Uncategorized

Surprise! You never know when someone will pick up your book!

amusingpoetLeave a comment

Every author I know seeks out places to get their book reviewed and hopes for a positive spin on their work. I was pleasantly surprised when I read Megan Wildhood’s review of Crash on the Mad in America blog in September. Here’s a bot of what she had to say:

Book Review of Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery by Ann Bracken

By

 Megan Wildhood

 – 

August 31, 2023

Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery (Charing Cross Press, 2022) by Ann Bracken

It sneaks up on you—depression, overmedication, and just depressed and overmedicated author of Crash Ann Bracken was by the time she realized that depression was the least of her worries. One minute, the reader is immersed in an isolated world of a terrified child whose mother never “comes back” from “mental illness” and the treatment she endured for decades. The next minute, the reader’s heart pounds, his or her head swims, and breath catches in his or her chest right along with Bracken’s. When did Ann’s migraine start? How many medications is she taking? How long has her husband been speaking to her like that? Why does every one of Bracken’s doctors sound the same?

Crash Cover

Why does every one of her doctors sound the same indeed—including the fact that not one of them asked her about her relationships (or anything else about her environment) before they adjusted (usually increased) her medication both in terms of dosage and variety. Bracken weaves together research on the harmful side effects, known since at least the 1970s, of psychotropic medication, especially the interactions of multiple psych meds, with her personal experience of some of these exact harms as well as finally understanding what she as a child witnessed of her mother’s experience of these harms. Her portrayal of herself as a dutiful, compliant patient in order to avoid the harshest treatments but also because she at one point trusted her doctors implicitly (as many do) makes the length of time she was in an abusive marriage all the more heartbreaking.

If you’d like to read the rest of Megan’s review, click here.

Megan recently interviewed me for her podcast, and I’ll provide the link when it’s available.

Have you ever done everything a doctor told you, only to find yourself sicker than before you began treatment?

amusingpoetLeave a comment

I’m thrilled to have my memoir, Crash, reviewed on the Mad in America Blog by the fine reporter, writer, and storyteller Amy Biancolli.

Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery by Ann Bracken (Charing Cross Press)

Cover art for "Crash"; an illustration depicting a spilled bottle of pills

“Have you ever done everything a doctor told you, only to find yourself sicker than before you began treatment?”

So asks Bracken in the first paragraph of her memoir, a devastatingly honest, ultimately hopeful account of personal and family anguish marked by crashes both literal and figurative. She zips back and forth in time, describing both her mother’s decades in the system and her own long arc of anguish and recovery—and touching on her daughter’s story as well.

The multigenerational saga begins in 1959, with her mother’s hospitalization for depression, and cycles through a decades-long ordeal that led to 37 ECT sessions (with minimal anesthesia) and psych drug upon psych drug upon psych drug. As a kid, Bracken had questions (where’s mom? why are the grownups whispering?); as an adult, she found answers in 30 years’ worth of medical documents meticulously preserved by her father.

The revelations were many. A full list of Helen Dempsey’s meds in the appendix includes barbiturates. Amphetamines. Tranquilizers. Antidepressants. The benzodiazepine Dalmane. The anticonvulsant Dilantin. Beyond all those medications and ECT, Dempsey also received some talk therapy—“but I’m not sure how helpful it was for my mother to talk with her male psychiatrists,” Bracken writes, “especially given the medical establishment and cultural attitudes toward women at the time.”

You can read the rest of Amy’s review here, and check out the other books featured this month as well.

So, what’s your new book about?

amusingpoetLeave a comment

You may have seen my blog post announcing my new book, Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Healing. Now you’d like to know what the book is about before you consider reading it. Here are a few details:

Crash is about a little girl whose mother disappeared, and no one would tell her where she’d gone.

Ann's first day of school
Ann’s first day of school

Crash is about a woman who did everything her doctors told her, and yet she never got well.

Crash is about the woman’s daughter who vowed she’d never be like her mother only to find herself trapped in a similar cycle of overmedication, numerous doctors, and intractable physical and emotional pain.

Crash is a story of one woman’s determination and optimism when it seemed like all of her traditional remedies and supports had failed her.

When all of the other remedies had failed, I looked for another explanation for my pain.

Because I have a deep belief in many forms of healing, I began to embrace a similar path to the one that mythologist and author Michale Meade advocates. Here’s what he as to say about facing your darkness (depression and pain) and healing:

“Wholeness and unity are what all healing seeks, but a genuine transformation requires a descent to the underworld of the soul. There we find that our woundedness is not a static state, but rather a dynamic condition through which we incarnate more fully. In going through the wound the greater self within us is revealed.”

Register here for the book launch on October 13th, 7pm ET on Zoom. Hope to see you there!

Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery

amusingpoetLeave a comment

I’m pleased to announce that my memoir, Crash,is available for purchase on the following platforms: Bookshop, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, &  Ebook Versions,  as well as here on my website.  Putting this book together was like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle—fitting experiences together with research helped me to develop a deeper understanding of what happened to me when I sought help for a severe depression and chronic migraine. Contrary to many of the upbeat and happy images you see in the commercials for antidepressants, my journey was one of trying one drug after another, yet never finding relief. The research I did for the book revealed that I was far from alone in that experience–only about 15% of the people who take antidepressants experience improvement greater than what’s accounted for beyond the placebo effect. 

Crash Cover
Book cover

Part of the reason I’m so interested in the topic is because I grew up in a home with a mother who suffered from chronic, unremitting depression for nearly 40 years.  Mom did everything the doctors told her, yet she could never escape the heavy pall of darkness. I kept wondering: Why could I recover and Mom couldn’t? I found the answers buried in an old folder in my sister’s attic. Crash braids my story with my mother’s to explore her journey using Dad’s detailed records from 30 years of her care, interwoven with research and vignettes from my past. 

All through my illnesses, “I’ll never be like my mother,” was my fervent mantra. I vowed to escape her fate despite year after year of unsuccessful treatments with numerous drugs and many rounds of electroconvulsive therapy. Crash is the story of what I learned about treating depression and chronic pain and the steps I took to finally recover. My memoir serves as a missive to women struggling to heal, carve their own path, and demand better care.

Here’s what some noted people in the field of psychiatric reform had to say about Crash: 

“Ann Bracken’s evocative memoir powerfully tells of how psychiatry’s diagnoses and treatments can lead to loss, illness, and despair, and how escaping from that paradigm of care can be a starting point for a full and robust recovery.”

            ~Robert Whitaker, Author of Anatomy of an Epidemic

“Ann Bracken artfully braids her path out of chronic pain and major depression, while questioning the system designed to help her, and reaching back into her mother’s history to find a way to help her as well. Bracken gives us permission to ask questions about our current mental health treatment; read and educate ourselves on the risks, benefits, and alternatives to psychiatry’s status quo; and above all, not to quit until we find our own path to a healed life.”

~Angela Peacock, MSW, mental health advocate and featured in award-winning documentary, Medicating Normal

“A fascinating memoir of two generations of medical and psychiatric mismanagement and suffering, and how one brave woman figured out what was happening and successfully took control of her health and well being… and prevented a third generation from following the same path.” 

~Stuart Shipko, MD, author of Surviving Panic Disorder and Xanax Withdrawal

It Takes a Village

amusingpoetLeave a comment

People often say that it takes a village to raise a child…and the same is true of putting out a book of poetry. I’d like to thank just a few of the people in my “village” who helped me to write, complete, and publish Once You’re Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration.

Patricia Van Amburg~I’m so grateful for her unfailing keen eye when critiquing my work. She helped me to shape many of my poems.

Grace Cavalieri~Grace was there every step of the way with her support and thoughtful comments on my work. She offered to host my launch reading with her inimitable style.

Brian Potts~My son, who did the headshot for the cover.

Christella Potts~My daughter, who designed the logo for my imprint.

Betty May~An author, playwright, and all around force of nature who inspired me to work in the prisons.

Linda Moghadam~My partner for three years and the person most responsible for my work in the prisons.

Thank you, everyone, for your kindness and support. Blessings to all of you!

A Book Can be a Pressure Point

amusingpoetLeave a comment

In a few days, I’ll begin readings from my third poetry collection Once You’re Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration. I’ve been thinking a lot about the trajectory of my three books and how they each reveal an aspect of something I care deeply about.

Use this link to preregister, and you’ll be sent a Zoom link the day of the reading. https://sites.google.com/view/annbrackenbooklaunch/home

The Altar of Innocence, my first collection, deals with my experiences growing up in a home where my mother struggled with depression and alcohol abuse and then my own journey through depression and chronic pain which opened the portal to leaving my abusive husband. My second collection, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, takes a deep-dive into the lives of teachers and children who are navigating the pitfalls and whirlpools of the current education system. Shorthand for themes: abuse, emotional distress, and education challenges.

Those themes of abuse, emotional distress, and education challenges coalesce in my third book Once You’re Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration. Here’s what one of the counselors told me about the general state of the current prison population:

“Most incarcerated people have a number of factors in common—abuse, for one. Sexual, verbal, physical, emotional— add in hearty helpings of neglect, abandonment, illiteracy, and dropping out of school.”  Suffering inflicted at the hands of caregivers. Pain and rage stored deep inside, erupting in every direction. “A lot of folks struggle mightily over how to live in the world without earning money illegally. Some report anxiety attacks thinking about how they can be in the world without pimping and selling drugs.” 

So there’s the connection. I guess you could say I recognized the pain that the incarcerated people carry because I’ve been around that kind of pain since I was a child. All three books are my attempt to tell the stories that need to be told. The depressed mother who can’t cope. The child who’s frightened because she doesn’t know how to help her mother. The student who’s very bright, but struggles to learn to read. The teen who’s despondent because of all the pain he lives with. The incarcerated person who feels abandoned.

There are many ways to bring about change in society–many pressure points, as I like to call them–legislation, demonstrations, articles, plays, novels, and poems. Most especially poems because they carry to weight of powerful emotions and stories in concentrated form.

Here’s the title poem. I hope you’ll find the poems in the collection both moving and informative. Maybe you’ll even be moved to find a pressure point where you can take some action.

Hope on Hold 

Once you’re inside

ignore the wreckage
of time, 

the lined faces
of men gray with age,


the once-cagey 16-year-old, 

the disorganized shuffle
of papers, of rules, of feet.


The torpor of boredom


thick as dreams
of honey on toast.


Once you’re inside
every smile is suspect,


every glance a risk.


Even hope tucks into a corner 

when these doors groan closed. 

Join me for my launch reading on October 6th at 7pm.

It’s my hope that by sharing stories about the men and women I met in prison, I can help to create a dialog among my readers to reimagine how we treat people who break the law. After working in the prisons for awhile, I could see that what the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson says is well worth all of us remembering: 

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

Use this link to preregister, and you’ll be sent a Zoom link the day of the reading. https://sites.google.com/view/annbrackenbooklaunch/home

Take a Poetry Break with Jane Satterfield and Ned Balbo

amusingpoetLeave a comment

One of the many hats I wear is as a co-facilitator for Wilde Readings Poetry Series in Columbia, Maryland. This week, I acted as host for a husband and wife poetry duo who are also well-known authors and literature professors–Ned Balbo and Jane Satterfield. Their work compliments each other in that they both write about nature, but Ned prefers formal poetry and Jane is more comfortable in free-verse. I’ve chosen two poems to showcase their work, both with a nature theme-but of course, there’s more hidden in the lines. If you’re inclined to settle in for a longer visit, take a look at the video of their reading. You’ll be glad you stayed!

Portuguese Man o’ War by Jane Satterfield

Full sail, a feat

of stylized rigging,

armed frigate, eating machine

whose armadas blow ashore

through warming currents,

to cooler coasts off Amagansett,

up the Atlantic as far north as the Bay of Fundy,

The Isle of Man—and I

who envisioned your technicolor

rays only in Our Amazing World’s

slick pages, centerpiece of

danger and display—how you swim

up unbidden, struck chord

like the wail of sirens, the warning

and the all-clear, the stark list

of grocery stash guaranteeing

post-atomic household survival. So you drop

that fine-spun glass pane

at the first sign of surface threat

to submerge or travel dark, lucent pools—

O blue bottle, spilled ink—

Even dead you deliver a sting.

The bees: A fable

by Ned Balbo

January 22, 2021

“Tiny bees found in woman’s eye, feeding off tears” (CNN, April 10,
2019): “She thinks the insects blew into her eye at a relative’s grave
site when she visited it with her family.” Known as sweat bees, they
are attracted to the salt in human sweat.

Stranger than it appears,
four bees living off her tears
sought brief shelter in her eye
where they stayed, impossibly.

Before whose grave did she kneel?
What discomfort did she feel?
Specks of dirt she’d brushed away
seemed to linger stubbornly.

In the dark beneath the lid
four bees fed on tears and hid,
stinging her with constant pain—
flecks of ash or burning rain.

Still, she knelt and cleared the weeds,
swept the grave site, planted seeds
in remembrance of the dead—
tears withheld and tears shed.

It’s said the eye swelled up—
Through the slit lamp’s microscope,
a doctor, shocked, could see
small legs wriggling to be free:

bees behind the eye, half trapped . . .
One by one, the doctor slipped
each one out; the four bees hovered,
caged in labs. Their host recovered.

There are others who insist
she got used to them at last;
that the bees live in her eye,
sheltered, to this very day,

nourished by her tears, their sting
milder than the pain we bring
to each loss we hold inside—
tears we cannot shed or hide.

A Conversation About Poetry

amusingpoetLeave a comment

Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s Poet Laureate, interviewed me for her long-running radio podcast called The Poet and the Poem. Sharing the voices of Maryland’s poets is one of Grace’s goals for her work as our state’s laureate. I’ve known Grace for over ten years and feel blessed to call her a friend. Her generosity of spirit shies through in this broadcast where she kindly invited me to share my work.

The endless procession of time

Taking on the Challenge of Something New

FeaturedLeave a comment

I took a poetry class with Chad Frame, the Emeritus poet laureate of Montgomery County, PA back in June. Chad provided many challenges for us–such as writing found poetry, shape poetry, and centos, to name a few. By far, I thought that the golden shovel form was the most opaque, and I dreaded trying my hand.

Terrance Hayes originated the Golden Shovel form when he wrote two poems as homages to Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool.” He wrote one poem in 1981 and one in 1991 and both of them use the words in Brooks’ poem as the last word of each line in the Hayes poem.

From “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We/left school. We 

And here are the first correlating lines of the 1981 Hayes’ poem

When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we

cruise at twilight until we find the place the real

men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool.

His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we

drift by women on bar stools, with nothing left

in them but approachlessness. This is a school

I do not know yet. But the cue sticks mean we

So what you get if you read down the final word of each line in the Hayes’ poem are the lines in Brooks’ poem.

Candle in the dark

I wrote my poem with a one line from a David Whyte poem called “Sweet Darkness” because I’ve used the line as a piece of guiding wisdom for many years: “Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

A few words about process. I wrote the words down the right side of an 8×11″ sheet of paper and just went for it. I actually pleased with the results. 

Inner Compass
It could rain anything
during the night—leaves or
maybe you dream of anyone

speaking a riddle that
you can answer. In what language does
a cardinal call?  I yearn for time not
designed by Tech gods who bring
endless yet useless updates to you.
None of them will keep you alive
until your imagination is
free to understand that too
many things feel small
because a cramped vision is useless for
the world that calls to you.

I’d love to hear from you if you decide to jump in!  Drop me a line. 

An Evening of the Arts

amusingpoetLeave a comment
before reading
Ann, Morna, and Brian chatting before the show

On January 10, 2020, Morna McNulty exhibited her collection of photos from deserted spots in and around Ellicott City, MD. I read from my three poetry collections, and my son, Brian Potts, accompanied me on a variety of percussion instruments. We had a great turnout! Everyone enjoyed the art, poetry, music, and refreshments. Here are a couple of photos from the event. Enjoy and hope to see you next time!

drummer
Brian Potts on the drums