Trigger warning : Depression, eating disorder, suicide, sexual harassment, anxiety, drug induced violence, postpartum depression.
Oh God!
This book is everything I needed at the moment. Shadows in the Sun is Gayathri Ramprasad's memoir. Through the book she shares her journey, her almost-a-decade long battle with anxiety and depression. Mrs R is amazing. The narrator grows up in a very strict Hindu household with her loving parents and siblings.
The first parts of the book talks about her slow descent into adolescent depression. It's so genuinely written that it gets painful to read. (Especially if you're someone who grew up in a similar household with a mental illness). She talks about her struggle with finding her identity as a teenager growing up and finding a balance between being the "pleaser"of the family as well as being her own person. The author manages to beautifully her love-hate relationship with her conservative mother as well as the Gods that she was rigidly taught to worship.
The middle part talks about her marriage to a software engineer, Ramprasad and her migration to America. This part deals with the contrast in the lives lead in both the countries and her struggle with finding herself now that she is no longer a part of a huge family with a predetermined role to play.
The next part deals with postpartum depression, her descent into the worst parts of her life with depression and finally hospitalization and her "awakening" or healing.
Gayathri Ramprasad is very candid about her battle. She shares her thoughts without filters and I think that's what this made the book endearing. She does not try to paint herself or her family as anything other than themselves. Reading her story about growing up in a Hindu household in India with a family who considered depression a myth or a weakness made me feel understood and normal. I realized a lot of things about my own struggle with mental illness while reading this book.
The biggest battle that she faces in her life is the fear that she is not normal and she shares how she overcame this through sharing her story and how she adopted a holistic method to heal herself and free herself of the stigma associated with mental health.
Finally, my first 5 star book of 2020. I thank the Gods for making me pick up this book last year at a used bookstore. It made me cry like a baby way too many times. I would recommend it to everyone who grew up in a similar background and have dealt with mental illness. I would also recommend it to people who would love to understand how depression works or the stigma related to it in a country like ours.

P.S. Gayathri Ramaprasad is the founder of a non profit called ASHA International, which strives to provide inclusion and empathy to people battling mental illness. ( )