers both heart and practical insight, with an emphasis on compassion and refusing to reduce a whole person to a diagnosis.

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Info on Suzanne Sherman:   https://suzannesherman.com/

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Music by Deli Rowe: "Space to Move"
Logo by Kaylin Talley

Transcript

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The Legacy Mental Illness Leaves

Speaker 1 0:00

Today, we're talking about the legacy of mental illness, not just what it means for the person living with it, but what it can leave behind for the people who love them. My guest is Suzanne Sherman. She's a writing coach, an editor, a publishing consultant, and an author. Her latest book, Living Within the Long Shadow, Surviving a Legacy of Mental Illness. Suzanne has taken something deeply personal and brought it into the light. Her story asks us to look at the family patterns we inherit, the silence we learn, the identities we build around survival, and the courage it takes to finally choose something different. Because being shaped by your past doesn't mean you have to be defined by it. And sometimes reclaiming your voice means finally telling your story. Let's welcome to the intervention. I am your host, Lyanette Talley, and you are listening to Virago 24-7. Virago is Latin for female warriors, and 24-7 is for all day every day. Virago 24-7 is a quick podcast that brings diverse women together to talk about life and art experiences in the world. Here you will find everyday groups, everyday feelings, and everyday warriors. All right, so today we have Suzanne Sherman on. Suzanne, you wear many hats. You're a writing coach. I I was looking on your website and you specifically like helping with memoirs. You are an editor, a publishing consultant, and an author. And you have written a book. Your latest book is called Living in the Long Shadow, Surviving a Legacy of Mental Illness.

Speaker 2:09

So welcome. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 2:12

I'm gonna buy the book because I was reading the description of what it's about. And I love stories where there's like complex relationships and not just the complexity of it, it's like how as humans do we learn from these relationships? How do we grow and how do we heal from them? So I'm I'm looking forward to like having you describe from your point of view what the book is about. And then also I'm definitely gonna buy it when it comes out this at the end of this month. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:41

Yes, two weeks practically. It's the 29th of September, is the release right now. The book is available for pre-order. It is distributed by Simon and Schuster, so it's available in a lot of locations and online locations as well. But on my website, you can find the pre-orders available.

Speaker 1 3:01

Okay, perfect. So when we get off, I'm gonna go pre-order it.

Finding A Life In Publishing

Speaker 1 3:05

So I always like to find out like what got people on the path that they're on. And so since you're in the whole like the publishing world and the writing world, what got you down that path? What was your inspiration or the passion behind all of that?

Speaker 3:20

The path of publishing world or which just or just like your career.

Speaker 1 3:24

Like I always I'm always fascinated. Like, how did people pick their careers? Was it something that they chose and they sought after, or it just fell in their laps? I'm always curious as to what brought you to where you are today.

Speaker 3:36

Sure. Well, um, I would say it's definitely a combination of those. I mean, certainly it was choice, but it also was serendipity and how things lined up, how it went. I think that as far as going into publishing, it is that I would say my first step into that. Well, when I graduated in college, let me go back. In college, I majored in creative writing. So I had been writing for most of my life. You know, prior to that, I really started writing very young. And so it was natural for me to go in that direction. When I graduated from that major, I had no idea what to do. Like, like most, you know, 20-year-olds or 21, whatever. What do I do? And I've got this degree in English lit writing. So I looked for a job in publishing. And I went that route. And at the time I lived in San Francisco, there was a big publishing company. I went and took a job there. And it was very not satisfying. It was very unsatisfying, it was not what I wanted to be doing. And so one thing led to another. And ultimately, I ended up getting a job at a magazine and getting a job as a copy editor at a magazine and commuting to that job. And that was the beginning of my work in publishing. It still was being an editor and not a writer, but I was the editor of every column and section that was in that magazine. It was, of course, magazine. So it was a national magazine, and it was, it was uh, you know, it was a lot for me. At 23, I had my own office. It was very exciting, and it was also intimidating at the same time. You could be excited and intimidated at the same time, but I managed. And uh that was where my career in publishing started.

How Memoir Teaching Found Her

Speaker 5:37

Things went on from there, and I will not relate my entire journey, but I will quickly jump up to how I got into memoir because that has become my area of focus. And it was in the mid-90s when I left San Francisco and moved to Sonoma County, North Bower, north of there. I wanted to live in a different location. I wanted to live more country, not as much urban. And I was prepared to volunteer at the college here and offer myself, since I'd been an editor by then for a few years, I thought I'll just offer to be to work for the life stories writing program. And because that interested me, I kept a journal since I was 10 years old, you know. And so it was a natural fizz. Like I couldn't, I want to do this. So it turned out before I was able to tell the man who answered the phone that day, who was the director of the program, that I wanted to volunteer, he told me he was looking for a teacher. Would I be interested? And I never told him that I was ready to volunteer. And instead, I accepted the job. And I became adjunct faculty at the college for the next probably 17 years teaching memoir. And I had four classes a week with over 20 people in each of them. So a lot of people, a lot of stories, a lot of new, wonderful. It really was a great wake up. It was a wonderful, it really woke up my life as a, you know, in in written words, you know, to be able to work with other people. After being an editor and just being in that sort of solitary world of editing, it was more than refreshing. It was just so exciting to me. And that lasted for it, it still exists today. I teach memoir. I just do it independently. I have an online Zoom class on Mondays.

unknown 7:46

Okay.

Speaker 7:47

Which, by the way, is advertised on my website, which is my name, suzannerman.com. So I still do it. I still love it all these years.

Speaker 1 7:56

Nice. Yeah. I was on your website and I did see that those services. I was like, that's I think that's really cool, especially if uh I bet it's overwhelming when you decide you want to tell your story. And so we have people like you that can help us and guide us along. When did you find out, since you've been teaching memoir, when did you want or decide that you were going to write about your life?

Sneaking Up On Her Own Memoir

Speaker 8:16

When when was about in my late 50s? And I am that was I was 57, and I I joke that it took me 40 years and five weeks to write my memoir, because my mother died by suicide when I was 18 after suffering with a serious mental illness for 15 years. And she after that, I I sort of knew. I mean, it's hard to say, I sort of knew, but I I did know that this was a story that I wanted to write. And I also knew I had no idea where to begin or what I wanted to say, and I thoroughly was not ready. And I was not ready until the day I sat down to write. And it just happened to be that day when I was in my when I was 57. I just happened, something happened with uh I didn't plan to write the memoir. And the funny thing is, I helped, I've helped, I helped so many people write their books, right? And I always, always working with people on preparation and the you know, the structure of the book and all these things. But when it came to my own, I had to sneak up on it. I had to sneak up on it. I had to not plan it. I that is just my relationship to that story and how comfortable or not I felt about it, and yet I felt compelled. I felt compelled to write it, like it just had to happen. And and I I did. I literally wrote it in five weeks, beginning to end, 86,000 words. And I wrote the first draft. That's not to say it was finished. That draft was finished, and I turned around and started working on read redrafts, rewrites, and the rewrites were about what do I want to include, what do I not want to include, what's going to serve my story here. And I had already kept those things in mind when I was writing hard and fast during those five weeks, but it was still different to make those sit down with it to make the decisions. And I do always teach that it's important to just sort of open the gates and and run when you're starting. And then you have to come back, and that's when you bring in the the the critical mind, the the editorial mind, and say, does this fit in the book? Is this necessary to serve the story? So I did that, and that went on for the next few years of revisions, and I changed the structure of the story. I felt that that first draft, it had to that first draft had to be written the way it was. I had to write it in the completely chronological way, which of course ended then with my mother's life ending, and which was about my experience too of that. What I decided to do when I, a few drafts later, was switch it up and not let it be that linear narrative, but instead to have a linear narrative run through my life up until that age of 18 when she died, but also to have a secondary narrative that appears at the end of each chapter, and it's it's short, and it's the two weeks following my mother's death. So that is the story of that experience, and it's it's you know, it's a big experience, obviously, a mother's um death. And and so I I didn't want it to be a predictable situation, like we know that's gonna happen. And I also wanted it to sort of trade back and forth and show that let that story of what's coming when I'm 18 in a way in inform they inform those stories inform each other what's going on, my process. So anyway, you have to read the book to find out the details.

Speaker 1 12:35

Of course. And and so that goes into my

Childhood Before And After Illness

Speaker 1 12:37

next question. Without giving like so much away, what like what moments in the book capture how you grew up? Because it's about your mom and her mental illness. What was growing up like without giving, again, too much away?

Speaker 12:52

Yeah, that's a tough one to answer in a short way, but I'll do my very best. It's about my mom, it's about me, actually, really, because it's a memoir. So it's it's about me in that situation, growing up in a family with serious mental illness, with um my sister also had a mental illness, has she's still living. And so all of that, you know, so the chaos of that. My mother thankfully did not have a chaotic energy about her. That was not her at all. So, but my sister did um kind of light a lot of fires, you know, of chaos in the house. So that was difficult, especially with a mother who, you know, didn't have a solid grip on reality and happiness. I I describe in the book, you know, as I describe in the book, the first there was a segment of my life, the beginning of my life, which is the first four and a half years, where the was the time before my mother's illness hit. And it really was it's called sudden onset schizophrenia. She had no, she had no indication it was coming. And she was 30 years old, and I was four and a half. She had three kids. I was the middle child. We were two years apart, the the three kids. So, you know, thankfully, I have memory from that time. And I for this book, I was able to really sit down with it and and retrieve and retrieve the memories and create the environment and the story around it and what that was all like. My mother was a um a singer and musician, and she was a beautiful classical pianist and a train and a performing and trained singer, and she also was um creative in other ways as well. So it was um she was able to share with her kids, me included, prior to her becoming sick with that illness, she was able to share a lot of her joy and pleasure and interest in all of these things, musical things, nature. She taught us about, you know, a lot of so that I describe that about, you know, I mean nature. We lived in Los Angeles, but there was nature in our backyard. So with bird nests and the eaves on the trellis and stuff like that. So she was able to share, and those that those early years of my life with her really did stay inside me, or they already were inside me. You know, I think we're born within what I call an essence self, and so I think my essence self was very much part of that, all of that at that time. And what happened after that was a reshaping, you know, it sort of got redirected, things changed. The 1960s were were coming. I was born at the end of 59, so uh my mother had this episodic schizophrenia, which means she had psychosis for about a year and a half, and then it seemed to have gone away. And in that time that it went away, which we didn't know it really hadn't, but it seemed to have gone away. She uh and she actually told me she decided that she couldn't live with my father anymore because he hadn't believed her. He hadn't believed she was hearing voices, he hadn't believed she was having the delusions she was having. And she really kept it very much to herself, away from us in her bedroom. We didn't see her a lot during that time. So, but there are a few scenes that I share in the book where you know I did see a few of the times when she, you know, clearly was suffering with that. But my father didn't believe her. So she ended the marriage ended. So then my mother was a single mother, and that was a lot of my when you ask how you know, how was the childhood? Well, it's different having the mother be, you know, she was, you know, running the show of the family, right? But not in the way that many mothers might be. She made sure there was dinner on the table every night. She really still did have depression. The 60s were on, and my mother was involved in civil rights, and she was an activist, and she became, you know, she took me to candlelight peace marches and things like that as a kid. And so she was she was involved in life, and it wasn't, and I was part of her, I was kind of her tag-along. I thought I loved her, and so I was interested in it all. And uh, she answered any question I asked. So yeah, but then but then it came again, the illness came again. So I would say that you know, it happened again a few years later to her with the voices, etc. And she kept it so quiet, I never could have guessed. But she decided that so one day she simply did a lethal overdose of pills, and I was 10 years old, and yeah, so it was it came as a surprise. And I feel that my and she didn't die because I found her. We had a date that day for her to take me to go buy a um a fringe leather purse in Hollywood, you know. So you know, I was so excited, and because of that date we had scheduled, I went into her bedroom to try to wake her up. That's why she lived for the next few years. So, you know, it was a different life for me after that. I feel that things really changed, partly because of my age and I was pre-adolescent, uh, you know, and then I became a teenager and things went on. When in brief, when I was 14 years old, I reached a point where I decided this is not an environment that I can survive. I cannot live here anymore. And I knew and I I knew I had to go. And I had a therapist at that time, briefly, really for just a little over a year, and I told him I didn't think I was going to survive at home. And he took it seriously, which is good, because I may not have. I really don't know. I had a strong drive inside to survive, to want to live a good life, and I knew I couldn't be living it there. And I moved out with his help and my mother's agreement, and I moved into a couple of different situations looking for something that somewhere I could be. And it wasn't officially foster care, it was not going down that path, but it was going down a path. And ultimately my father asked me to come and stay with him, and stay with him uh turned into ultimately an invitation to live with him, and so I did end up living with him and a stepfamily for the next few years, which was

Music Reading And Resilience

Speaker 20:30

high school.

Speaker 1 20:30

Yeah, that was you mentioned survival. How how did you get from that survival uh phase of life into healing and making your own life outside of what you grew up in? If that makes sense. We talk a lot about healing and growing from our childhood on the podcast, so yeah.

Speaker 20:52

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I really do. You know, I've really given it some thought because it definitely is is something that you know, I I mentioned essence self, and I think I was born with a spark in me. So I think some of it liter really literally was already present just in me naturally, and also my mother's personality and her love for me and us, all of us kids, even my difficult sister, was sh and her, the strength of her. So she was, even though she was struggling with what she was struggling with, she really, you know, kept it close. She played the cards close to her chest or whatever they would say. You know, so I didn't have but it was a depressing uh childhood to grow up in. So to say, how did I come out of that? How was I resilient? Well, I think what happened was uh that what she showed me in my earlier years through um music. The music, music is part of what saved me. And sure, as a teenager, I disappeared into it for years and all of that. But music and reading, I would say that stories, books, imagination took me somewhere else, took me away. I read a lot. And I played imagination games, I called them with a best friend. And you know, we'd make up things, and we just had great times. And so as a kid, and so I would say those, that's part of what I could say. I can carry those threads into the later years, more recent, later years of my life. My love of nature, my love of reading, my love of music are all still here. And I sing and I play the piano and guitar, and I study piano. Actually, I'm still taking lessons, but I'm still learning.

Speaker 1 22:57

Yeah. I've always wanted to learn piano, but I guess it's never too late. I always think, oh, it's too late. I should have started when I was younger, but so you're still learning.

Speaker 23:06

I would I would say this should have started when I was younger, probably sure. But you know what? I I coincidentally did that the very same year I started writing this book, Living in the Long Shadow. I'd it just happened that way. I had signed up for piano lessons, and it was around the same time that circumstances happened for me to start writing the book. So I have been in piano lessons for you know for the last eight years, and it's been great. I love having that. And I feel a connection that's so sweet with my mother. I feel like spiritually, in a way, she's she's just smiling on me that I'm doing it because she was a gorgeous pianist and she was an inspiration to me. And of course, I felt always like, oh, I will never be as good as she was. And that's true, and that's okay. I am the way that I play and I am doing what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 24:02

So yeah, yeah. Were you you speak so beautifully of your mom, which is is is pretty pretty special. Uh, were you ever angry at your mom, or or you always saw her the way you're speaking of her, or was there like a process to get to where you are today?

Speaker 24:20

Thank you for asking that. No, I would say never angry at my mom. I've never been angry at my mom. I have never blamed. Blame has never been part of my my language at all. The one time in my life that was the hardest was hard, was around, I would say the times I was of the age that was probably, you know, 13, 14, 13 and 14 when I was, you know, doing very teenage-y things and not wanting, and angry with in a way I was not angry, but rebellious, we could say. She did not want me leaving the house at nine o'clock to go up the, you know, and go stay with so-and-so. And I was just defiant, I'm going. So I was just, I was that form of angry, but not really angry at her. I think it was just that there were no, my mother did not have, we did not have strong boundaries, you know, in my household. So I think I felt like I could, I could do it. I could get away with it. I could get away with what I wanted to do. And and then I would come back to where, you know, I would realize like that is not what I want to be doing. I don't want to live my life like this, it's not going the way I want it to go. And as I had said before, I had that inner drive to do better, to live better, not to have it go that way. But no, I never did have. Um, I my mother and I became friends. We really did develop. I never got to have an adult relationship with her since she died when I was 18, but I did fortunately get to have a good relationship with her when I was those years that I lived with my father. So, you know, however old I was 15, 16, you know, 15, 16, 17. And it mattered. My mother and I went to, for example, she gave me tickets to a concert series at UCLA, a guitar concert series, because I was studying guitar at the time. And so, and we went to these concerts together every few months. And we did the so we did, and we had we had a really good connection together that that mattered to me and and still does. And I'm grateful that that happened. It would have been so different if it had not.

Speaker 1 26:56

Yeah, yeah. Because I feel like when people think mental illness, that that person that has these mental illness, that's all they are. And it's just more complex than that. And there's some people that grow up in that environment that just instead of seeing that person as a human, your your parent as a human, they get angry and and and it festers for years. So it's nice to hear that it doesn't have to be that way and that you can hold on to the beautiful moments of that person.

Speaker 27:24

Right. Thank you. Yeah. Yes. I think that, and also I really I do feel that I that is part of my, that was part of my motivation for writing this book. I wanted to sh to, you know, nobody's really watching. So it's like, who's watching? Who do you want to know that? But sort of put it out into the universe, if you know what I mean.

Suicide Loss Understanding Without Blame

Speaker 27:45

And what I what I the reasons I'm just looking at, you know, what I what I have written on my website as a note from the author, I'll read it. It's just one sentence. I wrote this book to understand what happened, to vindicate my mother, and to honor those who continue with courage. And that really is true. And I really felt like I I did that. I did all of those things. I went into the story deeply to really connect the dots and come to understand what happened. And it was the understanding of my mother, as in a way, I got a real way, I got to know her better by spending all the time that I did writing this book and really going over the details and over the incidents and all of it. And I really came to to know her better, strange, as strange as that may seem, and I came to under and through that understanding of her and her perspective and her situation and the compassion that I have for her, for it, and for how hard she tried for it to work and to go. You know, it really is something that I get to live with today in a good way. And and I feel that writing this book turned out to be a healing that I didn't see coming. I didn't think I needed it, frankly. I thought I already was there, I've already, I, you know, I'm fine. You know, no. But it was. There were there were places that healing happened that I didn't see coming. And when I said to vindicate my mother, I also have to say I think people don't really, you know, it's a hard piece to swallow, I think, to accept that, you know, suicide and my mother really had a very serious problem of no, no possible exit. There was no, she had really a difficult choice on hand, you know. And and, you know, and so how do you deal with that, you know? And in her letter, she asked us to understand, and she asked us to forgive her in her suicide note, which was a letter. And and I never did forgive her. And, you know, I mean, growing up, and and I mean growing up, I mean in the my twenties, 30s, 40s. I wouldn't say it was forgiveness, no. And I would say that understanding was always there. And that since writing writing this book and the thorough, the thorough story of it all, my understanding of how it went for her and that ultimate choice that she made, it just it's a hard, it's a hard pill to swallow. Do you know what I mean? Like, how can I understand something that's so hard to live with? You know, sure I miss her all the time. I would miss her no matter how she died.

Speaker 1 30:54

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's beautiful, Suzanne, really. Um, when what what message do you want people to be left with when they're after they're done? I read this book. What feeling or what message do you want to leave with the reader?

Speaker 31:09

I would like people to, I think I'd like people to know that to not dismiss for one, don't dismiss people with mental illness as that being all they are. Don't be sure that suicide is always a really bad thing to do. I mean, it in many most cases it is, but give give a moment to look into see if there's understanding for it, if it's in your family, if you're a suicide loss survivor of someone in your family, you know, see if you can go with understanding. And as far as having uh, you know, finding, I think that I want people to understand that it's possible to really connect with and be in touch with the beauty in your own life, you know, in your from your own, deep inside yourself, no matter what hardships you've faced going forward, you know, in your life since you were a young child, just to know that there is goodness here for all of us. And we need to practice the ability to change our focus, to to open to it and find it. And that is what I have done, and I hope others will will uh see that in my story and take some of it into their own lives.

Speaker 1 32:37

Yeah, yeah, thank you. And again, um, when I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it. So I'm definitely gonna purchase that book and read it.

Speaker 2 32:44

Oh good.

Speaker 1 32:45

Yeah, definitely. I I as as sad as these stories can be, I feel like I like to learn from people's stories and their situation, even if it's a heavy topic. Is there anything that I haven't asked today or that you really wanted to like talk about or hoping to talk about today that we haven't touched on?

Stepfamily Lessons And Choosing Perspective

Speaker 33:05

There there are many aspects in my book. I I could just say that, you know, if anybody who reads the book resonates with living with a stepfamily, there's a lot of lessons that come out of that experience. And what I what I dealt with there, it's like my story was not only what happened before then, but also the time period of living with another family who lived a very different lifestyle and and a very judgmental stepmother and on and on and that whole dilemma of what went on there. So I just, yeah, I guess I just would like it to be known that, you know, we we don't always, we don't walk a single path, you know, but we we get to carry whatever our spirit can be that holds our our own strength in going through it. And it's important not to not to hold blame for anybody, but to be to know that we have the ability to to yeah, to change our perspective and take the steps that we want to.

Speaker 1 34:08

Oh yes.

Speaker 34:09

That's all I wanted to say.

Speaker 1 34:10

I think that's beautiful. And and it's easier said than done, but I've been on that path because I too had a stepmom that didn't didn't, yeah. I I yes, I've learned just to let it lie where it was. She passed away two years ago, and I said I I won't speak ill of her, but um, but yeah, it's it's hard to overcome that and and it's hard to to go down that path. But once you're there, it's just like, okay, I I can breathe.

Speaker 34:36

So yeah, you know, being being an adult and realizing that these people were not behaving the way like they were not behaving really well, you know, that my stepmother, when I have actually thought about how old was she then? And I think, my God, she was like 38 or she was 42, really, and she spoke like that to me at that time. Yeah, my stepmother died two years ago, also, and uh, she will never read this book. And that was a concern to me for quite a while while I was writing it. She could be reading, she could read this at some point, but she won't.

Speaker 1 35:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, thank you.

Speaker 35:16

I want to go there's a little bit.

Speaker 1 35:17

Well, I can't wait. I cannot wait to read the book now because I'm sure I'll connect with that.

Where To Get The Book

Speaker 1 35:23

Suzanne, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Suzanne. And it's uh Suzanne Sherman.com to get all your services and books.

Speaker 35:32

Living in the long shadows, surviving a legacy of mental illness. Look at that, it's beautiful, and the roses have a very important part in the story, but that would be a spoiler alert.

Speaker 1 35:45

So I'm not gonna We don't want that. We don't want that. Go buy it, go buy it.

Speaker 35:49

And you said it's anywhere, Amazon, it's on Amazon, Barnesand Noblebookshop.org, and some directly from Simon and Schuster through their website as well. And so Amazon and all of those places right now, the book is available for pre-order. And so you can through my website, I have all the pre-order links there, or you can go directly to any of those locations, including Amazon, which you know has it right there for pre-order. And it'll be available as an e-book, print book, and an audio book is coming out quite soon.

Speaker 1 36:25

Oh, are you voicing the audio?

Speaker 36:28

No, actually, I hired a narrator for it. Yeah. So I'm waiting to hear how all that is. Yes.

Speaker 1 36:34

Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank you, Suzanne, for coming on. I really, really love hearing people's stories, and you've been a pleasure.

Speaker 36:42

Oh, it's been nice talking with you as well. And I'm I really appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Speaker 1 36:47

Thank you. Thank you so much. I look forward to reading the book. All right.

Speaker 36:51

Very good. I look forward to hearing from you. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 36:54

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