A Memoir of Illness and Recovery. In this stunning collection, Jessica Friedmann navigates her journey through postpartum depression after the birth of her son, Owen. Drawing on critical theory, popular culture, and personal experience, her wide-ranging essays touch on class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as motherhood, creativity, and mental illness. Occasionally confronting, but always powerfully moving and beautifully observed, 'Things That Helped' charts Jessica's return into the world: a slow and complex process of reassembling what depression fractured and sometimes broke.