Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot

11 reviews

bisexualbookshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

3.5

Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries is a memoir that resists easy categorization—a fragmented, poetic, and searingly intimate meditation on survival, identity, and the complicated act of telling one’s own story. With prose that feels like both an offering and a demand, Mailhot unravels the layers of pain, memory, and inheritance that shape her existence as an Indigenous woman in a world that would rather forget her.

Mailhot documents her struggles with mental illness, her fraught relationships, and the impossible expectations placed upon Indigenous women, particularly in the realm of storytelling. She is not interested in neat narratives or palatable resolutions. Instead, she leans into the tension between personal truth and collective history, resisting the impulse to explain or justify. Her words cut with precision: “Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves.” That forgetting—forced, inherited, and sometimes willed—is at the heart of her story.

The memoir traces Mailhot’s time in an in-patient psychiatric hospital, her diagnosis of PTSD, bipolar disorder, and an eating disorder, and her tumultuous relationship with her white creative writing professor, Casey. The power imbalance in their relationship mirrors the broader structures of colonial violence, as Mailhot is forced to navigate both love and exploitation in a space where she is perpetually undervalued. Her struggles with motherhood, memory, and psychiatric care are deeply entangled, revealing how Western institutions fail Indigenous women, offering treatment without understanding, structure without care.

While Mailhot’s reflections on race, gender, and power are striking, Heart Berries is, at its core, a story of relationship dysfunction—one that often reads as a meditation on longing, self-destruction, and unreciprocated devotion. As someone who does not gravitate toward romance-heavy narratives, I found myself frustrated by how much of the book was consumed by Mailhot’s agony over Casey, rather than the sharper interrogations of colonialism and intergenerational trauma that surface throughout. Additionally, childhood sexual abuse is one of my primary triggers, and the lack of content warnings made certain sections difficult to engage with.

Despite these reservations, Heart Berries is undeniably powerful in its form and execution. Mailhot’s writing is unflinching, lyrical, and immersive, a refusal to be easily understood or consumed. Though the memoir was not for me, its rawness and vulnerability are undeniable, making it an essential read for those seeking a voice that refuses to be silenced.

📖 Read this if you love: raw and poetic memoirs, nonlinear storytelling, and explorations of Indigenous womanhood.

🔑 Key Themes: Reclaiming Narrative and Voice, Intergenerational Trauma, Mental Illness and Survival, Race and Gender in Intimacy, The Limits of Western Healing Frameworks.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Child abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Minor: Alcoholism, Drug use, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Abortion, and Death of parent

The sexual assault, incest, and pedophilia content warnings are in relation to a description of incestual childhood sexual abuse. This description occurs on page 109.

theboricuabookworm's review against another edition

Gripping and raw. The lyrical way Mailhot writes about pain and trauma and grief will leave you gasping.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Incest, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Classism

carnimdream's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Racism, Violence, Gaslighting, and Alcohol

Minor: Chronic illness and Abortion

kelsey_kels's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Drug use, Self harm, Death of parent, and Alcohol

vainnerj's review against another edition

dark emotional inspiring medium-paced

4.0

A beautiful and ephemeral look into the intersection of race, culture, gender and mental health. The author has a certain way with words that takes you on a ride that you cannot predict the ending of. I know that the author states towards the end that she had initially envisioned this as a fictional story based on her own experiences, but I am glad she was willing to be so raw and open as to tell her story without that separation. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Death of parent

spicycheesecake's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

Such a beautiful book. The writing is amazing, and the story being told is so captivating. I was immediately pulled in from the first page, and felt emotional the whole ride through.

There are many things I could not relate with, but I understood everything, and I felt like I was there -- spectating, watching, experiencing.

I've learned about myself and my own relationships just from seeing the perspectives in this book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Sexual assault, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

Moderate: Abortion

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Cancer, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, and Murder

Residential schools, illnesses, rehab, divorce, foster home, teen marriage, child services, neglect, postpartum depression.

mxae's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.75

A hard read. Glad to have read it once, but complicated, especially for those who have also experienced trauma. Leaves a kind of madness with the reader, which is a beautiful skill. The afterword is also excellent and a way to own the reading of the book. Its own kind of genius.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Incest, Mental illness, Abortion, and Death of parent

hannaheiserman's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, and Alcohol

esmithumland's review against another edition

I knew nothing about this book except for the title, and I was surprised at how painful it was to listen to. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Colonisation