It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade and a half since my condition emerged, and yet in some ways it feels like yesterday.
I was twenty five years old and seemingly at the top of the universe making six figures in a career I loved. My college sweetheart and I had signed a contract to build a single-family home in a gorgeous country club community when I had a November so stressful and overwhelming that I couldn’t sleep for a week. The week of insomnia culminated in a manic episode which landed me in a psych ward - my first time ever in a hospital.
After two nights in the hospital I was sent home with orders to see an outpatient psychiatrist. At the appointment he took my history and when I told him the medicine made my head feel fuzzy, he suggested I try returning to work and my regular routine saying I likely didn’t need it because the episode most likely was brought on by the sleep deprivation.
But two weeks later the episode repeated itself while Ben and I were in Florida visiting my family for the holidays. They were forced to drive me to a psychiatric hospital on Christmas morning when my psychosis had gotten so bad I was pointing at the sky counting down from ten to zero on a loop.
It must have been terrifying for them to see me like that.
But I’m one of the lucky ones. On average, it takes most people about ten years to get a proper diagnosis. Because my family was so assertive with my doctors and I was willing to let them help me, coupled with the fact that our privilege afforded us access to quality healthcare, we were able to get to my diagnosis fairly quickly. Even so, I suffered through over a year of debilitating depression and even suicidal thoughts after one med change. Fortunately, within a year I had tried several different medications and had finally found one that worked well to control my symptoms.
The years navigating pregnancy and motherhood were scary and lonely. But I was incredibly lucky to have such loving family members and close friends around me supporting me through it. I experienced postpartum psychosis a month after Owen was born and antenatal psychosis when I was five weeks pregnant with Vivian.
Experiencing four hospitalizations in a five year period taught me a lot about overcoming adversity. Each hospitalization was a setback. I had to tweak meds and start again. I started looking for stories from other women who had gone through similar struggles to mine to help me feel less alone. Realizing that there were some stories out there, but not a ton, I decided I wanted to change that.
Stigma ran thicker in 2010 than it does today. Ten years ago there weren’t as many people sharing openly that they lived with bipolar or anxiety or depression or PTSD. And I thought that if we could celebrate overcoming cancer, why couldn’t we celebrate overcoming a brain illness?
By 2010 I felt I had reached a point in my recovery that I felt I had a responsibility to share my story to break down stigma and shame. So in 2011, when my kids were 8 months and almost 3, I hit publish on the first post on an anonymous blog I titled, “Bipolar Mom Life.” I was anonymous at first because I was afraid of judgement and discrimination…in short, stigma kept me from being completely vulnerable. But after a year and a half of blogging regularly about life, motherhood and managing bipolar, I was ready to remove my mask.
Life is way too short to not live every day as your authentic self. And for me that meant being able to share the good, the bad, and the ugly - to be fully human on my blog and in my life.
My experience of sharing my story publicly had such a transformative effect on my life that I wanted others to have that same opportunity. My experience led me to launch This Is My Brave in 2013.
Photo credit: Alicia Bruce
Bringing it back to my intention in writing this post. Over the years of living with bipolar I’ve had times of crisis, stabilization, long-term remission, both severe and mild depressive episodes, hypomania, and anxiety. COVID-19 had a major impact on my mental health, as I wrote about in my previous post.
I think the most important thing I’ve learned from living with bipolar for fifteen years is that I am capable of managing my mental health successfully, and this has come from experience. I’ve learned that my mental health is something I need to take care of every day in order to maintain mental wellness, and there are many facets to it. From monitoring my diet by eating nutritious foods most of the time, to maintaining a regular exercise routine, to keeping my stress level down, to setting boundaries, to utilizing medicine when I need it. There are many tools that go into my mental health toolkit.
When I redesigned my website last year, I did so with the intention of putting myself out there to speak more about mental health and mental wellness. I still want to write a book someday. I still want to create a podcast with my kids. I still want to do more keynotes. And I know I’ll get to these things in due time.
For now I’m going to set a goal to publish my Mental Health Mindset to my site in the second half of 2022.
This week I’m looking forward to what’s coming up in this fresh new year. Bring it on, 2022!