Black Rainbow: How Words Healed Me: My Journey Through Depression

by Rachel Kelly

The powerful first-person story of one woman's struggle with depression, and how she managed to recover from it through the power of poetry

In 1997, Oxford graduate, working mother, and Times journalist Rachel Kelly went from feeling mildly anxious to being completely unable to function within the space of just three days. Prescribed antidepressants by her doctor, and supported by her husband and her family, Rachel slowly began to get better, but her anxiety levels remained high, and six years later, as a stay-at-home mother, she suffered a second collapse even worse than the first. Throughout both of Rachel's periods of severe depression, the healing power of poetry became an integral part of her recovery. As someone who had always loved poetry, it became something for Rachel to cling onto in times of need—from repeating short mantras to learning and reciting entire poems—these words and verses became a powerful force for change in her life. Rachel analyzes why poetry can be one answer to depression, and the book contains a selection of 40 poems that provided Rachel with solace and comfort during her breakdown and recovery. At a time when mental health problems and depression are becoming more common, and the stigma around such issues is finally being lifted, this book offers a lifeline for anyone seeking to understand depression and seek new ways to treat it. Poetry is free, has no side-effects, and, as Rachel can attest, "prescribing words instead of pills" can be an incredibly powerful remedy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mental Health, Psychology, Memoir, Self Help, Mental Illness, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 2014

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am pro anyone who seeks to lessen the stigma around mental health. I have mental health problems. After reading, research and the love of good people in my life, I feel I have reached an understanding of mental health issues that I wish I had possessed in my teens and twenties. Or do I? Maybe I had to work and suffer for this. Rachel Kelly did. Two seismic attacks of depression lasted a total of twenty years. She describes it as ' a long old ride'.

Her initial description of being depressed was sickeningly recognisable in its mundanity. She couldn't sleep. As it often does, depression yanked her by the hand through the tunnel to the point where she could do nothing. This journalist and mother grasped at something she loved to provide her with oxygen: words. Rachel recounts the poems that kept her afloat in a moving account of how terrifying it is to be so suddenly and blindingly unwell.

As a fellow word-lover there was much to like here, but I got my Barbara Ehrenreich whoa there hat on when Kelly delves into 'the science of happiness' reproducing ideas and words without criticism. When Googling Rachel Kelly today I found she has written another book 'Walking on Sunshine-52 small steps to happiness'. My heart sank until I read that Kelly says the book is not for those in the grip of serious depression,but people, like her, who are keeping hold of things but are plagued by anxiety.

Let me clarify my position: I have no problem with things that can help people. Kelly says she manages her depression 'as you might diabetes'. That's great. My mental health problems are so much more manageable since I saw them as something to be managed rather that to be ashamed of.

What I am against is denial of reality and people being offered treatment as a panacea. There's a storm today. The rain cover on my buggy is broken. If I was offered the choice between a free yoga session and a new rain cover I'd go for the former, despite far preferring the latter. Kelly says 'a privileged life doesn't mean a privileged health', but the fact is that her privileged life gave her access to a swift diagnosis,quality therapy and time off work without the fear her family would be hungry and homeless.

People without funds often find themselves on a carousel of misdiagnosis, impatience from their primary health care provider and advice which seems patronising at best, as well as incomprehension from family and friends. Kelly's book was a memoir of her own journey . I admire her work since in being a mental health campaigner and advocate. My journey has been different, and the journeys of those younger and lower on the pay scale are also different. To get to the point of management you need to get past dismissal and misunderstanding. Not everyone does.

[Diane Dachota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoir of severe depression and the author's way out of her misery with the help of poetry. Rachel was a wife and mother of two children when she developed physical and emotional symptoms which became increasing debilitating. She chronicles her daily life, the extensive help she was given by her husband, doctor and mother and the role poetry and finding beauty in life helped her reclaim her life.

The book is well written, and also depressing and at times tedious. Other people's daily lives and symptoms can get to be overwhelming at times and this book is no different. It does however add a unique take on depression and how medication may not be the answer or the only answer.

[Leonie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply honest account of the author's journey through depression. I read it in two sittings and resented the time where I couldn't get back to it, inbetween! There was much food for thought, for someone like me who has lived with anxiety and (to a lesser extent) depression for thirty years. I particularly liked the references to brain biology and chemistry - an area that I've never thought about before and would like to know more about. Rachel is coming to my little city in July to do a talk - I'm not sure if I can make it there, but I'm glad I've discovered her.

[David Pope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, moving story of how crippling and serious depression is. Absolutely glued to this.

[Susie Spizzirro · Rating 5 out of 5]

black rainbow by Rachel Kelly

[Aiza Idris (biblio_mom) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever thought of yourself going through depressions? Or you just don't realise them yet?
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Its impressive when most of Rachel's writings are similar to what I've been through especially after giving birth. I thought its just the baby blue symtomps that I was having. But it is more than that and I am thankful I only have a mild one and continuously trying to get better.
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Following her suggestion to get myself analised through a website is a game changer. I've been receiving emails from the team members every single day and I love going through them in the evening. I'm still a mess in the morning as my anxiety is on its highest level.
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About sleeping disorder/ insomnia, I still have them once in a while as I went through this book. I've jot down a couple of general tips about combating insomnia and anxiety which is :

1. Stop being anxious about sleep itself. Start believing that in due course I would get the sleep I needed, though it might not always be conveniently at night and I needed to arrange my life as far as I could to make this possible. If i was awake at night, make it feel normal opposed to frightening & remind myself that I wasn't alone.

2. Being compassionate to myself is sometimes enough. When I'm sufficiently calm, I can then try to change the narrative of my thoughts.
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Researchs found that highly sensetive children who seem to feel things more deeply than their peers may prove more vulnerable to depressions as adults. Knowing this, I would do my best to keep my children live more in their presents and just be happy, give them more opportunities to have choices, be able to let their feelings out more open and give them more time to overcome their negative feelings on their on.
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Theres so much I want to share and review about this book but as far as I've written, I think It is about enough and I suggest you to read them yourselves.

[RaMi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the only book in years that I have not finished because I felt like it's an utter waste of time. I tried to push for 2/3 of the book but I just couldn't continue. For some reason I had impression that this book gives you advise and explanations of depression, latter it did. It was just her story that was yes, sad but also boring. I mean nothing much happens when a person is depressed, it's just stories how she felt when she was in bed unable to socialize. But all the poems that healed her, I'm happy that she won this battle but there was just too much about God. Hard to read if you are an atheist.

[Sandrine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book allowed me to discover the extreme physical pain which can be associated to depression together with the long journey to recovery. Despite Rachel’s extended support network, she only starts looking for answers and long term solution after her 2nd severe depression, having to acknowledge that she will have to learn to live with her illness.

There is a slightly frustrating part to her story which makes the book slightly less far reaching : her privileges (including her mother who can spend months looking after her) and her inability to limit the size of her family when she is so fragile.

[Frue_s · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinerande bok och min lunchläsning senaste
månaden. Vinner nog på att läsas i etapper. Hon är
inte helt lätt att sympatisera med, Rachel Kelly, och deprimerade personer blir ju så självupptagna. Det vet jag av egen erfarenhet. Men ibland bländar boken mig med kloka formuleringar. Önskar lite mer om läsningens helande kraft också, med tanke på den svenska titeln.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really interested in this book because I heard an interview with the author. However found it long and a little rambling but I really wanted to see what poetry she uses to help her depression. Told with honesty and surprising detail, it charted her journey through this period of her life.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fighter of depression myself I could relate to alot of this woman's story.
However she was very lucky to have a strong financial background to support her recovery and ease the burden. The average person doesn't have that luxury.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Food for thought.

[Ross Mountney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving account of the author's journey through depression - and recovery.

[Olivia Rose Toombs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good first half, then very slow

[hanis · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first book after so long. This book helped me to look at things in different perspectives. I’m in love w/ this book (the words were beautifully arranged…🥹) bYe i wud defo read it again…

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part memoir, part self-help book this was an interesting insight into how depression operates and how on eperson tackled it and wrestled it to the ground. Not really a book to enjoy but thought provoking all the same

[Shariq Latif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today, every disease can be measured by various tests and highly advanced machines. But, what about mental illnesses or imbalance? The answer of 'yes' is yet to discover. The diagnosis is also made when a mental health professional thoroughly evaluates the problem; considering his own professional wisdom.

This book was a unique road to entrench me from the start to the end, opened my brain to show ignorance, and step-by-step enlightenment. This book is a personal journey of the author's, dealing with depression and other kinds of it; broadly accosted as psychiatric illness.

Most people see mental illness as a whole when it is any disease which is confined to your mind, and not the whole body. But, when we coin the term psychiatric, it covers every part of the body. For our common understanding, we use the term mental quite often.

Whoever deals with anxiety, depression, panic disorder, or schizophrenia discovers the disturbance in his body that impacts his every aspect of life, either personal or professional area. The reasons to each of them are always poles apart, and anyone who suffers from mental illness, doesn't have to claim it as a personal problem, but it is more of a societal problem. A problem, others are responsible for it too.

I am surely not highlighting who forge it to gain attention. My target is the real survivals of it. People, who throughout their lives discover the meaning of depression and other mental illnesses by their series of experiences.

Every person is living a story of survival and perseverance, and the causes of their survival are the different reasons; because many remain silent about it, many speak but are left unnoticed, and many leave the mark of suicide to their name. And, very few get genuine help.

The events we face never disturb us or intrigue, but the meaning we come up with. The authors' journey to get over depression, and still fighting against it, is way beyond I can write to make others understand. It is how you feel when you face. It is how you fight with it when you don't want to. It is how you stick to live, and not throw it off forever.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book begins on a seemingly-normal Sunday evening, at a town-house in central London, with journalist and mother Rachel Kelly bathing her children. This is the beginning of her first depressive episode. In Black Rainbow, Rachel Kelly recounts her story of survival when she suffered not one but two depressive episodes in her thirties. With lyrical prose interspersed by beautiful poetry, Rachel describes both her painful relapses and the tortuously slow recovery.

For me, this book was so important because it gives evidence to the often-cited words 'this could happen to anyone'. Through the contradiction of Rachel's apparently perfect life and her depression, Black Rainbow proves that illnesses like depression are as indiscriminate as cancers when picking their victims. One of the most important take-aways I found from this book was that we must never undermine or make unfair presumptions about others' experiences based on outwards appearances.

What's more, Black Rainbow educated me on a side of depression that I previously knew nothing about - the experience of actually living with the illness. Prior to reading Black Rainbow, I had no idea that sufferers could experience depression as physical bodily agony. Nor did I properly understand how completely crippling this illness can be. I now feel that I have a better understanding of not only the illness, but how to manage it and how to help others suffering from it. This is all invaluable.

Overall, Black Rainbow has been an enjoyable and educational experience, and I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone better trying to understand depression.

[Eileen Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, and gave me a real insight into how bipolar disorder can strike seemingly out of nowhere. Long ago I lived with a manic depressive (manic depression is what the condition used to be called)for 10 years (his mother had also been a manic depressive). I had a colleague for many year whose husband also suffered from the condition. Recently I experienced someone falling apart with the condition too. Clearly it is an illness which requires medication.

Even knowing about and having experienced what I have second-hand as it were, I still could not feel hugely sympathetic for the author, though she writes with great honesty and in some painful detail.
I ask myself why? I believe in being compassionate towards those who suffer. Clearly it's her particular journey, and after all who am I to judge. Yet there is a nagging voice in my head which says - 'But we all have choices.' Life is difficult and will always throw us challenges. It is our task to deal with them. We have to cultivate a habit of self-awareness - through meditation, mindfulness, yoga. In the end it was poetry that helped the author, and that I can understand. What I cannot understand is the lifestyle she chose. She was so lucky with her supportive husband but she seemed to run headlong not into just one breakdown but into a second as well.
Whatever, hopefully the book will be helpful to those who suffer bipolar disorder.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The jury is still out on whether reading a book about someone's journey through depression is, for those who have struggled with the illness themselves, mostly an uplifting and encouraging thing to do. It is good to read about another's journey, it is good to be reminded we are not alone, but it's also hard - sometimes the emotion seems a little too raw, it cuts too close to the bone. This is depression - a struggle with confusion, doubt, self-absorption, anger, a struggle to get up and get out of bed, a struggle to find joy in the gifts of the moments we have been given. Kelly's struggle is very particular to her own challenges of having five children and juggling work commitments and meeting her own very high standards, but many of her difficulties are common to anyone suffering the illness. She has written with courage and honesty, and has threaded her story through with poetry, some of the lines of which still dance in my mind. Today it was these ones, from "Everyone Sang", by Siegfried Sassoon:
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Kelly quotes this poem, and others, and provides practical suggestions for how to care for yourself in depression... suggestions she has lived, practices that brought her healing. Thus it is a memoir of pain, but also of hope.

[Jessica Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this during a depressive episode I experienced at the beginning of the year. I was off work, crippled with depression and anxiety, but I needed an outlet so I signed up for an online course about mental health and literature; this book was on the reading list, and the author interviewed.

It took me a long time to read this because some parts rung so true that they were painful to read. I found myself fervently highlighting phrases as I recognised my own depressive tendencies in the author's recounts. Her experiences were eerily similar in places; I realise now that reading this could have been detrimental but I actually found the experience supportive as I realised I was not alone in my anxious need to aim for perfection and approval.

The majority of the book focuses on how poetry is used to aid the author's recovery process. Towards the end, I found that this tapered out as extracts were quoted less and reflective conclusions made instead. I think the author is incredibly brave to have shared her experiences with the reading public.

This was hard to read in places, as I was aware this wasn't a fictional story but someone's life. However, I thoroughly recommend this to anyone experiencing or supporting someone with mental health issues.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started being quite disappointed with this book, basically because Rachel Kelly lives a privileged life and has the continually support of her family and paid carers to look after her children when she is unable. She doesn't have to work. But once I pushed my own prejudices aside I could really appreciate her personal journey of having suffered from depression and her solace in poetry. There are some real gems in here, it has made me look more to the healing power of the written word. She shows a real humility in revealing everything about her experiences with this awful illness, how it has changed her life to a more simple one where she is more compassionate towards herself, how she will always be proactive in fighting it, depression will always be a part of her. I liked reading her experiences of therapy, and also her holistic treatment-focusing on diet, exercise, dealing with anger. I thoroughly recommend this book. I look forward to reading her new book "walking on sunshine".

[Sukey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've ever read about depression. Rachel Kelly chronicles her two nervous breakdowns and her subsequent recoveries in a very readable and accessible manner. Her descriptions of her suffering at the height of her illness were so honest and accurate that they were almost painful to read and will no doubt be instantly recognisable to anyone who has had depression or known someone with it. However, the book is also uplifting, detailing her determined but slow return to health with explanations of things that helped her (drugs, diet, exercise, therapy) and interspersed with poignant poems. Highly recommended.

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seems odd to "like" a book on depression but Rachel Kelly manages to tell it as it is, warts and all in an amazingly dispassionate yet forceful way. It reads somewhere between a novel and memoir. I had engaged with this completely crippling nature that depression can be with Mat Haig and was lured to read this by Rachel talking (on a FutureLearn course) about the place for poetry with depression.

Like (yet unlike) Matt Haig's "Reasons to stay alive" it is a completely terrifying account (but so personal) and is enabling to the reader in so many ways - focusing on not only the onset and journey of depression but the management of expectation.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and thought provoking. The description of such depressive episodes was outside my own experience but many snippets struck a chord. I read this book because I signed up for Future Learn Literature and Mental Health course. It proved far more fascinating than a required book should be. The author was an avid reader and collector of poetry and writings before she succumbed to depression so it maybe that if you are not familiar with reading poetry taking it up will not comfort you in the same way. However it is a suggestion as to one way through. Seems strange to say I loved a book describing severe episodes of mental illness but I did!

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried so hard to empathise with Rachel, and I did feel for her in her suffering, but I found it impossible to like her. Her writing style is good, and she has included some cracking poems, but try as I might, her values and world view are so far removed from mine that I just cannot relate to her as a person. I'm left deeply disappointed with myself, as I didn't realise I was quite so narrow-minded and judgemental!

[Cristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic does not interest me particularly however the book is a good read. The main points are: 1) one relates to the author, she is very good at telling her feelings and life, 2) the sequencing is great (it is not chronological neither by topic! there is a flow to it. For example Rachel tells her about her childhood at around page 150.

[Nicola Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for the Futurelearn Course, Literature and Mental Health, which I have just begun. It is interesting and well written - over the curse of the book I felt varying amounts of empathy for the writer, but she does express herself very well. I enjoyed the selection of poetry - some old favourites of mine, but many were new to me. A very worthwhile read.

[Mrs M E Sharpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful, emotional and enlightning

Having been given Rachel Kelly's Walking on Sunshine as a gift I decided to find out more about her journey. Black Rainbow has been an engaging read and has helped put my own problems into perspective.
I would recommend this too anyone who has suffered depression and would like to understand more about the condition.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting account, demonstrating how depression can affect anyone, no matter how privileged. Even with access to emotional support from family, friends and neighbours and specialised medical care that anyone who has tried to access mental health treatment from the NHS could only dream of, the writer still struggles.