Overview

How to survive ambiguous loss, by a mom who lost her son to psychosis and then to suicide. What mom expects her honor-student son to one day barricade a bathroom in their home to lock away ""demons?"" Who can imagine a beloved child behind jail Plexiglas, his eyes vacant? How does a mom sleep knowing her son is homeless, sleeping rough in a city park, his life tattered by his disordered mind? In Gone Before Gone, Clark describes her son's ""death by degrees"" during a young adulthood wrecked by severe mental illness. Surviving a parent's nightmare led to Clark's memoir of self-help-a toolkit for living with ""ambiguous loss,"" a term coined by Pauline Boss, PhD, an academic, author, and long-time family therapist. Trained by Boss herself, Clark has blended Boss' concepts with her own experiences and the coping skills she's cultivated as a long-time yoga teacher. The result is a book like none other. Part memoir, part survival guide, complete with practical exercises. You'll feel as though a kind mom is holding your hand and helping you breathe as you bravely take one step at a time toward healing yourself.

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9781958861967

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Gone Before Gone ""Jerri Clark writes beautifully, with solid information and enlightening stories. She teaches in a way that is clear and conceptually correct. Whether readers are facing SMI or other unresolvable ambiguous losses, they will be empowered by this book."" - Pauline Boss, PhD, author of Ambiguous Loss; Loss, Trauma, and Resilience; and The Myth of Closure ""Jerri Clark has written an important book. What is most unusual is her detailed account of coming to grips with her loss, as she ""stopped begging the universe to reverse time and give me my old life back."" I have read books on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder for over fifty years and would rank this book in the top five percent for families."" - E. Fuller Torrey, MD, author of American Psychosis, Surviving Schizophrenia, and Surviving Manic Depression ""Gone Before Gone is an extraordinary and searching book that combines Jerri Clark's narrative of struggle and loss with acute glimpses into the chaotic universe of mental healthcare in America. Families with stricken children on the precipice of this murky, confounding universe will find themselves guided toward healing with intelligence and warmth."" - Ron Powers, author of No One Cares About Crazy People ""This book will reach a wide swath of readers, who will come away with empathy and insight into those who live with mental illness, along with their families. Jerri Clark has lived, and survived, every parent's worst nightmare. This book powerfully and poignantly delineates how to navigate through and beyond ambiguous loss."" - Gail Freedman, producer of the movie No One Cares About Crazy People ""This book should be read by everyone who encounters people with mental illness in their work. We have built the largest psychiatry training program in the U.S. here at UW: I want all of our residents to read this book at the beginning of their careers."" - Jürgen Unützer, MD, chair of psychiatry at the University of Washington ""A powerful and deeply compassionate read, Gone Before Gone gives voice to what so many families live but struggle to name: the quiet grief of loving and missing someone who is still here yet changed by severe mental illness."" - Ann Corcoran, RN, MSN, Executive Director, National Shattering Silence Coalition ""Jerri Clark writes with rare honesty, weaving grief, love, and hard-won insight into a narrative that both breaks and strengthens the reader's heart. This book belongs on everyone's bookshelf because it cultivates empathy, understanding, and the kind of courage we all need."" - Nicole Drapeau Gillen, author of Schizophrenia and Other Related Disorders: A Handbook for Caregivers""What Jerri Clark has written is horrifically beautiful. It heartachingly tells what so many of us have been trying to express. An army of moms (and other family members) need this book."" -Sherri Wittwer, Utah family advocate ""Gone Before Gone is deeply personal, painfully honest, and incredibly useful. Jerri writes with fierce clarity and hard-won compassion, giving families living with SMI the tools they've been denied for far too long. This is essential reading."" - Todd Brown, award-winning author of When Shadows Burn

Author Information

Jerri Clark is a professional mental health advocate and an award-winning journalist who lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she surfs, practices yoga, and is gramma to two young boys. Her son, Calvin, died from his severe mental illness in 2019, when he was 23. Clark manages a resource center and supports and trains families for the non-profit Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC). TAC's focus is severe mental illness (SMI), which means psychotic conditions that are life-altering. Clark has shared her story and advocacy points on numerous print and broadcast platforms, including ""PBS News Hour"" and The Seattle Times. As a yoga teacher for more than 20 years, she sees her ambiguous loss work as a coalescence of the self-discoveries from those practices alongside her journalism, advocacy, and lived experience as a mom stretching to survive a loss beyond human expectation.

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