Carolyn DiPasquale
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Carolyn DiPasquale grew up in Wisconsin, earning a double major in French and English from UW-Milwaukee. In 1983, she moved to Middletown, Rhode Island (RI) where she raised three children while pursuing her MA in English at the University of Rhode Island.
Over her career, DiPasquale taught college writing and literature; wrote documents and books for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport; and volunteered as a winning grant writer for Turning Around Ministries, a Newport aftercare program for ex-offenders. DiPasquale has been a member of the Newport Round Table, a professional writing group, since 2013. Reckless Grace: A Mother’s Crash Course in Mental Illness is her first published work. Reckless Grace won both the Outstanding “Grief/Hardship” Category Prize, as well as the Grand Prize First Place: Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the Independent Author Network 2024 Book of the Year Awards. Additionally, it was a Nonfiction Finalist in the 2022 Chanticleer International Book Awards. DiPasquale lives in Richmond, RI with her husband Phil where she has started writing a sequel to Reckless Grace. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking with healthy ingredients, hiking with her husband Phil, and volunteering at the Providence Rescue Mission.
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Reckless Grace: A Mother's Crash Course in Mental Illness
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Memoir
Shocked by the fatal overdose of her only daughter Rachel, Carolyn pens an oversimplified eulogy for Rachel’s funeral. She soon discovers the truth in Rachel’s journals: severely disturbed, she’d been secretly harming herself for years. At fourteen, Rachel develops type 1 diabetes (T1D) and gains weight. She learns that by shorting her insulin, pounds evaporate. Rachel ignores the risks to please her boyfriend, Paul. Newly divorced and working, Carolyn mistakes Rachel’s silence for teenage angst. Rachel’s endocrinologist suspects but does not diagnose an eating disorder (ED) until nine months later. By then, Rachel has two full-blown EDs. Both romantically involved, Rachel’s parents are blind to her failing health. At sixteen, Rachel is hospitalized. At seventeen, Rachel’s new boyfriend, Lance, drugs her with love and introduces heroin. At twenty, Rachel receives treatment, but just as she starts to improve, the program ends. Relapsing, Rachel snorts heroin. She ends up broke, homeless, and incarcerated. Rachel’s descent is punctuated with hopeful moments when Carolyn believes her daughter might rebound; however, Rachel sabotages every break. Carolyn apologizes to her daughter for her ignorance and negligence. She tells Rachel that Reckless Grace is her new, true eulogy, one that she hopes will enlighten others. "Reckless Grace tells the story of a common struggle—one of a family navigating a loved one's mental illness—through a powerful, unique lens. Carolyn's firsthand narrative, punctuated by actual passages from her daughter's journals, offers an intimate perspective on self-medication through substance use. It's exactly what we need to help normalize a much-needed national conversation on mental health and addiction." – Former U.S. Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy SAMPLE PDF 
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