life inside by Mindy Lewis

Adolescence is difficult and painful : rebellion , critical parental scrutiny , an overall feeling of not living up to expectations . For some of us it is a time of excess - drug use , arguments , lots of psychic pain . Mindy Lewis ' compelling memoir is about what happens when adolescent rebellion is not treated as routine . Her version of teenage acting out led to a more than two-year incarceration in the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (which she calls PI ) when she was almost 16 years old . The book , Life Inside , explores Lewis ' life

, telling a story of an upbringing quite different from most , and its effects

Always a creative soul , Lewis expressed her emotions in painting , rarely in writing . But an intense cyber-romance in the early `90s led her to begin to express her emotions in writing . She began to take workshops writing essays and the occasional short story . Positive reinforcement in the workshops and small successes getting published made her take her writing a little more seriously . She actually wasn 't sure she could go through with her story , until she followed friends ' encouragement to write it , not just for herself but for the others who had been with her and for those who are in a similar situation now

Life inside chronicles a reasonably happy childhood in Manhattan , her father 's departure for California , and the dissolution of her parents marriage . The arrival of a stepfather did not provide any cushion as her relationship with her mother started to disintegrate when she began high school , smack in the middle of the `60s . Though her painting ability had secured her acceptance at the High School of Music and Art , she soon began to feel as though she didn 't fit in . She just didn 't feel hip enough for the other kids and heady atmosphere that pervaded the school Lewis had discovered an escape in marijuana , LSD , and a collection of other drugs . Her parents sent her to a psychiatrist to try to find a way to reach her , and though he didn 't seem to think that she was crazy he recommended institutionalizing her when she was suspended from Music and Art and made a perfunctory attempt at suicide

Several things strike the reader during the journey through the book the remarkable level of detail about Lewis ' experiences at PI the difficult adulthood that seemed as excruciating as it was inevitable following such a contorted adolescence and the courage that it must have taken to commit all of it to paper . As Lewis says : In [Life Inside] I hoped to give something - clues to parents of adolescents , or to adolescents themselves who are in pain . I wanted to let them know that there are kindred spirits - they 're not alone . There is a path out of the dark . If the worst situation in my life can become a positive it 's like alchemy . It gives me faith that miracles can happen in life 'Her story is honest and...