Mud Flower
Surviving Schizophrenia and Suicide Through Art
Mud Flower: Surviving Schizophrenia and Suicide Through Art shows the perspective of a person who has a serious mental illness, who survives extreme treatments, who both family and the health system have given up on, but who defies all expectations and common beliefs of what is possible.
Along the way, the author describes the role of art in her survival, grappling with how the life force can be either nurtured or destroyed by elements in our environment, such as nature, beauty, and art versus dehumanization and coercion.
A book that can teach everyone something
Meghan’s eloquent way of telling her story is both powerful and inspiring. She is unafraid to take the narrative of mental health and how it has impacted her into her own hands and show the raw, unfiltered reality of living with a diagnosis. Her artwork gives her words an even more meaningful impact. Meghan and her story are one of perseverance, bravery, and hope that will inspire every reader.
Mud Flower opens with “I found myself wandering from room to room” and ends with “I am in the middle of the fire. I am here.” The book is the life lived in between. It’s a book of bravery, courage and adventure, but not the Disney version. There isn’t a happy ending or a simple moral to the story. There is ambiguity and nuance; brilliance and tragic error; heartbreak and joy. Meghan gets you thinking. She really gets you thinking.