Local Stacey Powells’ brutally honest book puts it at top place on Amazon

Powells’ descent into a mental breakdown is essential reading

Long-time Mammoth local and former KMMT/KRHV radio DJ, former reporter and columnist, Stacey Powells, has all of a sudden found a very recently self-published book she wrote hitting some top numbers for new releases (and earning excellent reviews) on Amazon, getting noticed by Yahoo and much more – and for good reason.

The book, Empty Cupboards, details in sparse and brutally honest prose about Powells’ slow but steady descent into a mental breakdown, her recovery, and her ongoing struggles with her own mental health and clearly, it has hit a nerve, with reviewers praising Powells for lifting the veil of secrecy off what is a global epidemic.

She will be at a book signing for Empty Cupboards next week at the Mammoth Lakes Library on Oct. 14 at 5 p.m. and at another book signing later in October at the Booky Joint (see details below).

In the meantime, there are good reasons the book has taken off.

“Named #1 on Amazon in New Releases/ Mid-life, Empty Cupboards dives into the rawest and sometimes embarrassing moments of Powells’ life, reflecting on challenges, embracing her mental health journey and inspiring others in solidarity,” according to an article on Yahoo on Sept. 15. “Let’s face it — while mental health awareness may be “trendy” to champion on social media, the real conversations that create sustainable change are messy, full of pain, and require immense vulnerability. These authentic conversations are much harder to come by for fear of judgment, embarrassment, and the lingering stigmas surrounding mental health issues. However, one author is taking readers behind the curtain to facilitate these raw conversations with grace, wit, and wisdom.”

“When my own cupboards were empty, I thought no one else could understand the depths of my sorrow and despair...and that no one could offer hope,” said local Lina Lambert. “Until I

read Empty Cupboards... Not only can she relate, she hits the punchlines with humor and... raw honesty and offers hope for those suffering from many of the unknowns in life. I found myself shouting “Yes” to the pages in the book and into the Universe . ... for me, being able to connect and receive empathy is a balm to my chapped soul. Stacey’s book offered comfort to my emotions and I found myself feeling a little relaxed in realizing that I am not alone in this path of chaotic thoughts, turmoil in life and unexpected events. The journey through Stacey’s world has helped me through the twists and turns of my own turmoil. I am grateful she had the courage to write this book and to share with me... and you.

Trust me! You won’t regret reading the insight found within these pages.”

Powells is almost a Mammoth icon. She has been known to most locals for decades as a former, long-time DJ with KMMT/ KRHV; as a former, long-time reporter for the Mammoth Times; as the writer of a wellloved column about raising two sons called ‘Exhausted Parent’ as well as many other activities and jobs. She said the book’s rise to the top of an Amazon launch categor y surprised her as much as anyone.

“It was an accidental launch as it wasn’t supposed to launch on Amazon until Oct. 1,” she said this week. “I asked some friends to buy it and read it and then review it, but I forgot to tell them not to post anything on Facebook. After they read the book, they went on Facebook to talk about it and it took off from there. I was completely unprepared and had to scramble because, whether I liked it or not, the book had launched unexpectedly. I was grateful and panicked all at once,” she said.

Why did the book resonate so deeply and catch on so quickly?

Because... it is real. Real as in, yes, this is what it feels like to look like a success to everyone around you but at the same time, feel as if you are drowning.

Real as in Powells spares no embarrassment, veils no emotions, babysits no one. She writes from her own life showing how a million small things: a head trauma when she was a child (she literally fell off a roof); a series of men and boys behaving badly as she grew up; a series of surgeries (14 of them) suffered by her husband and the father of her two sons during her first marriage because of a freak medical incident (caused by a leg cast that literally burned the skin of his leg); another series of bad men choices; an emotionally absent pharmacist father who would rather have been living and fishing in the Sierra Nevada, not serving wealthy celebrities in Los Angeles their pills; a mother with her own trauma; boys growing up with a father so damaged by his trauma he wasn’t able to be there for them when they needed him most.

Typical crazy family and life stuff, in so many cases, whether we talk about it or not. But what is not typical is talking about it, even now.

By reading the book we see the slow buildup to the year 2001 when finally, the stress and strain of trying to be practically perfect in every way to everyone, breaks.

Powells went down the rabbit hole. Hard.

“I used to be flippant about people with mental health issues,” she said. “I always thought people were whining about something they should have been able to deal with.”

But 2001 was a “‘We will show you’ kind of moment,’” she said, preceded by the sudden loss of an 18year music licensing career at Paramount Pictures (she had moved back there in 1998 to be closer to her boys’ father after the divorce).

“I felt the walls of my brain closing in on itself,” she said in the book. “On step eight or nine of the stairs, I halted. My hand was on the wooden banister. I staggered, unable to catch my breath, then sat down on the carpeted stairs. But it wasn’t the physical sensations that got me. It was an understanding that at that moment, if there was a gun in the house, someone else would have had to pick up my boys from school.” “I was falling apart. I am not allowed to fall apart.”

“I needed to keep it together. I can’t keep it together.”

“Outstanding bills and letters were spread out in front of me looking like the hodgepodge of a fivehundred-piece jigsaw puzzle...,” she wrote. “... In between guttural screams that were not my own, my hands had had a minor altercation with my cupboard. Nail clippers, over the counter drugs, cotton balls were spread out all over the carpet.. a bottle of Valium was floating in the toilet. Those empty cupboards taunted me, a reminder of how a well-constructed life had imploded.”

“For the next 18 months, I ‘survived’ by going to therapy, and borrowing money from my family to pay the bills,” she said in an interview with the Times this week. “It all came crumbling down. I did not talk about this when I wrote the Exhausted Parent column; I thought it was important to be funny and so I was, not because it didn’t occur to me, but because I did not want it to be the ‘oh, poor me’ column. I wanted them to be funny. There was a big stigma then, so I kept my mental health struggles to myself. I always had a big smile on my face and like my family history, swept things under the rug.

“Little did I know, if I had talked about my mental health journey, it might have opened conversations instead of staying buried under the rug,” she said this week. Right now, this book is creating conversations about mental health.”

So, go. Get the book. Read it. Pass it on. Talk about it to your friends.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE

• To learn more about Stacey Powells and Empty Cupboards, please visit: https://emptycupboards. com/ or contact emptycupboardsbook@gmail.com or 661-433-9800.

• For local book signing dates and times, see the flyers in the article above.