Although Libby Peyton hailed from a small Ohio town, she branched out from attending a very small liberal arts school, which included a junior year sojourn in Japan, to a doctoral program at a major midwestern university.

Her studies in sociology were interrupted, at least as she likes to think, by the onset of schizophrenia and a subsequent hospitalization.

Despite the ongoing, unrelenting somatic symptoms, delusions, and suicidal ideation she experienced, she held down a low-level administrative job in a university for twenty years, all the while keeping her mental health status a secret.

In this, her memoir, Peyton sheds light on her enduring and intense struggle with this poorly understood and often feared disorder.

With brutal honesty and compelling bravery, Libby takes the listener along on her decades-long odyssey through schizophrenia, through the immediacy of an internal world of fear, odd sensations, and altered thoughts. She guides us through hospitalizations, misdiagnoses, therapies, and the unrevealed internal life she maintained in the midst of her altered reality. Family support undergirds her enduring struggle as the schizophrenia fights her for control of her mind and body.

Ultimately, we are led to the current day, where stability and advocacy have come to inform her life, where Libby’s attention has shifted towards recovery and community reintegration. She is engaged in politics and advocacy, has become a Certified Peer Specialist, and is actively engaged in the fight against stigma.