Bipolar world

I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 in 2020.

It wasn’t my first diagnosis of some sort, but it was the first one that stopped me in my tracks and made me analyze my entire life. I started asking questions I hadn’t asked before: Was it really me? Or was it the special way my brain works that had always been showing up—loudly, softly, beautifully, chaotically—in everything I did?

At first, I took the meds. Then I stopped. I had decided, somewhere deep in my spirit, that medicine would make me someone or something else. I wasn’t interested in being anyone else—I was just trying to figure out how to be me and be okay.

Around the same time, I started going to sound bowl sessions with Shanna Thornton in the East End. I was also going to BareSOUL Yoga, trying to find new ways to be in relationship with my own energy. I wasn’t running from the diagnosis—I was trying to understand what it meant to manage myself on purpose. I wanted to know: How do I hold space for the intensity, the fire, the sensitivity, and the silence inside me?

Someone once said, “There’s no harder relationship to mend than the one with yourself after your mind betrays you.” And I felt that. Because when your own mind—your thoughts, your moods, your actions—become foreign, frightening, or even dangerous, the process of rebuilding trust with yourself is holy work.

This year has been hard in a lot of ways.

My spiritual and mindfulness practices helped me manage my external actions, but inside—I was exhausted. I actually stopped sleeping. I relied on nighttime pain meds just to rest. I was having vivid nightmares, sweating through my sheets, grinding my teeth. What was happening in my life was truly stress-inducing, and the constant effort to manage my mind, my thoughts, my energy left me with nothing in the tank. No reserves. No cushion.

I don’t think there was a relationship in my life left untouched by it.

This spring, I made a decision to speak with my doctor. I've now been back on antipsychotic medication for four weeks. I know this is just the beginning of a new chapter, but I’m sleeping again. I’m experiencing space in my mind again. I’m able to just be with my loved ones again.

For now, that’s more than enough.

Please know that options are many. There is no one-size-fits-all path to wellness. My hope for you is that you simply be. Just like my hope for myself is to be—without shame, without pressure, without fear.

Step one is to live.
Step two is to live good.