Around the age of fifteen I was given my first diagnosis and put onto my first lot of "mental illness" medications. Stigma began through the fear of others. I was highly sensitive to everything within and without me, hormonal with no adequate capacity to emotionally regulate. I was immediately seen, understood and labelled 'Broken". I began to wear the well-worn projections of others. That I was someone to be feared. Someone incomplete, unwell, broken.

Disconnecting from my body, heart, mind and spirit, I unconsciously adopted the identity projected onto me from a non-accepting/fearful society. Consequently, plummeting into a life of internal and external suffering and victimhood, a lab experiment for cocktail of medications (oral and injectable) and regular 'shameful' dates in the dark forest and the fires of hell. Then the intensity of AOD coping strategies developing into addictions, repeated burn out and consistent failure at attempts of normality made me extremely vulnerable to the seduction of death. Staring death straight in the eyes, when my nephew suicided.

Finding some outrageous courage, I vowed NO MORE. Bipolar to me was no longer a Life Sentence. It was no longer a Death Sentence.

That was the day I changed my relationship with the diagnosis, from "I am Bipolar", to "Someone who experiences Bipolar episodes". This immediately silenced the stigma that shaped and created my inner conflict and victimhood. The recognising that the experience was not a curse; it was in fact a gift. My teacher. I understood that if I was born into an Indigenous community, they would recognise my 'gifts'. Bipolar is my apprenticeship in this Earth School. My gateway into a deeper truth and knowing of living in balance and harmony with self, community and earth.

- My hypersensitivities offer me a unique perspective of the world within, the world around and the world beyond. Being a Hypersensitive person is again such a gift... I am so blessed.

- Peace and calm amongst the chaos, was something that was more than 'impossible', it was a concept that was never in my vocabulary, consciousness or "invented yet". Until I understood the embodiment of my unique seasons, cycles and rhythms.

- That the polarities of Bipolar and for every other thing in existence, is not separate at all like I was led to believe. They are in existence with each other and cannot exist without the other. Therefore, they are not to be feared, avoided or shamed but embraced and accepted for the fullness of experiences they offer to be in our wholeness. Learning that I have personal power in the swinging of the pendulum between the polarities was the gift of sovereignty. Also, as deep as you meet the dark, is the depth in which you will meet the light.

- The episodes of Bipolar also gift me constant transformation. Every episode is a cycle of birth, death, rebirth cycle. Understanding this and tapping into this process when I used to suffer, is the most empowering gift into thriving existence.

So overall, tuning into the gifts of Bipolar, I am in actual fact living an authentic full, whole, thriving existence, that many people in modernity are reaching outside themselves for. Now, I can clearly say, nothing in my experience with Bipolar has ever been wasted or regretful it has been purposeful and gifted me WHOLNESS and a burning love for LIFE. I am no longer just surviving for the dream. I am living the dream.

The modern western world cannot accept and safely hold me!!! Mother Earth can hold me; I must hold me. I am the only one who can give myself the love, safety and acceptance I seek. I must hold myself. I am truly the only human who can and is entirely invested in being a sacred sanctuary for me.

I step bravely into the world everyday feeling consistently outcasted, on the fringe, different, misunderstood. Everywhere I seek safe sanctuary, I still feel the remnants of the imprint of judgment as the legacy of mainstream society. Seeing how a fragmented piece of context that is shared, is instantly interpreted as the whole, informing opinions, judgements and stigma. This small speck of sharing of a momentary experience begins a ‘knowing’ response within another, a ‘story’ in which others create, hold as truth and project onto protagonist. Often unaware that this story they have created has come from within themselves, laced by their own conditioning. Incredible damaging!!

I often spend so much solitude time in the complete and utter wilderness. Out there alone, I feel safest I have ever experienced in my entire life. At first, I could not fathom this incredible virgin embodiment of safety and acceptance. I soon realised that the forest holds me. She offers me sanctuary. A sacred space to delve deeply into my complexities. Never biased, judging or injecting labels. She doesn't see me as sick, unwell, broken or something that needs fixing. She demands nothing from me. Fully accepts me. Just as I am. Completely authentic. Just mirrors back to me my truth.

I asked her, the forest, to teach me this. She did.

I learnt to embody my own sacred sanctuary. Just like her. At our purest essence we are both the same, her and I. We are just 'space holding complexity'. Now, I hold all of my complexity without judgment, labels or an intention to fix. I see me, meet me, love me, accept me and hold me in my wholeness.

And, she asked me to share the wisdom of embodied sacred sanctuary. So we can hold our own complexities and we can hold others in theirs

I've come to love my times of darkness, my personal season of winter, my forest of shadows. I see that all life is born from the darkness. People used to ask me what was the hardest thing about living with Bipolar. I use respond with, "after an episode i dont remember who i was. What i believed. I rebuilt myself based on what others told me about me". I didn't realise at the time what an incredible gift this was. The time I spend in the dark is the time of transformation, a natural phononomen of the birth, death and rebirth process, seen everywhere in the world around. We are remade in times of darkness, broken apart and resembled. Although the dyeing off that happens during times of darkness is uncomfortable and painful, it is impermeant, it will come, and it will pass. I've come to realise that the darkness itself is not scary, I have experienced it many times before and will many more. However, what is most unpleasant, scary and uncomfortable is the not knowing what is happening. When I understand, accept and surrender to the death/rebirth cycle of the darkness, the "not knowing" is removed. Surrendering knows the way through. And fortunately, the sooner I step into surrender that quicker I move through the episode of darkness without suffering and with compassion back into the light. I have total faith that the light is ALWAYS there. Light and Dark, as all polarities, co-exist in time and space. They are not separate, they are one. As with the sun, it shines every day without fail. Even behind those clouds, and as night falls, it is shining consistently, we just don't always see it.

Now I regularly choose to voluntarily walk into my dark forest of complexities, to connect more with my sharp edges and expanding past my imposed limitations to my truth, now I know I always hold my own light to guide my way back out.

I loved this question. I literally thought I would have heaps to ask but it is very simple and clear. Thats where the confusion lies. It's that simple, I just cannot fathom how or why it's the thing I am asking and praying for the world to stop.

Stop the separation and division!!!! I just don't get it.

If I step into the wisdom I have gain through my apprenticeship with Bipolar is that separation and connection/union are two of the same. Both ends of the continuum. Both in-play at the same time. One cannot exist without the other. As light and dark. Day and Night. Sun and moon. However, the swing and nature of separation is not able to comprehend this truth. The concept of separation is heavily imprinted in the black and white, all or nothing thinking. It is separate in its thinking and (assumed) incapable of seeing and accepting that it is just one part of the whole. The exact same worldview that created a monster in the diagnosis and stigma of Bipolar. A diagnosed person is either manic or depressed. The "manicdepressant". Either extreme end of the spectrum. It fails to acknowledge the in-between or full range of emotions along this spectrum (that every person is capable of experiencing), or to acknowledge the fact that "what comes up must come down". Truth is both co-existing, in time and space!

Likewise, the other end of the spectrum of division is acceptance. This one does not fall into a worldview that is all or nothing thinking, so I really do struggle to understand why acceptance is so hard. All I can speak of is my experience and that of the power is in the stories that are attached to the separation worldview to justify its uptake. These stories can only be that of judgement, stigma, difference, superiority and power. These stories no matter how old or new, how far into the past have stained our hearts and minds and are the remnants of the very human legacy we have all left with someone at some time in our wake. Either consciously or unconsciously.

To stop separation and division, requires a change. A simple change that we are all capable of. And that is just an awareness of how each of us relate to separation, union, division, acceptance. If we are not aware of our relationship, we actually maybe reinforcing this separation and divide through our fight for connection and acceptance.

Therefore, I ask you ... to stop the autopilot of attaching to old, soiled stories/justifications of separation and divide. Breathe and be curious in how or why you are relating to the concepts that way. What would it look like if your relationship moved closer or further away from each of these concepts? Just stop, breathe and get curious.

Oh my goodness. This is something that I continue to do. I have so many video journals where I am crying from such proudness of my willingness to step into my bravery time and time again.

A lot of people throughout the recent years have told me or referred to me a strong person. I had so much resistance and was beginning to feel frustrated in repeatedly telling them they were wrong... I didn't refer to myself as a strong person. After coming in from the forest on an extended solo, I decided to video journal. It was here when I realised my resistance to this image of strong. I spoke about what resonated as my truth. That I was not strong woman but in fact brave woman. A brave warrior everyday I choose to live fully.

I am brave I left everything I knew: family; friends; mental health support team; relationships; home; financial security; job, moved into a van with only the possession I could fit and followed my heart and dreaming. I am brave that I regularly push past the projections of fear and stigma and lean into my sharp edges. I bravely invite in darkness, so I can get intimate with my complexities and truth. I am brave from walking away from my victimhood of mental illness. I am brave the day I decided to choose life over death. I am brave for always listening to my intuition and heart regardless of the lack of rationality. I'm brave for constantly speaking out to the world the vulnerable truth about my walk with Bipolar. I am brave for full immersion in the middle of the forest and having faith that everything I need will be provided for me. I am brave for having faith that I embody a safe sacred sanctuary for myself and trusting that my inner light will always guide me home.

I feel my bravest every moment in life that I choose to live fully in my wholeness!!!

Myself.

For 22 years I abandoned my truth. I disconnected from my body, heart and mind. I allowed myself to wear a projected identity as my truth for far too long. I lived as a fragmented victim. I lost my connection with my wholeness. Although the journey into self-forgiveness was long and painful. I deeply walk hand in hand with the grief and gratitude of this every day,

I also grieve the natural experience of development and the rite of passage from teen into adult. As I was medicated from the age of 15 years old, the chemicals in my brain were controlled. My development was artificially produced. I lost birthrights, I lost large amounts of natural developmental capacity and experience to serve me as a functional adult, and I lost the connection and empathy for a world calling for me.

That I was born with the longing to belong. I still grieve the absence of this birthright.

Although, I continue to grieve the loss of myself, both young and whole, I find comfort knowing that my soul didn't abandon me. The soul can never truly be disconnected or lost.

My mind is incredible. We co-create my dreaming into reality. When I need to step into my body or listen and lead from my heart or intuition, I simply ask my mind to quieten so I can hear the others. It not about being able to control my mind, again it's about being in healthy relationship with it. It's about respect. I totally respect the incredible capacity of my mind to learn; problem solve and bring my dreaming in fruition. However, I create boundaries when it wants to step into looping, monkey chatter, negative self-talk and judgment, I simply communicate with it and treat it as a friend, speaking with the same respect I would speak to another. It's a collaborative relationship, I share with it when it is not helpful, when it recalls something useful and when together we can move beyond imposed limitations, and it now responds appropriately to my needs. We support each other, I feed it healthy and nutritious thoughts and content, and it supports me as a catalyst, to articulate my experience, creatively express my unique perspective and wisdom with others in the world without.

Ask, "What do you need? What do you need from me right now?"

In my experience, particularly if I'm feeling a big (uncomfortable) emotion, the majority of people assume that I need fixing, a distraction, medication or something to cheer me up. They express an assumption that I am broken, in dark 'unwell' territory and do not have the capacity to know what I need to help myself. They are full of concern, worry and fear which they are unconsciously projected onto me through their assumptions. I don't need fixing; I don't need a pill. I don't need another distraction or to again supress what I am feeling. I am not a burden you need to carry. I need to feel. I need to experience my truth. My pain and my joy.

So, if they just asked "what do you need from me right now?" they would hear...

"Nothing. I just need to feel this, experience this".

"Have faith in me, that I will find my way"

"Sit with me, here in my darkness... no fixing...just hold my hand...be my guardian while I walk through my underworld...just sit in the darkness with me. That's all".

"Just hold me and witness me, as I am, in my truth"

Our experience with Bipolar, as with any other diagnosis, is grounded in our relationship with the diagnosis. Similarly, my experience of Bipolar, is to grounded in your relationship with the diagnosis. Understanding how we relate to mental health and changing that relationship if need is the most simple and effective way of the change of acceptance. For accepting ourselves as wild, incredibly gifted human beings. Accepting others, everyone.

My life and experience completely changed the day I changed the way in which i related to it. I embraced the diagnosis as a gift rather than a curse, as done in many other indigenous cultures. A whole beautiful world opened up to me. Changing my relationship with the diagnosis took away victimhood and allowed me to see the unique perspective and embodiment of my true nature. Invited me to thrive instead. Myself as wholeness rather than broken or incomplete. Someone who is mentally ill, to someone who is learning to regulate and express full range of emotions. I now feel so accepted in experiencing the full range of humanness and the divine that is available to me every day. Life is so sacred and changing my relationship with this has removed all barriers of living small and living trap behind the prison that we often view as life.

As I share this perspective with others, change happens. I feel more love and accepted then I have ever felt before. When I accept myself, it ripples out and invokes others to accept me also. Because you are no longer relating to a broken person... you are relating to me... someone who is whole, has always been whole.... Not the diagnosis of broken that you have decided to be in relationship with instead of me.

Life is such a blessing and choosing which door to walk through, is our choice. Doesn't matter what others say, think or do to us, but it does matter what we say, think or do to us. Suffering is a choice. Accepting life as messy and real, and accepting that I will think and feel a whole range of high or low vibrations, that's self-acceptance. That is all a part of human experience and must be felt in order to be true to my human expression. I for one, no longer want to deny any human experience. I have chosen to live. Emotions are just that, a living part of the whole human experience. The trick I found is a thought is a thought, and a feeling is a feeling. In their purest form that is all there is to it. As Shakespeare exquisitely posits, “there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.