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 Brentwood, TN - Cold Tree Press is proud to announce the publication of Westchester resident Linda Appleman Shapiro’s Four Rooms, Upstairs.
This memoir is a brave look back at growing up in the looming shadow of mental illness during the 1940s and 50s in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
Shapiro, now a psychotherapist, sat down 15 years ago to write a self-help book for Adult Children of the Mentally Ill. However, she only got three pages written before she realized she was not meant to write a self-help book. “It became painfully clear when I found myself wiping tears from my eyes that I did have a story to tell, but it was my story,” she says. “I felt that I owed it to myself, my family and my patients to write it.”
Shapiro grew up in an immigrant neighborhood with a mentally ill mother. Mental illness, in those days, was not understood as it is today, and except for periodic electric shock therapy, Shapiro’s mother went mostly untreated. Without the benefits of talk therapy and modern-day medications, Shapiro’s mother would often slip into deep depressions and agitated panic, sometimes for weeks at a time, or longer. In this family history, Shapiro takes us through the years of fear and uncertainty to love, forgiveness and healing.
Four Rooms is not just the story of a survivor, it is a story about how to survive. Written not just as a first person account, Four Rooms includes the insight of a therapist, which Shapiro hopes will help others move beyond trauma.
Shapiro earned a B.A. in Literature from Bennington College, an M.A. in Human Development/Counseling from the Bank Street College of Education, a Master Certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming from the New York Institute for NLP, and further certifications in Eriksonian Hypnosis and addiction counseling. She lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband, actor and audiobook narrator George Guidall. They have two married daughters and two grandchildren.
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