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Gone Before Gone: When Mental Illness Steals Someone You Love
How to survive ambiguous loss, by a mom who lost her son to psychosis and then to suicide.
What mom expects her honor-student son to one day barricade a bathroom in their home to lock away “demons?” Who can imagine a beloved child behind jail Plexiglas, his eyes vacant? How does a mom sleep knowing her son is homeless, sleeping rough in a city park, his life tattered by his disordered mind? In Gone Before Gone, Clark describes her son’s “death by degrees” during a young adulthood wrecked by severe mental illness.
Surviving a parent’s nightmare led to Clark’s memoir of self-help—a toolkit for living with “ambiguous loss,” a term coined by Pauline Boss, PhD, an academic, author, and long-time family therapist. Trained by Boss herself, Clark has blended Boss’ concepts with her own experiences and the coping skills she’s cultivated as a long-time yoga teacher.
The result is a book like none other. Part memoir, part survival guide, complete with practical exercises. You’ll feel as though a kind mom is holding your hand and helping you breathe as you bravely take one step at a time toward healing yourself.
What mom expects her honor-student son to one day barricade a bathroom in their home to lock away “demons?” Who can imagine a beloved child behind jail Plexiglas, his eyes vacant? How does a mom sleep knowing her son is homeless, sleeping rough in a city park, his life tattered by his disordered mind? In Gone Before Gone, Clark describes her son’s “death by degrees” during a young adulthood wrecked by severe mental illness.
Surviving a parent’s nightmare led to Clark’s memoir of self-help—a toolkit for living with “ambiguous loss,” a term coined by Pauline Boss, PhD, an academic, author, and long-time family therapist. Trained by Boss herself, Clark has blended Boss’ concepts with her own experiences and the coping skills she’s cultivated as a long-time yoga teacher.
The result is a book like none other. Part memoir, part survival guide, complete with practical exercises. You’ll feel as though a kind mom is holding your hand and helping you breathe as you bravely take one step at a time toward healing yourself.
250 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 21, 2026
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March 6, 2026
This book is a gift to everyone experiencing ambiguous loss and to their loved ones. Clark never, not once, implies that the suffering involved in ambiguous loss is a “gift” or “blessing.” She offers her beautifully written story as an example of how to carry the both/and of life and loss, anguish and peace, chaos and control.
Displaying 1 of 1 review