The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe is an Audible Original audio written by Arvind Ethan David and performed by Neil Gaiman and Jewel Staite, and the proceeds from the ticket sales of today’s premiere livestream event, and also the sales of the audiobook and are being donated to This Is My Brave.

The virtual experience today was amazing to be a part of, thanks to my dear friend Val from Depressed Cake Shop who introduced me to Arvind. There was a short Q&A panel discussion following the story. My anxiety spiked as Michael Patrick Jann, the Director of the project welcomed me to the stage. I had listened to the story several times before the event, but in the moment my mind was a blur of nervous energy. I gave my normal elevator pitch of my own story and how it led me to create This Is My Brave, but neglected to mention how while watching/listening to the story today, I noticed how deeply it paralleled my own journey with bipolar.

I was four years into a career as a headhunter with a staffing agency in DC when my mental illness emerged, plunging me into two hospitalizations for mania/psychosis, two weeks apart. The second hospitalization was on Christmas Day in 2005. All of a sudden, my seemingly perfect world (making six figures at the age of 26, top recruiter in the company newly married to my college sweetheart, building a single-family home in the suburbs), all felt like it was crumbling around me. I suddenly couldn't work. The stress and pressures of the fast-paced career I had loved sent me into daily panic attacks.

I resigned from my job to focus on my mental health, and with that, felt like I lost my entire identity. It was devastating. I didn't know who I was anymore without my successful career reputation. I dreaded seeing friends at social gatherings because I didn't want to talk about the pain I was going through. I felt so utterly alone for over a year as I navigated psychiatrist appointments, therapist appointments, sleeping through most of 2006 because I was so depressed. And felt like I had nothing to look forward to in life anymore.

While my husband, my mom and dad helped me through that horrible year of clinical depression, I had to find the path to recovery on my own. It took me another couple of years and two more hospitalizations the years I was having my children, for me to finally reach stability with my condition. Even then, I was scared to talk about it openly.

Slowly, over the course of five years, I reached a point where I felt like I found myself again. It was like the moment when Neil started playing chess again with Ship and remembered his old self, his confident, funny self. For me it was the point at which I realized I didn't want to live one more day regretting taking the risk of opening up about the fact that I live with bipolar.

And it felt really good to finally let go of that burden of hiding my pain and trauma.

I think our entire world will soon be coming to grips with the trauma we've all been through this past year, and being able to share our stories, I believe, will help greatly with the healing process as we move forward. We can get to a better place by listening to each other and holding space for each other's pain.

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This piece will be exclusively available on Audible beginning today, March 18, 2021.