Reasons to Stay Alive

Reasons to Stay Alive creates an accessibility around mental health that is vital in our culture today. Even if you aren’t struggling with anxiety, depression, or any other number of mental health disorders, this book is still one to keep in your library for those in your life who do struggle. Gift it. Recommend it. Reference the chapter titled “How to be there for someone with depression or anxiety”… “Be patient. Understand it isn’t going to be easy. Depression ebbs and flows and moves up and down. It doesn’t stay still. Do not take one happy/bad moment as proof of recovery/relapse. Play the long game.”

Haig ends the book with a chapter titled “Things I have enjoyed since the time I thought I would never enjoy anything again.” The list is funny, beautiful, poignant, real… “Laughing. Yes. Laughing so hard it hurts. Laughing as you bend forward and as your abdomen actually starts to hurt from so much pleasure, so much release, and then as you sit back and audibly groan and inhale deeply, staring at the person next to you, mopping up the joy.”