Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. Over the last month, I traveled overseas to work in Birmingham and facilitate a workshop. The workshop was made up of different colleagues from Africa and the UK who joined to discuss our future work. I thought I was prepared for it, that I had managed to tuck my Bipolar in and get through each day with grace, a smile and a wave. I was cheerful on the way out, smiled through passport control and even managed an enjoyable 18 hour flight. I figured it was a new opportunity to be a new mental illness free me.
One of the sessions was moderated by an outside facilitator who talked about mental health. He talked about addressing mental illness in poor countries that have terrible practices to address and contain mental health challenges. In these settings that have barely enough he spoke about success stories, about finding people and getting them the treatment – in all manners – that they truly deserve. About them regaining their lives, family and access to their village from which they had been thrown out. I listened quietly and heard loudly that we should all have access to the treatment we deserve and never be treated like outcasts for something that we truly cannot control.
Since I was diagnosed I firmly believed that the symptoms were in control since they were seemingly apparent and buried myself in the tick box description of Bipolar. I lost interest in life, in me and everything around me, probably a lot like a person without a village. However, with the right treatment, right belief, and hope for a better future there could be so much else. There could be me contending with serious symptoms and not them controlling me. There could be me, sometimes struggling, but always continuing to be a more than mental illness me. Please continue to read my story.
4 M's Bipolar Mom 