Nothing Was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison

Nothing Was the Same Reviews

• 
  Lightreads

  Jamison is on my radar as a prominent person with a disability, though she has never explicitly articulated a disabled identity. Her An Unquiet Mind is a hugely important book, politically speaking, and I salute her for outing herself as someone with severe bipolar, and effectively painting a target on her back for religious nutjobs and many of her ablest asshole colleagues in the medical profession. I mean, what the hell do I know about being targeted in wank, compared to that?
  
  This book, though . . . *shakes head*. It’s a memoir of her husband’s loss to cancer. I picked it up for blah personal reasons blah, and also because it was supposed to be about her struggle to distinguish the grief processes from the organic, chemical misfunction of her illness. As a mental health professional and a person with a mental illness, she could really get at this fascinating thing – distinguishing useful emotion from pathological, talking about the biological processes of intense emotion from the inside.
  
  Yeah no. The book is about that for roughly two pages. The rest of the time it’s an extended obituary, and not a very interesting one. By which I mean that I’m glad she wrote it, because I absolutely get how important a process that can be. I just don’t know why it needed to be published.
  
  The book is mostly about her husband, how wonderful he was, how much she loved him. And then he dies, and it sucks. You’d think, hey, grief is universal, but no. this book isn’t about grief, it’s about Jamison delivering a long eulogy to someone she loved that almost none of her readers will know. And it’s all told in this ponderous, stylized, cinematic mode, all ‘and then he dipped the ring in the North Se and put it on my finger.’ Lots of tell, everything was so romantic and intensely meaningful, you know. I’m sure these things actually happened, but the book has this roseate glow of recollection to it that precludes the more complex, the emotionally analytical, the clarity of insight I expect from Jamison.
  
  Like I said: glad she wrote it. She clearly needed to. I just don’t see what anyone else reading it will get from it.
  
• 
  Rick

  Jamison is the author of An Unquiet Mind, her superb memoir about her bipolar illness (a public secret even as she became one of the world’s leading experts on manic depression, literally co-authoring the textbook the medical profession trains on). Nothing Was the Same is the story of her husband’s, also an influential doctor and scientist, illness and death and Jamison’s experience with the overwhelming grief that comes with such a loss. It’s a profoundly personal book but also one that provides insight to grief and how it differs from depression or related illnesses. Jamison, it should be noted, is not just an excellent writer but a creative one, with a deep interest and experience in poetry, fiction, music, art, and spiritual literature—sermons, hymns, prayers. (She is also the author of Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, an excellent study of the illness’s connection to creativity.)
  
  Jamison comes to this very personal experience with a dual purpose, to honor the love she shared with her husband and to describe clearly the experience of intense grief that she endured, and brings to the task a deep reservoir of knowledge that spans the universe of how we try to understand what happens to us—science, medicine, nature, logic and reason, art, music, literature and religion. What’s amazing is how dazzlingly direct and to her points she is. It’s her story blessed with the insights that her career and her passions bring to the experience. She did not research the difference between grief and depression; she lived it, and describes the difference: “I knew depression to be unrelenting, invariable, impervious to event. I knew its pain to be undeviating. Grief was different. It hit in waves, caught me unawares. It struck when I felt most alive, when I thought I had moved beyond its hold.” Later she writes, “Time alone in grief proved restorative. Time alone in depression was dangerous.” The first sentence anyone might write, but not so simply elegant. The second is the revelatory partner of the first. Combined they are unique to Jamison and her experience and gifts.
  
  She calls on works of art and religion familiar to her or that she reached out to in her attempt to understand her feelings. Works that helped or didn’t. It is not a self-help book but a compelling, very human testimony of a critical, unavoidable experience. It deserves a place next to Donald Hall’s Life Work, another essential, yet brief, memoir of deep and insightful experience with sorrow and loss. Both books are unabashed, without being sensational or self-indulgent, willing to recount love’s presence so we can understand the impact of a lover’s sudden absence. Intimate? Yes, so a little claustrophobic, but necessarily and rewardingly so. Jamison has written a wonderful and courageous book.
• 
  Lauren

  The benchmark for books on grieving is set with The Year of Magical Thinking and while Nothing Was the Same can't match Didion, it is on its own a terrific book. I don't know that I could relate to the intensity of her marriage the way I could to Didion; however, parsing through the distinctions between depression and grief. To me, that was the most valuable aspect of this book. The recognition that grief does lift and that it serves a purpose. It also is not something we should necessary wish away. It is a process of accepting the loss of those we love while struggling to live without them.
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  Charlene

  I've long been fascinated by the personal/interior lives of scientists, and this book gives us a glance at two very prominent psychiatrists: Kay Jamison and her husband, Richard Wyatt. I was familiar with Kay's story before picking this book up but I have not read An Unquiet Mind. Maybe I was also attracted to this book because it was compared with Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking, which I think is one of the great books of the last decade.
  This isn't as good but well worth reading. Author is a beautiful writer and a thoughtful person. It is an honest, open look at their relationship, I think, and her reaction to grief but I did feel that there must be a lot of the husband's story missing, from the days before he met Kay (his children, etc.)but certainly understandable why the story is centered on the couple.
  I've jotted down quotes from this book and noticed other reviewers mentioned doing the same thing. I appreciated how she notices nature & quotes poetry for comfort in times of sorrow and pleasure in times of joy.
  I was also intrigued by Jamison and her husband's relationship with church. She says her husband believes in Science, not God, yet he loves Christmas carols, attends church at least occasionally, and plans a traditional funeral service.
  This was a short book and I read it quickly -- may go back and look at it again after I read An Unquiet Mind.
  
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  Shaun

  I started off listening to the audiobook of this with my girlfriend. We had listened to
  An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness together and learned a lot from it. We had hoped this book might offer more insight in to life with bipolar... but that's not what this book about. And we can't hold that against the author, of course. We just didn't read the description before buying it. This book is a loving and tearful memoir written about the author's relationship with, and grief subsequent to the death of, her husband: a rather remarkable scientist named Richard Wyatt.
  
  This is not a happy book. The author still loved her deceased husband dearly at the time she wrote this book. My girlfriend gave up on listening to it about 2/3 of the way through. She told me to let her know if it got happier. But it never did. That's ok. Books can be sad.
  
  I would gladly read more by this author about mental illness but I don't think I'm interested in reading any more personal memoirs about her. Honestly, it dragged a bit at times (although it was usually interesting). And, somehow, I feel that I never fully connected emotionally with the author in the way that I would need to in order to enjoy a sad personal narrative like this. The author should feel like a close friend now that she's shared something so personal with me... but she doesn't. I'm very sorry for her grief and for her loss, but in a detached and impersonal way like I might feel if I heard about a death on the news; I don't feel emotionally invested in her or in her life story.
• 
  Jane

  4.5 stars. Kay Redfield Jamison is one of my heroes because of her clinical work on Bipolar Disorder and on suicide, as well as her courageous openness and writing as a person who herself has Bipolar Disorder. I always talk about her with my advanced students and hold her up as an example of someone who dares to try to smash the stigma of mental illness, and someone who was drawn to clinical work by her own life experiences (many of my students think that they could never become therapists if they have their own mental health issues, and they find this quite heartening). This very well-written book is a wise, lyrical meditation on marriage and partnership, the healing power of love, and the deep and layered journey through grief after the death of a beloved. Jamison's husband was a gifted scientist in the field of Schizophrenia research, and this tribute really captures much of what made him a special guy professionally and personally. It is an intimate visit with her, and by extension, with him. I found the chapter differentiating depression from grief, "Mourning and Melancholia," to be particularly clear and lovely. By the end of the book I was left with gentle sadness, but also a sense of the strength of healing and hope. [I must note that some reviewers have rejected or sharply criticized the book because of Jamison's privilege(s) and renown. I believe she is sharing universal human experiences and emotions that transcend superficial particulars. Regardless of who they seem to be, all humans have a right to be fully human, and express that as best they can, beyond any limiting labels or categories placed on them by others. We all suffer.]
• 
  Mandi McRae

  3.5🌟
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  Kent Winward

  More in the grieving spouse genre --
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  Marianne Dillon

  Top 3 books. Now completely re-arranges my five star rating requirements.
  On bi-polar illness, madness, depression, necessity of love, death, grief, beauty, finding ones way back into life.
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  Callie

  Kay Redfield James writes very elegantly and formally. Her level of writing is far above what I've been reading lately. When I get the book in front of me, I am going to put some quotes from it in here. This is a remembrance of her husband and their marriage, before he died of cancer several years ago. I found it remarkable because I don't often read of people like this, much less know anyone like this. Completely committed to the life of the mind, devoted to science and their work as doctors, they are truly passionate people. They believe as purely in science and work as most people I know believe in God. I loved how much poetry she put in the book and her sentences are the kind you want to read aloud, they are so beautiful. If I were ever to write a memoir this is the kind I would want to write--one that leaves you feeling uplifted, inspired, warmed, enriched, but not because of easy answers. Because of her husband's illness and her own struggle with mental illness, they have seen their share of darkness. This memoir is not self-pitying, nor complaining. Neither is it inordinately confessional. It feels restrained and thoughtful, an act of love. Just read it, already.
  
  Some quotes:
  
  It was early June 2002. The foxglove was high in our front garden and the honeysuckle was climbing every which way over the stone walls. I picked armfuls of pink and white peonies and put them in the bedroom. Never, in seventeen summers with Richard, had I seen so many butterflies as there were now, in this early June. I tried to catch a small white one to keep Richard company, but I couldn't keep up with it. An, as Richard said, I shouldn't have tried. The butterfly ought to be free to fly in the garden.
  
  He said this without envy or regret.
  
  This is something she quoted from Robert Louis Stevenson:
  "We may compare the headlong course of our years to a swift torrent in which a man is carried away. We have no more than glimpses and touches; we are torn away from our theories; we are spun round and round and shown this or the other view of life, until only fools or knaves can hold to their opinions. We take a sight at a condition in life, and say we have studied it; our most elaborate view is no more than an impression."
  
  
  One morning--during the early weeks, when I still spoke aloud to him--I said , "I missed you, sweetheart, when it rained so hard last night. I missed you this morning, when it was no longer raining. I missed you, wondering if the rain would begin again."
• 
  Abbe

  EDITORIAL REVIEW: From the internationally acclaimed author of *An Unquiet Mind,* an exquisite, haunting meditation on mortality, grief, and loss.Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison—who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with a writerly elegance and passion—could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. In direct, straightforward, and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled debilitating dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic honesty, candor, wit, and simplicity, she describes his death, her own long, difficult struggle with grief, and her efforts to distinguish grief from depression.But she also recalls the great joy that Richard brought her during the nearly twenty years they had together. Wryly humorous anecdotes mingle with bittersweet memories of a relationship that was passionate and loving—if troubled on occasion by her manic-depressive (bipolar) illness—as Jamison reveals the ways in which her husband encouraged her to write openly about her mental illness and, through his courage and grace taught her to live fully.A penetrating psychological study of grief viewed from deep inside the experience itself, *Nothing Was the Same* is also a deeply moving memoir by a superb writer.
• 
  Ed Smiley

  I picked this up at the library, thinking that this was her earlier work on the experiences of an intelligent insightful person learning to deal with severe bipolar disorder, and actually finding a fulfilling life of considerable accomplishment.
  
  I had skimmed parts of that book at a bookstore, and had gotten interested in her life.
  
  This turned out to be a memoir of her life with her husband who fought, and lost, to fatal illness. He always helped her monitor her moods and keep to her program of maintaining stability. Such a work is of course always under the threat of becoming over sentimental. I found it touching.
  
  I try to avoid spoilers, so I will avoid details about their life together. However, having a bipolar disorder and facing such loss, added additional poignancy to the situation. He reminded her to take care of herself after he was gone.
  
  One of the urgent questions she had, and which keeps the reader reading, was how she could keep going after he was gone? This was no idle question, asked by a person with normal brain chemistry, who, however deep the pain, would indeed surely survive. What if she became depressed? Her depressions had been not just suicidal, but life sucking black holes. What if she was unable to sleep? Disrupted sleep could cause her illness to spiral out of control.
• 
  Tori

  I enjoy reading Kay Redfield Jamison's books. More than a book about her husband dying of cancer I felt like this one was a book about a great, true love. I think doctors are too eager to prescribe medicine for grief, and I really appreciated Kay's description of the differences between grief and depression. I felt this information meant even more coming from a psychiatrist who had felt deep dark depressions herself. The subject sounds like a downer, but I felt like this was a book about hope and the power of love. It was also nice to see a scientist speak about the comforts her religion brings her.
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  Nina

  Nothing Was the Same is Jamison’s account of her husband’s illness, death, and her subsequent struggle to differentiate grief from depression. She brings the same lyrical quality to this book that was evident in An Unquiet Mind.
  
  Jamison’s writing is honest, introspective, and transcendent. She opens her soul to the reader, invites us in so that we may learn and grow from her experience of loss. She shares intimate details of her marriage, her own mental illness, and her husband’s death from cancer as a way to show that death and grief are indeed an equalizer. The book is a lush, moving memoir, as well as a profound account of grief.
  
• 
  Melissa

  A beautiful memoir of a marriage, but Jamison only partly delivers on her promise to compare grief (after her husband dies) with depression (which she did not suffer, after a lifetime battling bipolar disorder).
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  Samar

  Very sad till now. How much pain can people really endure?
• 
  Amanda

  Excellent memoir on grief...
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  Sabrina Chap

  Years ago, I read Jamison's famed book, 'An Unquiet Mind' when it came out and was thrilled to have an honest account of manic depression from someone who experienced it firsthand.
  
  I found 'Nothing Was the Same' for sale for 5 bucks, and picked it up. 'A penetrating psychological study of grief viewed from deep inside the experience itself'? '...she describes his death, her own long, difficult struggle with grief, and her efforts to distinguish grief from depression'? The flap on the cover made it seem like a supremely interesting treatise, as did the reviews on the back - which upon further investigation, were all reviews of 'An Unquiet Mind'.
  
  Jamison's publishers are smart, knowing too well that stories from those who suffer from manic-depression are few and far between, so readers interested in that subject are starved for further introspection from brilliant minds like Jamison. However, once you unwrap the book jacket from this love letter of a treatise, it is nothing like what's promised at all.
  
  Instead of actually investigating grief, and how it can be untangled from manic depression, the bulk of the book is simply describing how much she loves Richard. There is little description of grief, up until you're 80% into the book. You go from how they met, to their wonderful summers and Chrismtases together, and then all the diagnosis. You get a glimmering overview into their love, and then when the grief happens, Jamison just quotes a bunch of Yeats and Tennyson.
  
  It's clear that Jamison hadn't delved into grief as a subject as much as written this book to deal with her grief. It's an obvious tribute to the love of her life, well written, but with only a few deeper discoveries about the subjects used to promote the book. As an author, it was a clever way to use writing as therapy through her grief while using her fame for her greater works to sell it. Jamison's style is addictive enough, but I kept on searching for some insight, some deeper meaning, and it never came.
  
  There is probably two to four pages of distinguishing grief from manic depression - and I'll sum it up for you: they're different. A bit of a waste of time, but an interesting understanding of how an author can allow their more famed works to sell their personal journals, and how publishers will ride that bandwagon to sell books.
• 
  Terri Durling

  Although this book revolves around two subjects that are quite somber in nature, death and mental illness, which in itself make it a difficult read, I was captivated by the author's beautiful, honest and poetic writing style. She is an expert in the field of mental illness, having been diagnosed as bi-polar in her early 20s (then called manic-depressive); as well as being Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and codirector of the John Hopkins Mood Disorder Centre. Without being too technical, she tells her audience how it feels to suffer from this disease beautifully. Her relationship with husband of some 20 odd years, himself a doctor who specialized in schizophrenia, is a love story that is truly enviable. His support of her is amazing as living with someone with mental health issues is no easy task. He's a hopeless romantic with a funny side and they are well matched in every way. My heart broke as she struggled to deal with losing him to cancer after a valiant attempt to beat it. Her descriptions of grief and depression are brilliant. It is a book I would refer to again and I would also recommend to anyone wanting to know more about these two difficult subjects.
• 
  Marcia Miller

  This memoir is both passionate and compassionate. It is full of love, joy, loss, life lessons, the powers of friendship, honest work, music, literature, science, kindness, and routine. It must've been a very challenging work for the author to undertake and share.
  
  Redfield Jamison's memoir is divided into three sections that detail her romance and life with her husband, Richard Wyatt. The first section presents the first third of her story about their love, scientific work, partnerships, adventures. and the simple joys of being together. In the second section, she details the harrowing trajectory of the diseases that ultimately end Richard's life despite the best possible medical care available at the time. The final third offers her musings on how she was able to move forward with her own life after her beloved's long illness and death.
  
  Such a memoir is always sad to read, but in the first 2/3 of this book, the author is often exuberant, grateful, deliriously in love, hopeful, and honor-bound to be as good a wife and helpmeet as possible. The last third, however, was a surprisingly repetitive, almost formulaic to this reader. It is the change of tone from the gripping first two sections that caused me to give the book only 3 stars.
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  Karen

  I enjoyed this book, but it is a completely different style than any of her other books. It was engaging for me, especially because of her detailed focus and description of her late husband Richard. This in many respects was a book more about him and the love he had for Dr. Jamison, and I found him to be a fascinating and inspiring academic who learned how to love Kay through her bouts of severe mania and depression. I actually think my favorite chapter, though, was at the very end of the book in which she beautifully contrasts the symptoms of profound grief with that of clinical depression. This is totally consistent with my own personal experiences and I think she so poignantly expresses how a symptom in grief and clinical depression can outwardly appear nearly identical and yet the inward experience of that symptom is completely opposite, depending on the source. In any case, this is a good book about an amazing person that entered Jamison's life for a season, followed by a very personal portrayal of how she experienced grief in the initial time period following his death.
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  Audrey Goldfarb

  This is a beautifully written and penetrating account of love, illness, and grief. No book has made me appreciate the love in my life as much as this has.
  
  Throughout the book, Jamison describes how her late husband impacted her work in addition to her life and health. In particular, his support of her publishing "An Unquiet Mind." The passages in "Nothing Was the Same" that discuss her process of deciding to write her first memoir are humbling. She risked and sacrificed so much to share her story and challenge the stigma of bipolar disorder, and love provided her the courage to do so. Those of us who suffer from mood disorders owe so much to Jamison, and I now realize, to Richard Wyatt as well.
  
  In the final third of the book, Jamison's comparison of her bipolar depressions to her grief is insightful and beautifully described. In describing her complicated struggle with BPD and grief, she reminds the reader why life and love are so precious even in the wake of enormous loss.
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  Peter Harrington

  Nothing Was the Same is a memoir by Kay Jamison about loosing her husband to cancer. I gave this book all five stars because this book on grief is very well written and importantly it comes from a first hand experience. Even more, Mrs. Jamison helps one understand the differences and similarities between grief and depression. The Author, unfortunately has first hand knowledge on both and does an exceptional job that helps the reader see these differences; depression kills while grief heals. The book also gives hope, through the Authors own life experience, that there is joy after death of someone you grieve for. In her own words, “love continues, and grief teaches". Her words reminded me that with every bad comes good.
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  Dinesh

  Nothing was the same - sequel to the author's 1995 memoir An Unquiet mind. It is a memoir of her life with her husband and her husband's loss to cancer. She also has beautifully and quite successfully charted out the distinction between grief and depression.
  She writes 'Grief is at heart if the human condition. Much is lost with death, but not everything...there is a grace In death. There is life.'
  This book serves dual purpose - her tribute to honour the love and life she shared with her husband and to describe clearly grief and how she endured loneliness and moving on with life, with her husband's memories. As she writes 'with the death of my husband, I lost many of my dreams, but not the ability to dream.'