About The Year of Rejection by Hope Mills
Hope Mills is an immigrant overachiever until an unexpected eviction leaves her homeless. She descends into psychosis for the next year, bleeding depression onto the corners of her sociology textbooks. Hope digs into atypical anorexia and avoidant attachment, deflating her passions into passive suicide. But it didn’t start with the eviction.
Hope Mills is twelve years old when she moves from Ireland to Lithuania. In one swoop, she loses her father, brother and Catholic schoolgirl identity, landing in a town of 900 people where everyone knows her name. She battles a generational, cultural and language barrier at home and at school, quickly collapsing into a hostile teenager. On this shaky foundation, Hope attempts suicide twice in six years. But when she graduates, she returns to Ireland to begin her life. By her third year of college, Hope seems to have everything figured out– until her new world crumbles beneath her feet.
The Year of Rejection steps into the world of growing up first-generation Lithuanian-Irish in an environment which dismisses mental illness. Through prose and psychoanalysis, Hope tells the story of 2022, the worst year of her life, and how she returned to herself.
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Author Bio:
Hope Mills is a chronically online Lithuanian-Irish writer, whose hobbies include overthinking and crying. Her work mainly explores mental illness and grief. Sometimes it’s fictional, sometimes it’s not. Hope self-published her debut memoir, “The Year of Rejection”, in October 2024. She graduated from University College Dublin, Ireland’s largest university, with a BSc in Sociology, Politics & International Relations in 2023. Hope is currently training to become a therapist. She splits her time between Dublin and Ignalina.