Leading a Life

In Leading a Life, Georgia Ressmeyer's poems consider what it means to be "normal," blurring the sharp distinctions that marginalize people diagnosed with mental illnesses. including many of the clients she defended years ago in civil commitment proceedings. Their funny or sad, always fully-human stories stayed with her and evolved to form the basis of this collection. Ressmeyer examines, as well, her own mental and emotional states in poems that bring each of us to the reckoning that we're not so different from everyone else who struggles to maintain balance in trying circumstances.