{"product_id":"2940046429404","title":"My Bipolar Backpack","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this powerful memoir Susan Ralphe employs sharp storytelling skills honed over a\u003cbr\u003elong, newspaper-reporting career to tell her own story of long-term, heart-wrenching bipolar\u003cbr\u003emadness.\u003cbr\u003eMy Bipolar Backpack begins shortly before the first of two stays in mental hospitals and\u003cbr\u003eends as she serves in elective office. Sandwiched in between are incidents from a troubled\u003cbr\u003echildhood, a brain that regularly froze during her college years, employment nightmares,\u003cbr\u003emisdiagnosis, suicide attempts, a marriage rocked by mental illness in Susan and alcoholism\u003cbr\u003ein her husband, and mothering failures.\u003cbr\u003eThe first chapter gives readers a snapshot view of how it feels to be under the grip of a\u003cbr\u003emanic attack.\u003cbr\u003e“Without warning invisible bands inside my head often tightened until the pressure\u003cbr\u003ebecame unbearable. It sometimes worsened almost to the point that I thought my head was\u003cbr\u003egoing to explode.\u003cbr\u003e“Simultaneously my thoughts raced as though my brain were continually in fast-forward\u003cbr\u003emode, while my ability to think decelerated. I vividly pictured my brain curling up\u003cbr\u003einto a fetal position…”\u003cbr\u003eSusan recounts how telling staff at the first mental hospital that her husband was the\u003cbr\u003eone who was “crazy,” landed her in a locked unit, the end of the line for the mentally ill.\u003cbr\u003eTerror greeted her at the door in the form of a young woman wearing a football helmet who\u003cbr\u003ehit and kicked Susan as she walked in, and the nurse behind a tall, plastic enclosure who\u003cbr\u003eignored what was going on. The author describes her unwillingness or inability to talk about\u003cbr\u003ewhat was troubling her and her resultant discharge with the wrong diagnosis and red-hot\u003cbr\u003ebipolar disorder boiling under the surface, ready to erupt again.\u003cbr\u003eThis is a story of soaring accomplishment alternating with black periods of tenseness,\u003cbr\u003ebrain freeze, and despair. A little girl who ran home from kindergarten daily during recess\u003cbr\u003ebecause she feared her mother was going to die, is transformed into valedictorian of her high school\u003cbr\u003egraduating class, then into a college student who was seriously mentally ill. The next\u003cbr\u003echaracter is a happy bride and new mother who subsequently falls apart under the weight of\u003cbr\u003eher husband’s alcoholism and her younger son’s asthma.\u003cbr\u003eFor most of her life, Susan explains, she carefully hid her bipolar disorder from\u003cbr\u003eanyone she could, fearing the stigma that could deliver a second punch to someone already\u003cbr\u003ereeling from illness itself.\u003cbr\u003eIn the pages of this memoir the author summons the strength to share her experiences,\u003cbr\u003econfident that other bipolar individuals can find hope and healing in her tale and that their\u003cbr\u003efamilies, as well as mental health professionals, can gain knowledge and understanding.\u003cbr\u003eShe says she dreams of the day when bipolar sufferers will no longer think they must\u003cbr\u003ecarry the heavy “bipolar backpacks” in which they hide their disease.\u003cbr\u003eThe author grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, graduated from Northern\u003cbr\u003eMichigan University, and worked as a reporter for newspapers in Minnesota and Arizona\u003cbr\u003eincluding The Duluth Herald and The Phoenix Gazette. She was married for 38 years to her\u003cbr\u003elate husband, Roger, and has two grown sons and nine grandchildren. She presently resides in\u003cbr\u003ethe Portland, OR, area.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Susan Ralphe","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47108511498480,"sku":"2940046429404","price":9.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940046429404_p0.jpg?v=1763693874","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940046429404","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}