Laughing and Crying: Conquering Bipolar and Cognitive Impairment

My life was filled with depression, rage, suicidal ideation, and dysfunctional decision making, punctuated with times of great focus, energy, and even exhilaration. For almost fifty years, this was my reality, and I knew of no other way to live.

When Bev Rohlf's third husband insisted he could no longer live with her erratic mood swings, she took the first steps toward identifying and treating a mental illness that had impacted her entire life. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Bev began the long struggle to find and maintain a treatment that would stabilize her life and her moods.

Beginning with the midwest farm life of her grandparents and parents, Bev follows the thread of mental illness through her family history, and the obvious connection of bipolar symptoms present in both her father's and her own behaviors. Her own life moves from the farm to her life in college, three marriages, the second to a man twice her age with his own mental illness, their life in Egypt, and his early death. Viewing her life and choices through the filter of bipolar, she accepts some of her disastrous choices and the consequences to herself and her family. Despite dibilitating insomnia, medication side effects, and the stigma which cuts short her profressional career, she moves forward with treatment, determined to tamp down the wild ride of emotions she has always experienced-depression to fury to hypomania. When diagnosed with cognitive impairment, Bev applies the lessons she has learned from her painstaking search for wellness, dedicating herself to finding a treatment.

Her story is one of determination and forgiveness, recovery and hope. She states her story is not always a pleasant one, and it's not. But she shares it in the belief that her experiences will help others who face the same struggles.