I know depression. It nearly destroyed my life in my thirties and almost killed me in my early fifties. When I was in the worst of it, had anyone suggested there was something valuable in the experience, I would have been deeply offended.
What I am about to share is not an argument that depression is desirable or that suffering has hidden rewards. It is a true story about what I discovered was possible — and how that possibility, developed over years of sustained work, made me the person my family needed during the worst experience of our lives.
April 2015
I fell into one of the deepest depressions of my life on April 1, 2015. Within two months it had reached an intensity most would call extreme — and yet I continued to teach my classes, do my work, and maintain my responsibilities.
The depression was real. Physically: my body ached everywhere, I was completely drained of energy, and getting out of bed required a conscious act of will. Mentally: thinking was slowed, I repeated the same dark thoughts repeatedly, I was obsessed with death. Emotionally: the pain was at an intensity that words inadequately describe — distraught is insufficient. Socially: I wanted to be alone while simultaneously feeling the loneliest I had ever been. Professionally: my thoughts ran constantly toward failure and fear.
And yet I functioned. Not because the depression was mild — it was not — but because I had spent years developing the capacity to remain functional within difficult states rather than waiting for them to end.
That capacity is the only reason I was able to be there for my family in the way they needed.
The Call
In the midst of this depression, I traveled to visit my mother and my sister Laura, who had lived together for fifteen years. My daughter Kate joined me. We surprised them — and they were genuinely surprised.
Laura had been dealing with chronic illness and pain medication for most of her adult life. During the visit she announced she was going to a clinic in Louisiana to try to come off the medications. I committed to flying back to stay with my mother while Laura was at the clinic.
On June 2, I arrived at my mother's house after a full day of travel, exhausted and still in the thick of the depression. At 5 a.m. the next morning, my mother woke me screaming. Laura had been rushed from the clinic to the hospital in an emergency.
What followed was the worst week of our family's lives.
What Followed
Laura had suffered two cardiac arrests. She was on life support. The prognosis was uncertain and then, over the following days, increasingly clear.
My daughter Kate, a physician, navigated the medical communications while I focused on being present for my mother — holding her through her terror and grief, facilitating conversations with doctors, helping my mother understand what was happening when the clinical explanations were too abstract, and supporting Kate through something that was both professionally and personally devastating.
On June 7, five days after we arrived, it became clear that Laura was not going to recover. Her brain had sustained catastrophic damage. We gathered the whole family and made the decision together that it was time to let her go.
Being Present During Unbearable Pain
What I noticed — and what I have reflected on many times since — is that my familiarity with extreme pain allowed me to be fully present during those five days in a way that would not have been possible if I had no experience working within difficult states.
I was in the deepest depression of my life. I was also able to help my mother, support my daughter, communicate with hospital staff, facilitate the family's decision-making, and be genuinely present during the most important moments.
When Laura's eyes opened in her final moments, I was present enough to say to my mother: "Look, she is saying goodbye one final time." My mother poured her heart out to her sister in those final seconds, and Laura's heart stopped shortly after. It was the most painful and simultaneously the most sacred experience of my life.
I do not believe I could have done any of that from a place of disorder. I was able to do it because years of learning to function within difficult states had built something in me that was available precisely when it was most needed.
After
I stayed with my mother for a month after the funeral. I gave the eulogy. I helped Kate process her grief. I helped my mother through the impossible work of beginning to accept her loss.
Throughout this, I was still in deep depression. I was not performing wellness. I was genuinely in pain — physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I was also genuinely functional and genuinely helpful.
The pain I had worked with for years prepared me to hold the pain of others without being overwhelmed by it. That is what Bipolar IN Order, at its deepest, makes possible.
What This Means
I share this story not to claim that depression has no real cost — it does, and I know that cost intimately. I share it because the standard story of depression as only a deficit to be eliminated misses something important.
For people who do the sustained work of learning to function within difficult states — with appropriate clinical support, with a proper foundation, with gradual and careful development — something becomes available that does not exist in a management-only approach. A different relationship to pain. A capacity that belongs to them no matter what the state brings.
That capacity is what the Bipolar IN Order program is designed to build.