My Lovely Wife In the Psych Ward: A Love Story

A fairy tale marriage faces dramatic challenges as a psychotic breakdown interrupts a beautiful love story

—

An interview with Mark Lukach

by Kristen Noel

Listen to the audio interview

Kristen:           Once upon a time, a beautiful fairytale romance was born. It was love at first sight for Mark and Giulia Lukach who met on the campus of Georgetown University when they were only 18 years old. Madly in love, they graduated, married, secured dream jobs, and rode off into the sunset, moving across the country to live in San Francisco, one of the most desirable cities in the world. Life was full of promise and they dreamed, plotted, planned, and saved for the bright future ahead. They had it all mapped out until the ‘in sickness and in health, through good times and in bad’ part of their vows was put to the test… and put to the test and put to the test.

In 2009, when Giulia plummeted into the abyss of mental illness after a psychotic break, the map of their life rerouted and nothing would ever be the same. In his recently released memoir, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward, Mark Lukach, a teacher and freelance writer, depicts the side of mental illness often overlooked from the partners, the family, and the bystanders — a journey to healing in all of its guts and glory. This inspiring memoir is a brave account of what really happens when a family is ravaged by mental illness. Candid and gut wrenching at times, there is no glossing over what it really took to find their way back to each other.

I’m Kristen Noel, Editor-In-Chief of Best Self Magazine, and I’m honored to sit down today with Mark Lukach to delve further into this amazing story. It is a book I couldn’t put down. While I was rooting for their love story, I didn’t know how it would end. It made me question myself, it made me think about our capacity to love one another, and it made me revere the power of love because at the end of the day, we all want love to win. Welcome, Mark.

Mark:  Kristen, that was the most beautiful introduction, thank you. What a way to get things started. It’s great to be talking to you.

Kristen:           I want to commend both you and Giulia for sharing this story. Why share this  very personal and at times, excruciatingly painful journey?

Mark:  I think the answer to that is two-fold. The first answer is actually personal. I’m not a trained writer; I’m a high school history teacher and I never really envisioned writing a book. But after Giulia had been hospitalized a few times we had a really hard time reconnecting as a couple because our experiences of her psychosis and then depression were different. And if we tried to talk about it, it got tense and brought up a lot of tough feelings and resentment and difficult memories — even though we went to couple’s therapy and everything.

On a whim, I tried writing about it for Giulia like it was an audience of one. I thought if I can sit here and sort through my thoughts in a way where I’m not just blurting them out or not wrapped up with emotion, but rather I’m trying to take the time to groom and make them accessible for her — maybe she’ll be able to hear them and we can process and move forward together. That began the journey of writing about this so that Giulia and I could simply reconnect as a couple. And I have to say, on that front, it felt like this book has been a really big success. There’s no question that the writing and Giulia reading and us talking about it subsequently helped us to process as a couple what it all means for us.

And then for the public answer — when Giulia was hospitalized, I remember sitting in the waiting room and being on my phone and trying to Google my way to understanding what was happening. I was trying to comprehend some of the terms the doctors were using, but I found pretty much nothing that helped me understand what I was about to go through. What was the journey going to look like for me? What were some of the choices that I was going to have to face?

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more alone than I did that day in the waiting room with Giulia locked