Writer returns home to launch memoir with a big focus on Armidale

Thursday night saw the Armidale launch of her most recent literary offering, In My Mother’s Hands, which details what it was like growing up with mother, suffered from severe schizophrenia.

The most notably element on the front cover of the book are the gloved hands of Ward’s mother.

“It’s a story of gloves like you’ve never heard before,” Ward said.

“It’s about what the gloves covered up.”

A prominent focus of the book is the troubling circumstances of her older sister, who drowned as an infant in a bathtub before Ward was born.

The book is told in the voice of Ward, aided by her razor sharp memories and recounted from family members and friends.

“I sat down to write about my father who was a kind, wonderful, charismatic man, but my mother kept coming into it,” she said.

Ward’s father was a prominent historian in Armidale, who was credited with bringing the legends of Australian history to the region.

Ward said her short, but formmative years in Armidale were quite significant for her and her mother, with four of the 16 chapters in the book based in the city.

“I was here from the age for 14 to 19, which were very powerful years in my life,” she said.

“My mother was extremely ill by then, and I coped by getting out of the house a lot.

“I made some wonderful friends here, and people were especially kind, because I think they knew that something wasn’t right.”

The struggles were made greater by the social climate in Australia during that time, when mental health issues were rarely addressed.

“There was no language to talk about mental illness in the 40s and the 50s,” Ward said.

“The only word people would use was nervous breakdown.”

Ward said telling the stories of mental illness are important to break down the stigma surrounding in the mentally ill.

In My Mother’s Hands is currently available at Reader’s Companion.