Down Came The Rain by Brooke Shields (2005, Abridged, Audio Cassette)

I bought this book so I could read about someone else's experience with PPD. I had a mild case after I had my son. What I liked about it was the fact that she was so open to sharing her story because no one talks about PPD. She told about her struggle to become pregnant and what happened after the baby was born. What I did not like was that at some times the book was a little slow and it took me a little while to finish the book. Over all it was a good read and it was a relief to read about PPD from someone else's experience.

WARNING! Depression hurts and those who do suffer depression may not enjoy this because the main content is her struggle downward. The majority of this book is on the downward trending patterns. This is not happy reading. Do not read this if you just had a baby; do not gift this book to a person who you think has post partum depression and you just want them to "see" that depression is treatable. This is definitely NON-pregnancy reading.

If you have never been able to explain the magnitude and self loathing of depression, Brooke has done it for you. She spends a lot of time describing the slippery slope of feeling out of sorts and not very excited into feeling your absolute and unexplainable worst. In the audio version she reads the story herself and it really does get across the stymied feelings of those around her who could not understand what was going on. She should be on top of the world. Instead she felt it was on top of her.

She documents her way through the maze of depression and page after page you keep saying to yourself "And the Doctor was not on to this???". I think that is part of the point of her writing this, normal healthy people can get very serious depression and the people around them do not know how to react and they do not put depression into the mix. They just work around the equation hoping that this will pass. In her case it was never going to pass on its own.

She covers the awful trip back to herself and how as a person she was as perplexed at how to "feel better" as those around her were to have her be better. This is at times a story you want to speed up and skip over more and more of the exhaustive recounting. Again that is the point of the story- depression is an exhaustive journey.

We recommend the audio more that the written word because it has Brook telling her own story and you can feel her emotions as she tells her story. We also recommend that you buy this discounted because it is not a body work that you keep in your collection unless this topic is related to your field. For the average reader: this is a read and pass it along to another book or an ah-ha! reading to explain something that you may have already have gone through. RICH CHICKS specializes in independent reviews to help you invest in the right product for your dollar. We have left many reviews all over this site.

Felt that Brooke Shields held the readers at a distance. I think that she really tried to let us know what happened during this down time of her life. She definitely told how she felt but it felt like she was telling a story not living the story. Glad that I didn't pay full price for the book.