Hi,

So many people have problems, especially people who have bipolar disorder and their supporters. Not that they’re a special population, or anything like that, but anyone with a mental

illness and their supporter have a difficult time with things.

They not only have to cope with the every day problems that other people have to cope with, but they also have to cope with the added problems that bipolar disorder brings with it, both for the survivor and for the supporter. And the problems that it brings to their relationship, to a job situation, family, etc. It’s not an easy thing, living with bipolar disorder. Or living with someone who has the disorder.

But it’s not the fact that you (or your loved one) have bipolar disorder, it’s what you do with it that counts. Even at the worst of it.

I know someone who has bipolar disorder and her sister had it as well. These two women were like twins, even though they were several years apart, but that’s how close they were. However, one of the women went off her bipolar medication, went into a bipolar episode, and ended up taking her own life.

The other sister, the one who had stayed on her medication, was devastated! She went into a deep, deep depression, although not a full-blown bipolar depressive episode (she thinks only because she stayed on her bipolar medication), because she was so sad over her sister killing herself. She had a real hard time coming to terms with her sister’s suicide. It took years for her to find peace with it.

At first, she felt angry with her sister for doing what she did. Then she felt angry at the bipolar itself, for giving her sister the irrational thoughts that caused her to kill herself. That helped her find more peace with it. She understood that her sister would not have done what she did if she had not gone off her medication.

So what did she do? She had a blog for people with bipolar disorder. She used that blog to tell her sister’s story, and to encourage people with bipolar NOT to go off their medication! And every year after that, on her sister’s birthday and death day, she repeated the story, again begging

people with the disorder not to go off their medication.

So what she thought was that “it’s what you do with it that counts,” and she was going to use her sister’s suicide for good. She was going to keep telling her story so that other people wouldn’t do the same thing that her sister had done. She would keep telling it in the hopes that it would save someone else’s life. She would use what had hurt her so deeply to try to do some good for someone else with bipolar disorder.

She still does this today. At her sister’s every birthday and death day, this woman gets on her blog and makes the same plea, for people with bipolar disorder to stay on their medications so that they won’t go into an episode and kill themselves like her sister did. And she’s doing a lot of good!

So it just goes to show you that good can come out of bad – it’s just what you do with it that counts.

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave