Libby started life in a small Ohio town, but expanded her world by attending a liberal arts college that included a year-long stay in Japan, stimulating a life-long interest. Following graduation, she returned to Japan for two and a half years to teach English. She then went on to enter a doctoral program in sociology at a major midwestern university.
At the point where she would have been writing her dissertation, her studies were interrupted by the onset of schizophrenia and a hospitalization. Thus began her odyssey with the delusions, hallucinations and suicidal ideation that accompanied her twenty years working in a university setting.
Libby’s memoir draws upon years of journal entries to reconstruct her interior world of fear, odd sensations and altered thoughts.
Currently, Libby is in recovery; she facilitates a National Alliance on Mental Illness support group and has earned certification as a Peer Support Specialist. She is rediscovering the parts of life that her illness denied her and endeavoring to educate herself and others about this feared and poorly understood disorder.