Note: This book is suitable for adults only
39 (Memoirs of Amanda Green)
by
Amanda Green
39 (Memoirs of Amanda Green) is Amanda Green's second memoir. Amanda is looking for reviews, so please help her out by leaving a review after reading the book.
You can also read my earlier blog post on Amanda's first memoir My Alien Self: My Journey Back to Me.
Description
After recovering
from mental illness and many other adversities, Amanda Green published her true
story, My Alien Self: My Journey Back to Me. This is the journal of her life
during the year following publication. Dysfunctional and ever more inspiring,
this memoir will take you into a whirlwind of love, humor, emotion, depression,
adventures, music, animals, family health and relationships, as she strives to
stay strong and achieve a life really worth living as a childless woman before
her fast-approaching 40th birthday.
Due to flashbacks of
dark scenes and sexual abuse, this memoir is for adults only and although it's
a sequel, it can easily be read alone.
Excerpt
Introduction
I have truly been tumbling towards the age of forty, wondering if it’s
true what they say – that life really doesn’t begin until you reach that number
– and if it’s true what has my life been before this – just the prologue?
I wrote a memoir that was published in 2012, covering my whole life to
2011. I talked about how I coped with adversity, mental illness and my
dysfunctional family – and once that was finished, it was time to move on in
life, and try to be more balanced, mentally. I wanted to reach my fortieth
birthday with some grace. By that, I mean not riding the roller coaster
nightmare of mental illness, not feeling anguish that I have not had children
and by radically accepting those around me just as they are, instead of
fighting them in my mind.
I currently spend all my time writing my book, and run six websites
ranging from an Orang-utan campaign, Spanish holiday rental advertising and a
personal blog where I can have my say about the issues I am passionate about, a
site for my published writing and photography portfolio, plus my mental health
campaign to beat stigma.
I passed nine GCSEs at school, which was a turbulent time when I was
bullied because my mum was mentally ill and hospitalised; I sweated a lot,
masturbated publicly in class at junior school and had various other problems,
mostly due to stress.
After a short span in college, I decided to go to work. Through my habit
of ‘running away’ from problems, I travelled extensively across the world since
I was sixteen, taking in over twenty-five Countries – living and working at
times in Japan, Thailand and Australia.
Due to my issues, I found it hard in the past to settle in one career,
but have been successful and liked in my work in the fields of hotels, leisure,
banking and recruitment. Customer service and sales were my forte, as I was
always a bubbly honest person, so I have built some great ‘self PR’ skills over
the years.
I love photography, writing and my websites, and love to get my work
published in magazines and local newspapers. It feeds my self-esteem which has
gradually built up again since my semi-breakdown a few years ago, where I
totally lost touch with my true personality and became an ‘alien self’.
My spare time hobbies are eating out and reviewing restaurants, wine and
beers, travel, days out, campaigning for Orang-utans, campaigning against
mental health stigma, advocating and chatting, plus reading, theatre, cinema,
films, TV documentaries, comedy and cooking and when I can calm my mind down,
just relaxing!
My aspirations are to be a full time writer/photographer.
From 2008 to 2012, I spent all my time writing and editing my memoir and
I was still recovering well after publishing it, whilst finding myself left
with the bare broken bones of a life which needed to be fixed.
And since my fortieth birthday was fast approaching, I gave myself a year
to turn my life around – May 2012 to May 2013. I had managed to enjoy social
media, sell books and get some great reviews, so, here were my goals for the
year! Not New Year resolutions, life goals…
1.
Get to my thirty-ninth birthday, and at thirty-nine have a life worth
living, be happy, let my personality blossom, and take some responsibility…
2.
Complete a course at college and pass the exam as this will allow me to
meet new people, learn a new skill and gain confidence. Even though everyone
seems to believe I have tonnes of confidence, I absolutely do not!
3.
Move out of the apart-hotel I have lived in for well over a year, into a
real home, paying bills and taking responsibility.
4.
Have pets – cat or dog.
5.
Volunteering – helping animals, elderly or mentally ill.
6.
Stop taking my mental illness medications.
7.
Settle down, like myself and my own company, and have a life worth
living.
8.
Accept that I am childless. My mum had me (her fourth and last child) when
she was thirty-nine, and was going through her menopause at the same time, and
since early menopause can be hereditary, I have lived, for years, with the idea
that if I don’t have children before I am thirty-nine, my chances will be gone
forever.
Sounds boring right? But life is
far from boring in my world, and as we all know getting what you want is all
too often not easy at all…
This book is not like the journey I portrayed in my first memoir – in
many ways I see it as both a snapshot of my life in the year after publication,
and my personal countdown to turning forty. I use extracts of my journals and
my website blog, as well as diary and narrative pieces that never made it into
the first book. Perhaps it remains a metaphor for my life and my coping
strategies that I tend to move from subject to subject, swinging between the
past and the present, the good and the bad – covering all sorts of topics as my
ever busy mind does. But this time, I hope, with more of an emphasis on the
positives in life. And while my focus is more light-hearted than my first book,
I hope it also shows how recovery from a mental illness is never absolute. Living
with a mental illness is a journey every day.
Review
After reading Amanda
Green's My Alien Self I was left thinking what a truly inspirational lady she was!
Amanda opened
herself up and was brutally honest in this memoir dealing with multiple mental
illnesses, drink and drug abuse, and so much more.
I was left thinking
I really want to know more of this very interesting, kind, and most of all
inspiring, woman's life.
I have since started
to tweet with Amanda and follow her Facebook page to see how her life has
panned out so far, and to also educate myself more on mental health issues, and
also found out we have a common love of animals, and family.
I was so excited
when Amanda announced that she would be releasing a sequel called 39,
which is about her life during the year following publication.
I absolutely loved
this sequel. It carries on with Amanda's life and her recovery of mental
illness, which again I find truly inspirational, and her fight against the
stigma against mental health through her campaigns/blogs/twitter, plus also
campaigning to stop cruelty to animals! These are all subject that have touched
my life through my family and friends and also my jobs, and I truly feel even
if they have not touched your life, these memoirs give you a real inside view
of what it's like to suffer with mental illness, and I feel everyone should be
educated in this area to help people talk about these issues, so they do not
feel isolated from the world and people in it.
This book also
transports me back to my era as a young party diva with Amanda's love of her
music and how songs remind her of certain times in her life. (They certainly
bought back some of my memories, strutting my stuff on the dance floor) *blushes*
A brilliant sequel
to My Alien Self, I know I keep saying it but when I think of Amanda Green I
always think kind, strong, and truly inspirational.
From the Author
I am Amanda Green,
author of My Alien Self: My Journey Back To Me and the sequel, 39.
My Alien Self: My Journey Back To Me is my memoir which follows my journey through travel, excitement,
normality and mental illness to find myself again. 39
is about what happened afterwards; the year before reaching the prime age of
forty, family relationships, love and memories. I want to inspire others that
it is possible to recover and have a life worth living.
Because I grew up
with my mother having severe Schizophrenia, who had been incarcerated in
psychiatric hospitals for years, and felt the bullying and loneliness that
stigma can spread, I campaign to stop the stigma surrounding mental illness. I
also felt the wrath of stigma when I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Many people do not understand mental illness, so judge people unfairly. So I
created my website where I publish
articles on the topics covered in my story, including self-help, depression,
bankruptcy, alcohol/drug abuse, family and relationships, sexual, physical and
mental abuse, anxiety, anger, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), self-harm, obsessive
compulsive disorder (OCD), anorexia nervosa/bulimia, mindfulness, panic, rape, schizophrenia,
psychosis, suicidal thoughts, paranoia, dissociation, mood disorder, thyroid
issues, and psychology.
I love photography,
writing and looking after my many websites, and have had my work published in
magazines. I enjoy the challenge of getting published and very much enjoy doing
my own PR, which is why I chose to self-publish to Kindle in this first
instance.
I will be working
with mental health charities, magazines, newspapers, social networking and
other PR projects, actively making people aware of this disorder through every
means possible through the media. But also, I hope that my books will help
other sufferers and their families and friends to understand BPD and mental
health and how to help oneself to feel better. I want to raise awareness to the
general public about mental illness and the stigma sufferers have to deal with.
I am going to continue writing through fact and fiction storytelling, on the genre
of mental health and love stories - facing and combating adversity as the main
point. (Not self-help books, but based on reality.)
I hope that doctors
and the medical industry involved with mental health will benefit from reading
my stories, as they unfold what it is like to suffer from debilitating mental
illness from the inside out and how it manifests itself.
But I have also
written my memoirs in a style that hope will compelling and sometimes shocking
reads for anyone interested in memoirs with a twist, so that I can reach more
people.
I really hope to
encourage more celebrities to come out about BPD or other mental illnesses.
Outside of work, I
love eating out and reviewing restaurants, travel, days out, campaigning for
the precious Orang-utan and the issues of unsustainable palm oil production,
running six websites of my own and seeing my family. I also enjoy reading,
theatre, films, TV and cooking and when I can calm my mind down, just relaxing!
Links
