Vol. 1 Brooklyn published a powerful essay written by Claire Phillips, “The Stories That Save Us,” based on her memoir, A Room With a Darker View: Chronicles of My Mother and Schizophrenia.

Reflecting on her childhood, long before her mother’s diagnosis, Phillips laments on the impossibility of understanding her mother’s behavior. She writes, “there were no depictions on television of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder to help me define what was happening in my home. Language would fail me. […] What I do know is that medical secrecy denied me a healthy bond with my mother.”

Read the rest of Phillips’s essay here.