It's rare that I read a non-fiction book, or at least that used to be the case. I've recently finished number 5 of 2018 and that definitely holds some 'you're so far out of your comfort zone now boo' record.
Shiny Happy Person is a book all about one woman's personal struggle with depression over many years. Her time as a teen was tough: after growing up as one-third of a set of triplets, Terri begins to find her own way through life without the back-up of her sisters. School was rife with bullying, but after spending a year abroad at uni to study languages was when Terri really found it hard to fit in to her 'shiny happy' persona.
Suddenly Terri found herself lost, a shell of her former self. It's something that became more and more apparent as she spent time with the people she loved until she reached breaking point. Everything stopped. Terri's love life had hit a wall and she was single again. With a strong support network however, she worked her way back up from the ground again.
The story is a tale of recovery and how things can get so low you need to recover. It's a story all about how mental health issues don't need to be caused by a massive trauma or specific incident, but how they grow and manifest, and are set off by a final straw. I absolutely blazed through it and found it so easy to connect with Terri. I loved that she didn't gloss over how hard recovery can be, and that she spoke about the things that helped her, and the bits that weren't so great.
It's an honest novel that tells the truth about what it's like to suffer with depression, and I would recommend giving it a read.
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