Rock Steady is a self-help survival guide of tips, tricks, and tools on how to survive being bipolar by someone who has been through it all and come out stronger in the end.
This volume is truly a must-read for anyone who struggles with a mental disorder or someone who finds comfort in daily structure. Forney addresses readers with the tone of a caring friend, and her approach will likely make her fans eager for more grounding advice.
Rock Steady is pragmatically structured around specific topics, which only occasionally are accompanied by witty narrative segments. Still, the humorous narratives can be the best part ... Aside from her illustrations, Forney’s writing style gets her message across: she does not coddle her readers, nor does she overwhelm them with complex medical terminology ... Still, even without a gripping narrative arc, Rock Steady achieves its goals in a brilliant manner. It might not be engrossing, but it will be easy and comforting to consult for some issue-specific advice and relief.
While it’s drawn from her own experience with bipolar, most of it is applicable to anyone with a mood disorder; in fact, it has chapters that would be useful for anyone, like one entirely dedicated to insomnia. It has everything from practical advice on funding your mental health care to track listings of mixtapes to help with different moods ... Rock Steady, though, is a practical guide. It’s impossible to gauge how well it succeeds without asking if it’s useful, or if it’s not. All I can say is that I found it useful, and I imagine many others will too.
