Bipolar View: Steady is as Steady Does

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bipolar disorder, strategies for managing bipolar disorder, strategies for managing mental illness

Sure, sometimes you wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

You probably can’t imagine what it feels like to wake up not knowing that there is a world beyond the thick blackness of the blankets pulled up over your eyes.

And some days you’re excited. It’s the first day of a vacation trip. It’s Christmas morning.

You probably can’t imagine waking up five or six times that enthusiastic, without any reason at all.

Having bipolar disorder means that steady is as steady does. Because the feelings are almost random.

Bipolar and Unafraid: ‘Ordinary’ Life with a Diagnosis

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bipolar disorder, Eph. 3:17-19, hope, NAMI

During the eight years I taught NAMI’s Family to Family course, the session that most powerfully impacted participants was the one near the program’s end where they got to meet a person who relies on mental health services.

They’d look around the room expectantly and I’d announce: “I know you’re expecting a special guest tonight, someone who lives with mental illness as your relatives do.” I’d pause a few beats, then say: “Hi. My name is Carlene and I live with bipolar disorder.”

Eyes would widen. Jaws would drop. Sometimes I could hear a sharp intake of breath. No one expected their teacher to have a diagnosis. No one imagined that an ordinary-shaped life could also include bipolar disorder.

Did Robin Williams Have to Die?

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bipolar disorder, mental illness, Robin Williams, suicide

Robin Williams in his last role as Teddy Roosevelt

I suspect I wasn’t the only person who teared up when the Teddy Roosevelt statue came to life in the last “Night at the Museum” film.

Critics said the late Robin Williams turned the rough-riding president into an on-screen “father figure” for the rowdy crew of cave men, dinosaurs, cowboys, and gladiators who rode rough through the series of crazy comedy films. The role was Williams’ last; he committed suicide by hanging in his home on August 11 last year.

Williams “neither confirmed nor denied” having bipolar disorder. I can’t imagine that anyone who knows bipolar was uncertain that Robin Williams depended on bipolar for the verbal velocity that fueled his comedy.

I’m Sinking and Stuck in One Place … and That’s Progress

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aspergers, bipolar disorder, stress

The last couple weeks have been challenging, to say the least. I’ve moved; I’ve met the divorce attorney; and although many of the boxes are unpacked, there are still a lot of items to be settled into their proper places. For example, the top of my great-grandmother’s cabinet Victrola is absolutely littered with the salt and pepper shakers I have collected over the years. And did I mention that I’m job hunting?

When Can You Call a ‘Crazy’ a Crazy?

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bipolar disorder, kate millett, mental patient liberation front, ted turner, vision new england

Envision this scene with me. I’m the editor of New England Church Life, sitting at my desk in the crowded offices of Vision New England, a 100-year-old religious organization that serves congregations in more than 50 different denominations. I’m looking out my window across the parking lot as I talk to my current interview subject on the phone. He’s just put out a book that has a lot of people laughing behind their hands and a lot of reviewers laughing out loud in their magazine pages: 87 Reasons Why Jesus Will Return in 1987.

Okay, you’ve already decided he’s crazy just because of the title. But I’m an interviewer. I don’t have that freedom. So I’m asking questions about the book, why he wrote it, how he got the idea, how he found the time … all the usual questions.

Except one of the answers doesn’t add up. Literally. Because I’m a Navy brat and he’s former Navy and his years of service don’t work out. Tours of duty come in multiples of certain numbers of years and he’s out early.