Miskin’s memoir, Hell Gate Bridge: A Memoir of Motherhood, Madness, and Hope, reveals the emotional toll of living with depersonalization-derealization disorder (DPDR), highlighting the isolation caused by misdiagnosis, societal pressures on motherhood, and the critical need for equitable mental health care during pregnancy.

While Miskin was in the early stages of treatment, telling her story wasn’t therapeutic—it led to feelings of self-erasure and shame. In the psychiatric ER, repeatedly sharing her story “continued to subtly erase [her] sense of self” (35). Later, when she was in the hospital being induced for Nora’s birth, she felt she "had to shame [herself] by recounting [her] story," this time to even more people during rounds than in the ER, when asked why she was being induced (89).

However, Miskin reveals how writing her memoir, Hell Gate Bridge, was a quick yet consuming and therapeutic process. Rather than promoting shame and erasure of self, writing this memoir offered a release from the trauma she experienced. Though emotionally taxing, revisiting difficult memories was crucial to telling her story honestly. Her ultimate hope is to open conversations about perinatal mental health and DPDR, providing a beacon of hope for others facing similar struggles.

Melissa Rampelli: When you were able to engage with literature again, what specific texts or authors resonated with you or helped you in the process of healing and/or writing Hell Gate Bridge?

Barrie Miskin: Catherine Cho’s Inferno and Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire were the two books I went back to again and again. Also, Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms about her recovery from cancer and my mentor Sarah Perry’s book After the Eclipse in which she contends with the devastation of her mother’s murder when she was a child.

When I was........

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