Choosing Dance Over Despair: How I Found Keys to Joy and Recovery While Living With Serious Mental Illness (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798998638022)

In Choosing Dance Over Despair: How I Found Keys to Joy and Recovery While Living With Serious Mental Illness, Margalea Warner shares her inspiring journey of finding joy and resilience while living with serious mental illness. While she isn't a ballerina, the way she lived in recovery from schizophrenia inspired a ballet called Unfinished that premiered at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City in November 2022. This book entitles you to a front-row seat to that performance.

Through vulnerability and grace, Margalea reveals the keys that helped her embrace recovery and dance through life's challenges, inviting readers into a story of courage, faith, and hope. Just like dancers put in hours of disciplined practice, Margalea has practiced choosing dance over despair for almost three decades. Medication and talk therapy became her dance partners. Traumatic events challenged her, and she processed them and moved on. To her, dance is any movement of body or spirit that renews joy, love, and gratitude. She invites you to join in the dance.

Choosing Dance Over Despair is a heartfelt memoir, not only for those on the path of mental health recovery but for anyone seeking hope, compassion, and resilience. Margalea offers more than her own story; she offers readers the keys to finding joy and courage within their own lives, knowing that even in the darkness, there's a light-and sometimes, a dance-waiting to be embraced.