Figuring Us Out is a graphic memoir addressed to my daughter.

Erica died a preventable death at age 15 in a wilderness therapy program. When I first considered writing about Erica in this form, I registered for The Sketchbook Project as a drawing exercise. From the list long list of themes I chose “Figuring You Out.” The more I handled the sketchbook with “Figuring You Out” printed on the cover, the more natural it seemed to address the work to Erica.

Figuring Us Out has three parts:

I. Figuring You Out—in which I tell Erica stories of her birth and early childhood and how often I was awed by her.

II. Figuring It Out –in which I explain my view of our family’s experience of the US mental health care system and the decisions that lead to placing Erica in the program in which she died. I explore my incremental comprehension of what happened and how that knowledge leads to a role in efforts to reform the “Troubled Teen Industry”.

III. Figuring Us Out—in which I tell Erica how I’ve tried to understand our relationship, both before and after her death, and how that relationship is still changing.