ALICIA DUNCAN

The Other Side of the Straitjacket is a story of grief, loss, and the fight for truth. When Alicia's mother, Donna Duncan, chose medical assistance in dying (MAiD), it set off a whirlwind of unanswered questions and legal battles. What followed was a profoundly personal reckoning—one that revealed the cracks in a system meant to offer compassion, but too often lacking caution, oversight, and true consent.​

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What began as a daughter’s desperate attempt to intervene became a journey of advocacy, transformation, and the search for meaning after loss. As Alicia pieces together her mother’s story, she uncovers troubling gaps in medical safeguards and the devastating consequences of unrecognized mental health struggles. Through raw emotion, meticulous research, and relentless determination, she exposes a system that prioritizes policy over people—especially those living in the margins, where suffering is often misread as consent.

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More than a memoir, The Other Side of the Straitjacket is a call for accountability, a testament to a mother’s unfulfilled dream, and a deeply moving reflection on how grief reshapes us. It is for those still grasping for answers, and for anyone who’s ever felt overlooked, dismissed, or too broken to be saved. It challenges everything we think we know about life and death and reveals that sometimes, the fight for justice is the greatest act of love.