Travis G. Adler grew up in a pristine farming community in a loving, faith-filed home. He learned much about hard work, devotion to his faith, and the importance of integrity from his parents and grandparents. His father was an entrepreneur, and so T... Read more

Travis G. Adler grew up in a pristine farming community in a loving, faith-filed home. He learned much about hard work, devotion to his faith, and the importance of integrity from his parents and grandparents. His father was an entrepreneur, and so Travis was introduced to the world of business at an early age. He went on to become a CPA, a Corporate Controller, and continued his climb to Chief Financial Officer with about 900 employees reporting to him. He had similar success with multiple companies. But at the age of 29, a time when he was enjoying life, he encountered a job-related trauma that triggered a previously undiagnosed genetic predisposition to major depression. At a time, when little was known about this brain disease, Travis searched for answers and endured the stigma of mental illness, all the while keeping it a secret from his employers. The hardest part of Travis' journey was the stigma. If you had a normal disease, people sent you a card, they came to visit. But if you had major depression, a physiological malfunction of the brain, you faced it alone. This is the true story of Travis Adler's journey toward hope. Travis says it best: This is a true story of my life. I grew up in a religious, intelligent and loving family, in a small midwestern community of only 300 caring and wonderful people. After parochial grade school and public high school, I graduated from a huge, highly rated secular university. My major study was accounting.My working career consisted of initially working five years at a large national public accounting firm, where I earned a CPA certificate. I continued my career by being employed at five different manufacturing companies of varying sizes and products. While working for the third employer, at age 29, I came down with an unbelievably and grossly misunderstood, brutal, unipolar mental illness, technically called major depression. Over the next 41 years, I lived with this totally misunderstood illness. It was a struggle that created many family, job, financial, and friendship problems. Specifically, I lost four wonderful jobs, my printing business, two marriages, my life savings, and my sense of self confidence! At 62 years old, I was unemployed, broke...and alone. Miraculously, after never giving up, after 41 years, a cure for my mental illness was found. Since then I have been fortunate to be able to restore my life. At age 70 I started over. My future became bright and exciting. I had married for the third time and was extremely fortunate to find a marvelous and intelligent woman. She has been my savior! I also was able to improve my family relationships, financial independence and self-respect. I have a very outstanding marriage, what a blessing!Currently, my future appears very promising; since at 85 years old, I am enjoying the best years of my life. I am spiritually, physically, and mentally very healthy. My dream is to write another book or two regarding self-help situations.This book was written because I wanted people with mental illness to have the benefit of what I had learned so they don't experience what I did. There is so much that I now know about this illness. Loneliness was one of the chief trials that I faced.I truly believe this book will be a great source of knowledge for a mentally ill person. This is the reason that I wrote it. If I am fortunate to make a profit by selling this book, it will be all be donated to appropriate charitable causes. Travis G. Adler has written an important book. Courageously sharing his own personal struggle, he highlights the importance of faith while enduring the loneliest and most intimate of challenges: those that take place within our own minds. Here is a message of hope and a call for understanding for anyone humble enough to read it and say, 'Yes, this could happen to me.' -Rev. Dennis Budka, Catholic priest and author A truly inspirational read. -Randy Pheifer, MBA Less