Ten years were spent with depression and mania before I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of twenty-five. My illness was manageable on Lithium until menopause hit, then everything went wrong and the mood swings reappeared. Mental hospitals became my second home, and I spent 14 months of my life in them.
I married three times and learned that marriage is hard to manage when you have an unwanted guest in the house called Bipolar.
I experienced many years of loneliness in my marriages, and after my last husband died, so I wrote a book on loneliness called, “A Practical Guide to Overcoming Loneliness,” which you will find on this website.
Over the years, I have written reams of poetry which has been published in journals and anthologies. I have since written a poetry book called “We Never Did Mornings” which was published in August 2022.
I began writing for Quora, the International question and answer website, three years ago and have now written well over 4,000 answers. I have 34,000,000 views to date. The questions and answers in “How to Live With Bipolar” and “A Practical Guide to Overcoming Loneliness” were all taken from my answers on Quora.
Now that my medication has been changed, I am in therapy, and am looking after myself, I am in remission and have not been near a mental hospital for eleven years.
I have traveled to all different parts of the world, but now live in Texas with my two cats. When I am not writing, I am drawing or painting.