For Young People:
Some Transparency and Encouragement
Alongside the professional content of this site, I want to reach out in particular to people of my generation and younger and share some life experience and commentary about it. I’ve been helped enormously by anonymous postings on the internet, but probably more so by learning stories within the full context of specific lives. I aspire to give this same gift to someone else.
Between childhood and the present, I’ve grappled with issues that have gained attention in North American society in recent decades: mental health challenges as well as my sexual orientation and overall queerness (Sidebar: If I had to put a contemporary label on how I feel about myself, I’d say I’m somewhere in the gender-nonconforming or gender-agnostic/nonbinary range. Gender seems kind of silly to me—it’s the 21st century, why are we still socializing people so strongly based on anatomy? At the same time, I respect that for others it’s an important identity marker and way of being in the world.)
Most recently, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after years of worsening and undiagnosed signs and symptoms in my twenties. I’ve been faced with decisions about how open to be about this. In the end, I decided to put it in the public domain despite some real fears: that misogynistic folks or folks who are prejudiced against those with mental health challenges will use this information as grounds for making assumptions about me or automatically dismissing me or my work; that professional or personal contacts will dig around about me (and I know they will), find this, and think warily of me as “that bipolar person” before they think of me as competent, rational, and level-headed “Julia”. The flip side is that, in addition to maybe helping someone else, this gets to be part of my filter for who is worth my time; the people I want to work for or spend time with will receive this information with openness and respect.
To be clear, however, I’m not trying to normalize making private medical history a matter of public record. This is a very personal choice I’m making. I’m so proud of what I accomplished living untreated with this condition through intelligence and sheer force of will. I’m also proud that I got help. I remain unapologetically me. I believe that (mental) illness is a vulnerability, but I also believe that there should be no shame in it. I hope that, one day, better understanding of the biological underpinnings and effective treatments of mental illnesses will put them on the same medical and social footing as more “respectable” conditions. After all, even if an illness has some amount of social or circumstantial causal factors, that does not lessen the fact that it’s a physiological response to those factors, likely in addition to biological tendencies.
On adversity, generally: It is an important fact that you can write your own story—in particular, one in which you remain the hero(ine) and an obstacle plays whatever role you decide. If you’re telling yourself that you’re the victim of life or the universe, in some sense you’re right. So much is out of our control, and so much is unfair. But there are so many other stories that would make your life better. My life has many positives alongside the challenges—and that have oftentimes gotten me through the challenges. My story is so much a story of love and support, as well as hard work. I was nurtured as a kid; I was given a university education; my family didn’t disown me when I came out, and they have stood by me since my bipolar diagnosis. I’ve generally had access to the healthcare I’ve needed. Indeed, I consider my own life to be an example of why universal and fair access to (mental) healthcare is so important.
One of the ways I get through challenges is by remembering that I can see each moment as asking the question of who I want to be. How I feel and how my efforts do or don’t result in wide/great success are sometimes completely out of my control. I am lucky to have the imagination and creative impulse to aspire to craft a beautiful life story instead of a tragic one; to be a person who embodies perseverance and courage; to be a person who leaves people and places better in some way for having encountered them.
Finally, a couple of thoughts about existential anxiety (vs. clinical anxiety), which seems to be in the zeitgeist post-COVID: My take is that there is both a lot and nothing to be anxious about. The world has a staggering amount of uncertainty and misfortune in it, but anxiety is only sort of smart about how to handle it. It knows enough to look out for you by asking the question, “What if X terrible thing happens?”. But it’s dumb enough to just leave the question hanging around in your system as an unresolved threat to gnaw at your health.
So answer the question. If X terrible thing happens, and it very well might, and it might not even be your fault, then you can still do Y or Z or … There is always a next step you can take to respond, and that’s critical. Work to do your best in every situation, and dig into that process of looking for the next step or other possibility. In my experience, exercising that agency is a big part of the happiness we’re looking for and are worried that some awful external circumstance is going to rob us of. It can’t, unless it kills us, in which case we really have nothing to worry about! So settle back into things. You have the capacity to act with confidence and thrive amidst uncertainty.
Finally, and very importantly, thank you to all the people who have given me acceptance and support. You will always share in whatever successes I enjoy, and you’re a big part of why I do what I do.