One Year of Bipolar Disorder

7th of May.

It is exactly one year since I had an emotional breakdown at work and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.

This day is also Maternal Mental Health Day.

These two things are not a coincidence. They share the same story.

My Bipolar Disorder symptoms started after the birth of my first son, Silver, in the middle of Covid pandemic back in 2020.

I experienced Mania, Psychosis, Anxiety, and Depression.

I did not know that then. I did not have the language for what was happening to me.

I just knew that something is happening… something deep and complicated.

That person I had been before Silver’s birth was not entirely the person who came home from the hospital. I carried that quietly for years, the way mothers are expected to carry things quietly.

Until I couldn’t anymore.

To every mother reading this...

If you felt like you disappeared after having your child…

If something changed in you that nobody around you could see or name…

I want you to know that you were not dramatic. You were not ungrateful. You were not a bad mother.

You may have been unwell. And that is not your fault.

Maternal mental health is still one of the most under discussed, most misdiagnosed, most silenced chapters in a woman’s life.

Today, on Maternal Mental Health Day, I am saying it plainly:

what happened to me after my son’s birth was the beginning of this.

And I wish someone had told me sooner.

On 7th May 2025, I had an emotional breakdown at work.

I was a nurse. I was someone who understood mental illness clinically, professionally, academically.

I thought that knowledge would protect me.

It didn’t.

I could not explain why I could not stop crying over something that I have experienced multiple times throughout my nursing career of 13 years, Death.

I have experienced multiple deaths in different ways…

Calm and peaceful, tragic and unexpected, young and old.

But this particular death was the last drop that made me overflow… non stop like a broken dam.

Nothing about this death is special, it was similar to all the other deaths I have experienced and the patient was no one special for me, I had only known them for 2 hours.

So crying over it hours after it happened was not normal for me… I realised something is wrong.

It has been a year since that day.

And the past year, I was officially diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.

It is highly caused by genetics so my kids are at high risk of developing Bipolar Disorder.

I will now forever take antipsychotics.

After a year of medication and dosage changes, it is still not optimised.

It took me 9 months to start therapy.

My self directed therapeutic management is being scrutinised as malicious and fraudulent.

My family and I are financially worse off because of my condition.

I will always carry the risk of having a relapse despite medication, therapy, and daily self management.

I will always second guess my happiness, thoughts, and behaviours…

and despite all the self-awareness and self-work, I could one day wake up and feel manic or depressed.

It’s EXHAUSTING.

And sometimes, I give up.

Because I am tired of it all…

Why can’t I just live a normal life…

Why do I have to fight and work this hard just to have stability…

Sometimes I feel like it’s not worth it anymore.

And when I am feeling like everything and everyone is against me, one thought always pops up in my mind…

I DESERVE TO BE HERE.

I deserve all the things that I want and need.

I deserve the this life.

Because I am worth it.

I am loved and I love… myself, my passions, my family, my friends, my community.

Sometimes that’s enough.