While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence

Content Warning: This section contains discussions of suicide, self-harm, domestic violence, child abuse, substance use disorders, and mental illness; there is also a brief reference to an antisemitic hate crime.

Meg Kissinger describes her family members and their prominent character traits to set the stage for the events that defined her family dynamic and the issues that shaped her and her siblings’ lives. Meg and her seven siblings (Mary Kay, Nancy, Jake, Patty, Billy, Danny, and Molly) grew up in North Chicago with their parents, Bill (who went by Holmer) and Jean Kissinger. Although Jean had other aspirations, she followed the dictates of her Irish Catholic background, in which a woman’s purpose was to bear children. She was a dutiful mother but had anxiety and depression. Holmer sold advertising space to drug companies, many of which sold the tranquilizers prescribed to women like Jean. He would often come home after work already intoxicated, and his moods were unpredictable—he hit the children impulsively, often for no reason at all.

Mary Kay, Meg’s oldest sister, was an art enthusiast. Nancy was smart but sneaky and often vengeful. Jake, the eldest boy, was often bullied at school, and looking back, Meg regrets never intervening.