Celebrating 19 years in my healing journey

In February 2006, I was hospitalized in the psych ward while experiencing my first full blown manic episode and diagnosed with bipolar I disorder.

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24-hours before being admitted, I was manic and walking unattended on the hospital's helipad located on top of a 4-story parking structure without railing. I was arrested, handcuffed and forced into the back of a police car, and charged with trespassing and assaulting an officer while resisting arrest.

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The diagnosis scared me, living with an incurable condition scared me while I was drowning in shame due to the stigma and remembering while I did while manic.

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Once I was discharged from the hospital, I made a commitment to educate myself about bipolar and find ways to live well not despite it but because of it.

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I've been on a 19-year journey trying out different healing modalities from therapy, bodywork, natural alternatives, and the manic episodes continued.

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A year ago today, I met Dr. Nima Rahmany, a former chiropractor doctor and Attachment Healing Specialist, and I started studying and working with him. He helped me reframe bipolar responses as nervous system dysregulation.

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The work I've been doing with him has been deep and life-changing. It helped me process and integrate in utero trauma, the grief/shame/guilt/abandonment I experienced when I was 7 months old after my older sister died.... and more.

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I've been learning to feel the manic energy in my body when it arises, allow it to move, and use exercises to calm it down until it dissipates without escalating into a manic episode. I still take Lithium, it would be foolish on my part to stop it when my body has been used to it for 19 years.

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Looking back, it's been a long and often times hard journey but I wouldn't change a thing because it has been necessary to help me become who I am now.

And now the trailblazer in me is ready to continue guiding others.

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(This picture is me, two weeks before my first psych ward stay, at the Altavista petroglyphs in Nayarit, MX during a yoga retreat)