Optimal Distance: A Divided Life, Part One - Softcover

Joan Carol Lieberman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0998769010 ISBN 13: 9780998769011

Publisher: Camperdown Elm Press, 2017

Synopsis

Part Oneof Joan Carol Lieberman’s two-part autobiography, OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, reveals the genesis of her family in prose and photographs. The book’s title comes from early recognition that her survival was dependent on maintaining a safe distance from her mother, the descendant of prominent Mormon pioneers, who tragically developed paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the author’s birth. Perpetually alert to the distance between herself and others, her narrative draws upon the attachment theory of D.W. Winnicott, British pediatrician and psychoanalyst. Part One includes two of the five smaller books found in this autobiography: the author’s “CHILDHOOD” from her birth as a Gentile in Salt Lake City in 1942 to her first pregnancy in 1962 in Berkeley; and “MOTHERHOOD” from 1963, when the author gave birth to her daughter, to her mother’s death on the morning of the author’s fortieth birthday in June 1982.The author’s father was a federal research entomologist assigned to conduct the first experiments using DDT for agricultural purposes in Delta, Utah. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, but spent most of his childhood in Ogden, Utah. He was distantly related to Simon Bamberger, the only Jewish governor of Utah. After World War II, he was transferred from Delta to Logan, Utah, where he headed the USDA lab at Utah State. It was in Logan that the author found safe harbor in the Mormon Church. When she was five, she followed a playmate to a Ward House, where her presence was welcomed. Knowing her mother would never follow her there, she felt the Mormon Church was a safe place to hide. Or as she writes: “I always felt like a small wild animal desperately trying to hide from danger among a large herd of domineering dairy cows.” At age eight, she went to the Mormon Temple alone to be baptized. At fourteen, her father was transferred to Bozeman, Montana, and the author left Utah and Mormonism behind. Less than a year later, her father was sent to Bakersfield, California, where she graduated from high school. During high school she was a National Science Fair winner and finally learned the name and cause of her mother’s mental illness. In that era, most psychiatric experts believed schizophrenia was caused by “perverse mothering.” Having had nothing but that, the author concluded that she was doomed, a fear that haunted her for the next twenty years, even as she began a hopeless quest to heal her mother.After studies at the University of California at Berkeley, Joan Carol Lieberman traveled in Europe and worked as a medical volunteer in Africa, where she contracted Yellow Fever. By the time she returned to America, her father had been transferred to Tucson, Arizona. The first night she was home from Africa, her mother made an attempt on her life. She committed her mother to a Tucson hospital where she was treated for the first time with the first pyschotropic drug, Thorazine. After a month in Tucson, the author returned to Berkeley to continue her studies. Increasingly resilient, she was able to withstand the sadness of her mother’s illness, even while she faced an illegitimate pregnancy, shotgun marriage, divorce, and single-working-motherhood. Granted excommunication from the Mormon Church on the grounds of apostasy in 1966, she moved to Northern Idaho to finish her thesis on leadership. After accepting a managerial position in Boulder, Colorado, she began breaking through the glass ceilings facing women and never stopped. Her poignant, detailed journey is both exhaustively researched and intimately personal. Locales include: Salt Lake City, Delta, and Logan, Utah; Yellowstone, Wyoming; Bozeman, Montana; Bakersfield and Berkeley, California; Europe; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Troy, Idaho; Boulder, Colorado.

About this title

About the Author

OPTIMAL DISTANCE, A Divided Life, is a complex and compelling autobiography that covers the whole of Joan Carol Lieberman’s personal history. As a young child, she became expert in managing the psychological and physical distance between herself and others because to survive she had to keep a safe distance from her paranoid schizophrenic mother, who suffered from episodic murderous impulses. Having spent her life in close proximity to death because of her mother, she learned how difficult it is for human beings to face mortality, regardless of their religious beliefs. Part One begins during and after World War II in Utah, in two small Mormon communities, Delta and Logan. During the first half of the author’s life, it was the long era when many experts believed schizophrenia was caused by “perverse mothering”and before any anti-psychotic medications were developed. The author becomes a mother herself while a student at UC Berkeley and faces many economic challenges trying to finish her education. When her mother dies on the morning of the author’s fortieth birthday, she considers it to be the greatest gift her mother ever gave her. Part Two opens with the author feeling as if she has a second chance at life after her mother’s death and the birth of her second child. However, not long after starting motherhood all over again, she meets new obstacles, including metastatic breast cancer. The details of her treatments and what happens to other mothers with young children are poignant reminders of how dependent we are on others. With the close proximity of death, the author stops looking forward for hope and to instead begins to look back in search of meaning. In seeking the secrets of her ancestors, she discovers the new science of epigenetics. Her open and honest narrative inspires readers to reflect on their own relationships, their inevitable deaths, and their spiritual beliefs. Joan Carol Lieberman has been a management consultant for forty years and continues to advise and write for long-term clients. A finalist for the Bakeless Literary Prize, she was invited to attend Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as a Bakeless Scholar in 1999. It was there that she began writing her autobiography, an eighteen year effort that she finished on her seventy-fifth birthday in June 2017. Married, she is the mother of two grown children, and lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Review

"Maybe astounding stories like those in OPTIMAL DISTANCE only happen to people who can tell them with her sensitivity and skill. Joan Carol Lieberman's wise narrative shines and inspires."
-Patricia Hampl, MacArthur Fellow and author of four memoirs: A Romantic Education, Virgin Time, I Could Tell You Stories, and The Florist's Daughter.

"A profound autobiographical exploration of the nature of attachment and mental illness in Mormon Utah. Joan Carol Lieberman's mother developed paranoid schizophrenia in Delta, Utah, shortly after the author's birth in 1942. Her poignant narrative of how she sought optimal distance from her mother's dangerous paranoid impulses is a powerful reminder of the urgent need to find a cure for schizophrenia, a devastating disease that strikes one out of every one hundred of us."
-Andrew Solomon, award winning author of Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

"A brave and beautiful book. Each page is a truthful manifestation of embodied prose."
-Terry Tempest Williams, author of Finding Beauty in a Broken World

"An amazing American autobiography about a family with a history that is as diverse as our cultural, national and religious backgrounds narrated with tenderness, sincerity and grace. Joan's fraught relationship with her mother helps her define what we all need in some way - an optimal distance to discover our own unique path in life. Her ability to illuminate this is a true gift to her readers."
-Ruth Wariner, bestselling author of The Sound of Gravel

Edition details

• Publisher: Camperdown Elm Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0998769010
• ISBN 13: 9780998769011
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 384