Missing Me: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis and the Long Road Back

The unflinching debut from blogger Lage lays bare her struggles with mental illness, beginning with panic disorder and leading to postpartum psychosis. After she gave birth to her daughter in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, Lage alternately elated and despaired over what she believed were God’s messages to her. She stopped trusting her family and entered the hospital, where she filled notebooks with grandiose “prophecies” that her daughter was “the second coming of God,” that hospital staff were running medical experiments on her, and that she was “God’s favorite.” Lage holds nothing back as she chronicles her long path to recovery, including the self-doubt and paranoia that crept in (“If I felt too excited, used too many exclamation points, or had a day filled with mood swings, did that mean it was happening again?”), and her fears that her second pregnancy would result in the same experience. Particularly vivid is the sense of violation the author felt over losing trust in her memory, her mind, and—for a time—in a faith that had failed to save her (“I dutifully take my antianxiety pills every night but sometimes imagine an alternate universe where God made my problems disappear”). This brave memoir does valuable work in dismantling the stigma of an often overlooked mental illness. (Mar.)