The Integrity Cure

What if honesty is all it takes to set you free? Inspired by the illumination of Bipolar Type II diagnosis at age 46, and the subsequent process of healing, Donelle McKinley’s memoir offers hope of recovery from ‘incurable’ illness and lights the way for others.

In deft literary style, The Integrity Cure provides insights into a relatively common mental illness that flies under the radar of general awareness, while sufferers battle emotional extremes that can derail their lives repeatedly. The author shares the personal experience of an unorthodox approach to therapy, which burrowed beneath the symptoms of ignorance to identify and extract the cause of suffering.

Across 30 stories that illustrate a pattern of flight and fresh starts, she examines the role of home, place, cultural heritage and the arts in her efforts to hold fast to her foundations. Capturing poignant moments of her life and travels, from Stratford-upon-Avon to the Shanghai Bund, from the heart of Turkey to earthquaked New Zealand and the ivory towers of Oxford, riding a rollercoaster of hypomania and depression to diagnosis and beyond, her memoir celebrates the power of the humanities to enrich our life and understand its complexity.

With different points of view and approaches to storytelling subtly applied to serve dissociation, reinvention, and reflection, stories revisit pivotal events, capture emotional impressions, and explore themes of vocation, love, spirituality, integrity, and freedom. Poetic, uplifting, and unflinchingly honest, The Integrity Cure honours the precious, the painful, and the extraordinary in a half-life lived bipolar.