Written by Lauren Spiro, based on her tumultuous life, ‘Living for Two’ fuses the author’s poignant story of tragedy and triumph with a series of bold life lessons. After being committed to a mental institution after her father was murdered, Spiro was forced to endure the brunt of the nation’s broken mental health policy. However, through a transformative journey that will inspire all, Spiro turned herself from victim to victor. She is now taking that story public for the first time to prove that healing of the mind and heart is always possible.

Kensington, MD -- (SBWire) -- 06/12/2014 --While everyone endures adversity, few have been dealt cards as tragic as Lauren Spiro. However, while life took turns that were both unexpected and wholly unwelcomed, Spiro’s faith and tenacity have since allowed her to flourish into a new and invigorating existence. Having committed her experiences to paper, anyone can now do the same.

‘Living for Two: A Daughter’s Journey From Grief and Madness to Forgiveness and Peace’ takes readers back to Spiro’s life aged just fourteen, when her father was shot and killed by a teenager and Spiro was committed to a mental institution, labeled a “Chronic Schizophrenic”. After enduring forced drugging, locked seclusion and many other trials, Spiro became acutely aware of just how dysfunctional the mental system really was.

Today, in an unlikely yet remarkable twist of fate, Spiro prospers as an educator, mental health provider and co-founder of Emotional CPR, a public health education project. ‘Living for Two’ takes readers into Spiro’s tragedy, trauma and eventual triumph; empowering all to break their silence and recognize hope’s omnipresence.

Synopsis:

This book is for those who savor the journey and are willing to explore how you come to know who you were born to be? Have you lost someone to a violent death? Have you ever doubted your own intrinsic worth, felt crazy, or been labeled by the mental health system? Can you use a dose of meaning and purpose - because we live in a world that can be so unjustly harsh? If you can say yes to any of these questions, this book may be for you.

“I bear my heart and hard lessons learned on this journey to wholeness. This book will help anyone seeking mental health liberation, and a release from the hurts and humiliations they are enduring. Our oppressive culture can be extremely damaging, but anyone can affect change in order to overcome this damage. To give my readers further tangible resources, the book’s epilogue highlights some accomplishments of the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery (www.ncmhr.org) which I directed for seven years. I also share information about Emotional CPR (www.emotional-cpr.org), a public health project I co-founded and co-direct which is now spreading around the world.”

To date, the book has garnered impressive reviews. Family Physician, Mark Foster, comments, “In vivid prose and poetry, Lauren Spiro has painted for us a picture of her spiritual journey, a journey that took her from unbearable emotional pain, down into psychosis, through the depths of our dysfunctional mental health system, and finally to a place of transcendent healing and peace. This is a story of hope and love, the story of how a daughter, so devastated by her father's senseless murder, was rescued by his cherished spirit awakening in her adult life. The message is clear: healing of the mind and heart is always possible, love needs to be the guiding star in recovery, and we are all connected, much more deeply than we understand."

Author Robert Whitaker was equally as impressed, adding, “In this moving, beautifully written memoir, Lauren Spiro tells of unfathomable loss, the madness of a psychiatric system that would diagnose her with ‘chronic schizophrenia’ at age 16, and her ultimate recovery from both of those childhood traumas. In her poetry and prose, we see, too, that words—the language that can bring us understanding and compassion—can have a healing power of their own.”

‘Living for Two: A Daughter’s Journey From Grief and Madness to Forgiveness and Peace’ is available now: http://bit.ly/1kZWegK. For more information, visit the author’s official website: http://laurenspiro.com.

About Lauren Spiro
Fueled by a vision of an America where every individual is respected and included as a valued member of the community, Lauren’s work focuses on developing humanity’s capacity for compassion, appreciating the vast creativity of the human mind, and building pathways so everyone may come home. She is a schizophrenia survivor, educator, artist, consultant, community developer, co-founder and co-director of Emotional CPR (http://www.emotional-cpr.org), and associate director of National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery (htp://www.ncmhr.org). Her memoir, Living for Two: A Daughter’s Journey From Grief and Madness to Forgiveness and Peace was published in 2014. For more information see http://www.Laurenspiro.com.