“For the next 25 years, I traveled across the country and beyond, looking for answers to two simple questions: Why are people with serious mental illness so misunderstood, and how can we treat them better?” she wrote. “It was too late to help Danny and Nancy. If I was going to understand the illness that killed two of the people I loved most, I would need to look to strangers for answers.”

Kissinger spent a recent Wednesday in Lake Forest, Illinois, not far from her childhood home. She visited a couple of high school classes during the day, where she spoke with students about mental health and journalism and the intersection of the two. In the evening, she sat on a stage in an auditorium filled with more strangers (mostly) and spoke about her book and her family and her heart. Incredibly brave stuff.

I joined her onstage as the conversation’s moderator. The warmth in the cavernous room was palpable, and not just from the stage lights. For an hour she answered questions—mine and the audience’s—and for an hour I was reminded, once again, that we’re never alone. In whatever we’re enduring, in whatever we’re overcoming, in whatever we’re fearing, we’re not alone.

“While You Were Out” is many things. It’s a clear-eyed look at mental illness, of course. It’s an examination of the Catholic Church and its stance on everything from birth control to funeral rites. It’s a portrait of a large family in suburban America.

But it’s also a story of evolution—evolution in the way we’ve come to understand and treat mental illness. Evolution in the way the Catholic Church responds to suicide. Evolution in the way a family loves one other and understands one other and handles one another. Kissinger’s dad is appalled by her first personal essay, the one about Nancy’s death. By the second one, about Danny, he’s open and grateful.

So it’s also a story of hope. That we can find answers, that we can find healing, that we can survive darkness, that we can find a better way—as long as we never stop searching.

A man in the front row at Kissinger’s event raised his hand a couple of times during the audience Q&A, quick with kind words and helpful resources. He nudged others in the room to reach out to a local chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, for guidance.

His daughter, he told us, survived repeated suicide attempts. Now she’s married with children and doing well. He wanted to end the evening, he told us, on a high note. And he wanted to give us an assignment.

“Never give up on people,” he said.

That’s not the whole solution. Not even close. He wasn’t pretending it to be. But it’s a beautiful beginning and a worthy North Star to return to over and over, when we’re searching for something true to hold onto.

Never give up on people.

©2024 Tribune News Service. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.