Reckless Grace: A Mother’s Crash Course in Mental Illness

Fourteen-year-old Rachel guards a collection of secrets for ten years, journaling to vent her terror and loneliness.

Following Rachel’s fatal overdose years later, her mother, Carolyn DiPasquale, stumbles upon her daughter’s diaries. Shattered, she searches for answers, retracing her steps to figure out how parents and doctors missed three major mental illnesses.

What the single, working mother recalls is a far cry from what happens, as dramatically revealed in tandem chapters gleaned from Rachel’s journals.

While the mother sprints from task to task, the daughter details the baffling emergence and frightening progression of bulimia, diabulimia, and borderline personality disorder; her eventual substance abuse; and heart-wrenching reasons for not seeking help.

Despite her loss, DiPasquale hopes her story lights a path for victims of mental illness while awakening all readers.

Reckless Grace tells the story of a common struggle-one of a family navigating a loved one’s mental illness-through a powerful, unique lens. Carolyn DiPasquale’s firsthand narrative, punctuated by actual passages from her daughter’s journals, offers an intimate perspective on self-medication through substance use. It’s exactly what we need to help normalize a much-needed national conversation on mental health and addiction.

• Former U.S. Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy