My Personal Story

I learned about the importance of keeping your head above water and doing your best to keep swimming, from watching people in all of my worlds do just that. Losing your parent at an early age literally alters your brain. The grieving process is a never-ending journey, that you learn to work through. The loss of my dad was very numbing for me. After his passing, I shut down all of my feelings and was angry for some time, but no one ever knew. I didn’t walk around with my childhood trials and tribulations on my sleeve.

Though the situations that arose in my childhood weren’t always the same, I managed to keep things in perspective as best I could. Naturally, I struggled to see the beauty in my dad’s spiritual transition. It didn’t happen until my late 20’s. His death took a huge toll on my life, and the grieving process was long and hard at times, but it has since transitioned into beautiful understanding and perspective.

In my teens, I began to indulge in extremes and manic behaviors which later led to me being diagnosed with cyclothymia during my senior year of high school, and eventually, in time my Cyclothymia was later diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder. Cyclothymia is a mood disorder. Similar to Bipolar Disorder, but not as "severe".  I started two different medications shortly after my diagnosis. In my freshman year of college, after a successful first semester, I failed my second semester because my dosage wasn’t right. That experience led me to “go it on my own”, without the help or assistance from medication. I just want to be clear here for a minute: I am not advocating for you or anyone to go off of their medicine. This is not something that works for everyone. I recommend talking to your current psychiatrist about your options to discover what would work best for YOU. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you have a great relationship with your doctors. If they don’t feel like the right fit, keep searching. Do not settle. If you need help finding a doctor, don’t be afraid to ask for it.

While on medication, I fell into a slump and a serious depression that stemmed from my anxiety about potentially taking medicine to “feel normal” for the rest of my life. I felt like I could fix what was wrong with me, without the medicine. A mindset and approach that is all backward and wrong because the problem wasn’t ever me. The problem was that I had really believed that there was something wrong with me when there wasn’t. My process is different than most others, that’s all. That’s it. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. That discovery is what led me to say living with Bipolar instead of Bipolar Disorder.

I've been a lot more open about my struggles and overall difficulties in living life with bipolar and it's helped significantly. It’s also helped me to highlight my successes and how my bipolar is an advantage in the right areas. With regard to my bipolar, I've found it's a lot easier to manage with the help of talk therapy, journaling, exercising regularly, and most of all, extending myself the grace I give others. In this journey of life that I am on, I've grown more and more comfortable in my own skin, and proud of every label that can be attached to my name and being - whether it be Woman, Black, Latina, or Bipolar. I found that sharing the wonderful things about my personality that are directly correlated to Bipolar to change the narrative and stigmatization surrounding mental health is quite freeing and sometimes fun. The truth is, you have to talk about it. Plain and simple. So I’m proud to be an advocate for the normalization of these conversations. The only way we can truly change is by learning and I’m happy to be both a teacher and a student.

As I always suspect I'll be, I am still learning lots of new lessons about life. Sometimes old ones that cosmic kindergarten (the universe), thinks I need to relearn - but nevertheless, I am still learning. One of my favorite things that my dad left me with was that "you can never make too many mistakes if you learn from your past ones; so try your best not to make the same mistake twice". Join me as I share what I've learned, and sometimes the harsh ways in which I had to learn the many lessons of life. I hope through my experiences people can perhaps learn from me, before making the same silly mistake I made. Every day is a different mission, and it's my goal to finish each one out strong and with love.