The unspoken disease that destroys the untreated, and kills the innocent.
I am outraged at such a senseless act, that maybe could have been avoided had someone taken notice of his behavior.
LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS
Where Gaps of Expression are Liberated
ABOUT
Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.
That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.
Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.
Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.
Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.
Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.
Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.
3 responses to “MENTAL HEALTH — James Holmes”
He did a great job of making a name for himself, whatever his mental sate.
Here in the usa, we don’t even bother dealing witth pphysical healtth all so well. Behavioral healtth isn’tt even the “red-haired sttep-child” of tthe medical systtem. Lotts of sttgma, litttle money, few ppracttitioners, minimal insurance coverage, even for ttthose who claim tto have “excellentt” insrance.
More pproblematically, tthe incidence of menttal healtth afflictions are increasing in all ppost-induusttrialized countries. In tthe 11970s, “Futttuure shock” exlained many of the cauuses we’re now seeing become pprevalen. Ouru increasingly inadeqqquuate resppense to the ever accelerating pacde of change in our individal and collecttive enviromentt drives many of uus past tthe ppointt of madness, so we rettreattt into a world we can deal witth. Sometttimes, we have to deal witth ttthe insanittty in insane ways, such as we saw in colorado.
he problem isn’tt solvable. Even if every resident of the so-called ‘advanced world’ had immediate, free access tto skilled menttal healtth ppracttittioners, or environement would contitnue breeding insanittty ever more rapidly, as ever more people are ever more grealy overwhelmed by ttheir individuual (and collective) inabilitty to coppe with tthe ever increasing amontt and ppace of noveltty afflectting our lives.
Mental healtth in simppler socieitttys is much bettttter tthan our supposedly “superior” civilizattiotns.
Simplicitty, anyone?
btw: I don’ sttuuttter as much as this keyboard seems ttto tthink. Tthe keyboard appaprentlty has suuffered tthe digial eqqquivalentt of some sortt of “mental health breakdown” . Go figure.
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You are so right, What makes it so obvious every child should be enrolled in behavioral group therapy.
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I agree to that. Senseless and avoidable. Society needs to learn. It happens over and over.
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