Bent self-publishes memoir about "Hope, Courage & Triumph"

A former KANZA Mental Health & Guidance Center clinical director has chronicled her own personal journey of caring for her husband as he battled mental illness in her new self-published book “Hope, Courage & Triumph.”

Connie Bent of Hiawatha shares her memoir of the effect mental illness had on her husband, Jerry, herself and their children. 

Bent worked for KANZA Mental Health & Guidance Center for 30 years as a clinician and later as a clinical director. She retired in 2009, and she worked in the Holton office for several years. 

“I had never even considered writing a book,” Bent said. “One evening I had the strongest thought, ‘Connie, you need to write a book. You have something very important to say that others need to hear.’ The next morning I got up and started writing.”

The majority of the book centers on Bent’s second husband, Jerry, a major in the U.S. Army. He was an oral surgeon and became mentally ill after he and Bent had been married for a year and a half. 

Jerry was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, and after years of struggle, he committed suicide. 

Throughout his treatment, Bent said his physiologist taught her some techniques to try with Jerry when he was struggling. Bent used some of the tips with Jerry and future clinical patients, and she shares some of them in her book.

“Somebody else may gain from what the doctor taught me,” she said. “I am extremely determined. With Jerry, I just couldn’t or wouldn’t give up. I thought if I could pull him out of his hell, things would be so much better.”

Bent said the title of the novel is driven from her own personal journey.  

“I have so much hope, and it took a lot of courage to do what I did because he really went mad,” she said. “But I felt, in the end, I did triumph.”

Many of Bent’s friends asked why she didn’t leave her husband when, at times, he became extremely difficult.  

“Sometimes love just holds you, and I had the belief that things could be better,” she said. “It was because of Jerry that I decided to go back to college and become a clinician.”

After she completed the first draft of her book, a friend encouraged her to expand the story to include Bent and her first husband, a childhood sweetheart who was killed as the result of a car accident.

“It’s very personal. When you write a book, you take off all your clothes and let the world see you. That’s what it was really like for me,” she said. “People that have read it have told me the same thing - they just can’t put it down. It’s such a unique story. The interesting thing is that even my best friends are saying to me, ‘We didn’t know you went through that.’ There were some things I didn’t tell the world until I wrote this book.”

Bent began writing the memoir in January and completed it in three months. “Hope, Courage & Triumph” is self-published by Xlibris. The book is available to purchase online at Xlibris, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.