Book Review: The Perfect Other

I came across Kyleigh Leddy's story while listening to the podcast Schizophrenia: Three Mothers in The Trenches. As a sister, and someone impacted by mental health conditions, the episode caught my eye. Kyleigh spoke candidly about her love of her sister, the pain schizophrenia brought her family, and her eventual loss of her sister. I knew I had to read her book.

"My sister was a force: funny and wild and unpredictable." (Page 64)

Kyleigh's story captures not a simple tragedy of illness and loss, but the remembrance of a person who sparkled with personality. She guides us through a journey of sisterhood cast from her older sister's wishing her into the world through the spirals of adolescence, encouraging notes and drawing constellations of each other's faces, and into the inferno of schizophrenia.

Kyleigh describes her sister as someone we can envision. A person with a sense of humor and whimsy. Someone who someone looked up to.

"I was not in a battle with my sister, but I was in a battle with the person she was becoming, with the disorder that seeped into her brain." (Page 121)

Serious mental illnesses have a unique capability of affecting how we view the world and relate to others. Surrounding each person living with a significant mental health condition like schizophrenia is often a number of people—partners, friends, family—who love and care for them and who are also affected.

For individuals and families affected by mental illness, this sheds a rare and relatable quality. The effects of mental illness or relationships and this experience of ambiguous grief many face are not often talked about. A mental health condition does not change the core of who someone is, but sometimes it can make it more difficult to access the person you've always known. While many recover and make meaning of their experiences, the process can be tricky. As a person with lived experience, I found myself reading the pages slowly. This is a book that heals with tears. I think others would find the same.

Perhaps books like this should be required reading for mental health professionals. As a therapist myself, I can say my classes taught me about the illness, but we didn't learn how it feels to see someone you love shift. We learned about the medications, but not about the long journey someone weaves through with side effects, gains, and losses. Involuntary hospitalization and the cross with the justice system were covered. Yet, there is no way to describe the sense of watching a family member shackled because of an illness asking to be released from a hospital setting meant to treat their condition. These are aspects that can only be shared through personal accounts. Memoirs like this have so much to add to our education.

"In the face of mourning, we are all insufficient. We are all impossibly small." (Page 194)

Kyleigh's words reach further toward what it means to be a sister and a human. She discusses what it means to love and miss someone. She dives courageously headfirst into her process of grief. She draws on the uniqueness of the sibling relationship. She doesn't talk about an illness. She shares a memory of a beautiful person. I believe this is one of a few books almost anyone could read and learn something from. I'm appreciative for having read it.