‘There is a shapeshifter asleep in my head. And when it wakes you won’t recognise me as my children’s mother, my husband’s wife, or the writer, veterinarian and advocate that I am. You won’t recognise me as someone who is alive to adventure and beauty.’

Anita Link was thirty-two years old, and six days into motherhood, when she experienced a psychotic episode and was trapped on the wrong side of sanity for the first time. It took months in hospital, medications, electroconvulsive therapy and psychological therapies to fully recover. And then, a few years later, it happened again.

This memoir is a look into what can happen to a person’s thoughts, emotions and behaviour when they are ravaged by a severe mental illness. Anita writes compellingly about what psychosis, mania and catatonic depression can feel like. Her authentic narrative of recovery reveals the hard work it takes to return to normal life after being stolen away from it by highly stigmatised symptoms.

Anita has survived these abductions and returned to her beautiful life many times. This is her story.