Flying with Paper Wings: Reflections on Living with Madness (updated edition)
Sandy Jeffs was born in Ballarat in 1953. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1976, a time when recovery was seen as unlikely. She was in and out of institutional care for 15 years, including at the infamous Larundel Psychiatric Hospital.
Sandy was among the first to start speaking publicly about living with a mental illness, and much of her writing - including eight volumes of poetry - has been about her struggle to live a full life. She is well-known as a community educator, speaking to doctors and psychiatrists, at community health centres, and educational institutions. She has been honoured in the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, Her Place Women’s Museum, and with an OAM in 2020.
Flying with Paper Wings offers insights into madness – medical, social, personal – as well as disturbing reflections on its causes and its care. It is also a story of how poetry can become a personal saviour in the face of nearly irresistible forces. This edition is an updated edition based on the original text.
Read this exceptional book. It takes you beyond your own narrow terror towards something that might be called insight.
—Helen Elliott, The Age
Awards:
Highly Commended Certificate in the Human Rights Commission’s Non-Fiction Award 2010
SANE Book of the Year 2010
Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award, 2010
MARCH 2024 | 9781925950946 | Paperback | 152 x 229mm | 278 pages
Calm, clear, honest and it oh so gently lifts your soul until you unexpectedly find yourself gliding in the clouds before gently coming back to earth. And weaving in the rhapsody works a wonder and evinces deep hope.
—Jack Heath, CEO Philanthropy Australia, Former CEO SANEUltimately, it is Sandy’s insight into fighting the monster of psychosis that makes this book valuable to the many people …[who] have had to fight similar demons. Whether Sandy’s voices will ever be stilled is hard to say. She says of them: ‘It’s like a war of words between us. I hope it will be me who has the last word.’ With this book, that will outlive both her and them, I believe she has.
—Andrew Denton
Reviews
The Weekend Australian shared an extract from the new edition of Flying with Paper Wings. Subscribers can read it - and the many wonderful reader comments to the article - here.
It is a compelling story. Read the full review.
—Jim Cable, Independent Australia