Lessons from Life

About the Book
The book is about the adversities the author experienced resulted from using and abusing drugs and alcohol which led to a diagnosis of a mental illness. The author explored her darkness from using drugs to experiencing her nervous breakdowns. If overcoming meant not using, she didn’t know or realize this until years later. She would go on to discover the support of friends and family members through their love, care, concern, and compassion for her. As the author accepted help, she learnt to give help to others as well. The author experienced changes, and it is her aim to share in these experiences as learning experiences. She found out that the effects of using and abusing drugs and alcohol caused addictions, nervous breakdowns, and led to a diagnosis of a mental illness called schizoaffective disorder. After her diagnosis, it took years for her to realize that using wasn’t right for her because it destroyed her mental health, but she did change by quitting the abuse of drugs and alcohol so to improve her mental health and well-being. The author didn’t do it by herself because she had the support of friends and family members that held her up even when she was down and picked her up when she needed their help. And this will be shown in the poems she has written for her potential readers.

About the Author
Phoolmatee Dubay, born February 14th 1968, migrated to the US during 1992. She attended the Borough of Manhattan Community College and York College where she pursued her career educational goals in Human Services and Social Work respectively. The author’s poetry became a way of coping with her mental illness and coming to grips with reality after learning about the harm and dangers from using and abusing drugs and alcohol. As the author wrote in her poem “A Dark Place In My Head”, “As dark as an abyss in the mind where no light shines, even in the presence of light.” explored the dark side of using drugs and/or alcohol. While she discovered how to deal with life as she wrote in her poem, “I Deal With Life”. You may wonder how and why because as she wrote, “I couldn’t see life for what it was; therefore how could I accept it for what it is?” She would go one to state, “When I didn’t know I had doubts but now I have answers. This doesn’t mean that doubts are gone because I still need answers. Even while looking at life differently.”