Balancing Act: Memoir of a Teenage Breakdown

In the 1970s, outside the town of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, Barbara Ann is 13, going into grade seven, and starting a new school. 

She wants what most other teenage girls want: the right hair, the right clothes, the right friends, the right boyfriend, and everything else that leads to love and happiness. 

Innocence allows her to believe it’s all easily within her grasp, with the only obstacle being her overcontrolling mother. 

She fights and pushes against boundaries to gain the freedom she wants. Each step a power struggle between mother and daughter. 

When Barbara Ann finally meets a boy and believes all her dreams are coming true, her life shatters in ways she never saw coming. In desperation, she tries escaping her pain, but instead her anxiety and depression increase and she spirals into a nervous breakdown. 

It is in the midst of all of this that Barbara Ann learns the depths of her mother’s betrayal and the realization of just how much she’s lost, and the need to find inner strength.

Listeners will be torn between understanding a mother's interference in her daughter’s life and her daughter's emotional stress caused by the mother’s interference. 

Listeners will enter the world of a teenage girl and experience what life’s like from her point of view...experiencing anxiety, loss, grief, and depression.