Devout

October 1, 2023

In 2011, Gazmarian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which suddenly made sense of her life but was viewed by the Evangelical community in which she was raised as an affliction of the spirit instead of a medical condition. Here she explains how she spent years finding a way to square her mental health issues with her religious beliefs. Prepub Alert.

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January 1, 2024
A young woman's account of faith, church, and mental illness. During her freshman year of college, Gazmarian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her diagnosis and subsequent struggle to find adequate treatment was complicated by her evangelical Christian upbringing. "I was determined to be a good Christian, but I struggled with doubt," she writes. "In my community, doubt wasn't welcome." As the author narrates her path through therapists' offices and experiences with a variety of medication regimens, she also notes the way that Christian teachings, narcissistic church authorities, and the prayerful passivity of the faithful created their own obstacles to mental stability and support resources. The text is a whispered challenge to the evangelical church and a subtle critique of how Gazmarian's faith tradition accounts for and engages with mental illness, with hints at the inadequacies of other institutions, such as schools and medical professionals, to right this failure. Gazmarian also writes about seeking out Christian therapists, and she integrates into the text Scripture passages on which she continually relies, even in her darkest moments. The authentic version of the author's personal faith journey is complicated and nuanced and may elude literary expression; the writing reflects a restless and distracted quality that suggests as much. However, both the doubts of the author and the solace she ultimately finds are presented in a manner that feels overly cautious, and many of the descriptions could have benefitted from tighter editing. The resulting rather anticlimactic reconciliation blunts the potential force of a much-needed exploration of the intersection between mental illness and faith. Readers are left knowing that Gazmarian's ideas of faith, religion, and church have changed and expanded, but not the reasons why faith truly matters to her. A mostly surface-level story about both the flaws and hopeful possibilities of religion.

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Starred review from January 22, 2024
Gazmarian’s dazzling debut memoir delivers a potent examination of the intersection between faith and mental health. Raised as an evangelical Christian—a designation she continues to identify with—Gazmarian long struggled with religious doubt, which is often considered anathema in her spiritual circles. As a freshman in college, she was rebaptized in an attempt to quell that doubt. A short time later, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Seeking comfort in her faith, Gazmarian found that her religion ascribed nearly all negative sensations to Satan, and wondered whether her diagnosis was a test of her faith. Fighting near-constant thoughts of suicide, Gazmarian eventually found stability with the proper cocktail of prescription medications, an open-minded group of fellow believers, and her husband and baby daughter. Rather than demonize her religious beliefs for driving her shame, Gazmarian embarks on a measured and compassionate examination of the stigma around her condition. By resisting easy finger-pointing and making a strong case for treatment and acceptance, she extends a hand not only to religious people living with mental illness, but also their friends, families, and faith leaders. This deserves a wide readership. Agent: Cassie Mannes Murray, Howland Literary.

February 1, 2024
What do you do when the place that's supposed to be a safe haven misunderstands and rejects you? This is the question Gazmarian contends with in her transparent memoir debut. Raised in an evangelical church in North Carolina, the author always worried about her salvation and her worth to God but diligently attended despite her doubt. In college, after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, fears about how the church would treat her added to her grappling with the diagnosis itself and regulating her medications. After transferring to a new college and discovering poetry and her talent for writing, she found emotional outlets for examining questions without judgment. She learned to navigate a relationship, then marriage, with David, who suffers from depression. Together, they pursued an accepting church family despite past traumas and eventually found one. Gazmarian discovers that hope and lament can coexist; her perseverance deepens her faith, and she concludes on an optimistic note with a beautiful letter to her daughter. Fans of Rachel Held Evans and Sarah Bessey will welcome this eloquent voice.

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