“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.”
— Mira Bartok
“We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don’t want you to think that anything is wrong.”
— Mira Bartok
“We humans are different – our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.”
— Mira Bartok
“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?”
— Mira Bartok
“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.”
— Mira Bartok
“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.”
— Mira Bartok
“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.”
— Mira Bartok
“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!”
— Mira Bartok