Children of the mentally ill learn early on how not to be a bother, especially if they grew up with neglect. As my sister insisted once, when she was in severe pain after injuring her ankle, 'This isn't me! This is not who I am!

I don't want to be the person who gasps in fear whenever she hears the sound of a doorbell or a phone. I just want to lose myself in these hills, in the river winding west to the city of bridges.

Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur.

We humans are different--our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them. Our recollections change in their retelling.

Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says we are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember. Who am I, then, if my memory is impaired?

We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don't want you to think that anything is wrong.

I felt held hostage by her illness and by the backward mental health system that once again was incapable of helping our family in crisis.