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Struggling with mental and emotional health issues as a teenager is a hard, dark, and devastating road if you go it alone. Just hearing myself say that brings back memories of the hopelessness I felt as a teenager. The subject of this piece is simple – YA fantasy books saved my life.
I’m not going to bore you with the morose story of how I grew up in South Africa in the Apartheid era where everything was censored. So I never had the kind of books I needed to read to relate and learn from. This is why I started to write YA fiction after my kids were born, because I knew if I had the kind of YA fantasy books I write, I would have saved myself a whole lot of emotional and mental trauma.
To this day I still read young adult fantasy books because when I finally found the types of stories I wished I had as a teenager, I recognised the power in this genre. YA books could have kept me off the streets and away from the stupid, reckless things I did to deal.
The thing is, teens do not listen to their parents; well, most of them don’t anyway. Teens shut down emotionally when really bad things happen to them. Because no one understands, no one really feels the deep ache in your chest that haunts you each night you close your eyes and think of facing your bullies at school the next day. How you have to pretend to be perfect on social media the entire time, when all you really want is everyone to love you for you, to be popular for who you are. Or having to live with the fact that you let someone violate you because you were to weak and scared to stand up for yourself. I walked around with this guilt and shame for twenty-six years before I finally figured out how to heal – write the type of books I would have wanted to read when I fell into that black hole.
I am what you would call an evangelist converting teens to reading YA. Why do I feel that reading YA books is the remedy?
Many YA books represent characters of similar age facing the same emotional crossroads that question who you really are or stand for. Take the love triangle or the forbidden love trope books for instance: it questions the MC’s ethics and morals, He or she knows what is right or wrong, yet when emotions take over, it gets very complicated and things get overwhelming – that is when wrong decisions might be made, and then self -doubt forces its way down your throat and the MC feels guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Now, reading something like that will resonate with the reader and make them feel less alone, knowing there is someone out there who knows how it feels. And it helps them understand how to deal with such emotions as the MC goes through the same problem-solving journey.
In a romantic fantasy, the female MC is besotted with the mysterious bad boy who keeps disappointing her, and finally when things feel like they are going well, he leaves her and shatters her entire world, because falling in love is having no control over your emotions, and inevitably your actions. And being in love is your new existence, so when it is taken from the MC, she begins to spiral. She questions every single thing about herself. Was she so stupid to think she was good enough, was what she felt not real, was she insane? She feels humiliated, stupid, used, and unworthy. This is where the reader will relate to mental health flags, recognise the feelings and journey with the MC as she goes through a self-sabotage period as the dark cloud swarms.
The reader will relate and identify and empathise with the MC and root for her to get back on her feet because she needs to be stronger, because she is stronger and this is where the reader will realise and question the profound and dark moments in her life as she or he sees them through the thoughts and existence of a character that is now more than fictional to the reader, that is now a recognizable part of the reader’s self. These thoughts are dealt by others too, and they do not feel so completely alone. It also represents a whole bunch of questions as to why the character needs to feel like that as there is no need, and a feeling of self-power returns to the reader.
As the natural ARC of any novel develops, the MC reaches a huge self-development phase through a brave act, and even though in fiction it might be physical, deep down it’s fuelled by emotions. So as the MC adapts, reinvents, and steps up to his or her best self with so much self-sacrifice, the reader feels inspired and invigorated, and has personally and vividly walked an emotional adventure to recognise certain toxic emotions and habits. The reader can then relate in a deep and meaningful way that is very personal. Thus the book has given them more than entertainment but a learning curve in emotional and mental development when it comes to things as personal as emotional and mental health.
What YA fantasy books have you read that have improved your mental health?
Happy reading.
I am so glad you started writing and reading YA! You are an amazing person and it shows through you and your writing.
Thank you so very much to the Book Cave team for honoring with a spot on their blog and newsletter to talk about something so massively important and hugely impactful in our daily lives as mothers, children, teachers friends and the readers who suffer daily to break through the dark cloud of mental health. For those of us who feel alone – know you are not, and for those of us who watch it happen to the once we love ; it take courage and wisdom to see loved one’s through the storm we do not always understand.