'It Was a Joint Effort'- Deborah Kasdan on Bringing Her Late Sister's Story to Life

Deborah Kasdan is author of Roll Back The World: A Sister’s Memoir, in which she describes her extraordinary late sister Rachel-poet, musician, free spirit-and her decades-long journey through psychiatric treatment until, finally, she found a place of peace and community.
Kasdan is a longtime business and technology writer who pivoted to memoir writing on a quest to tell her sister’s story, joining the Westport Writers’ Workshop. Her book, published in October by She Writes Press, is a moving and nuanced portrait filled with love and grief, candor, and complexity.
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[@jennytaylor3324]

This was touching, but also inspiring. I was thinking only the other day, as a long-term (but only recently diagnosed) CPTSD sufferer, I know all about the way it neutralizes you in the world. You live your days imagining the road not travelled. I think it's also true that people place an unofficial lease on your mental health from the date it fails. You have a year or two's grace within which to 'recover' realign yourself with the normal folk, after which time your unresolved 'problems' will sometimes be talked about with rolled eyes and sighs, from even those close to you, who don't really understand 'it'/why your still aren't back to the version of you whom you miss as much as they do. To yourself, your name takes on negative connotations, and you feel its definition shifting in your own mind. Mae West once said, "Keep a diary, and one day it will keep you." From experience, I know she was right. So I understood the part near the end when Deborah talked about a continuing, still evolving relationship with her beloved sibling through her memoirs, poetry, and ongoingly, through her own work. We lose so much when we cease to communicate honestly. It's a human instinct to avoid the mentally ill person out of a sense of embarrassment or fear of having our own hidden buttons pushed, but we lose even more when we close to them. And for willingly walking towards her sister Rachael in death, with an open, curious heart, I believe Deborah may be closer to her now than ever before. I will look up the book with interest.

[@cleopetraducic4301]

Great content. Wish it’s presented more concisely