On our 21st Birthday (today, officially), I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge that we’re slowly working through the archive. If you go back as far as 2007, there’s a lot that I said that is not accurate in today’s mental health climate, or reflected the fact that I wasn’t actually bi-polar, but I was speaking up for the community. In the 21 years since I started this site, out of desperation to get the word out that bipolar disorder was not a death sentence, not a reason for people to avoid others, definitely not a thing to be all that ashamed of, research, definitions, and the books that psychiatrists use have changed. Treatments are always coming up, new ones, old ones refined.
I have often said that the UK is about 10 years behind America, in terms of adopting treatments and medications especially, and all the stuff that has been deemed difficult or different to what should be happening because of research or my own experiences (believe me when I say that some people get on with CBT and DBT. I need time to adapt them to how I understand the world and how to use them, so in the traditional sense, I don’t get on with them, but in the important measurements, the idea that if I’m actually managing things now, they’ve worked quite well. I just needed to adapt them), there are always changes.

21 years ago, I founded this site with a few good friends, and over the years, we’ve had a lot of content come and go as those friends have moved to their own sites, or asked no longer to participate in the site. 21 years ago, I hadn’t met my beloved yet. My daughter was a toddler – she’s now in Uni, studying to be a photographer, and my son a slightly older one (and he’s now out in the world about to buy his first house). I was still living in Edinburgh, having just separated from their father.

Now? I’m in the Cotswolds, I’ve graduated from a course I talked about on this blog, and my diagnosis has changed. I’m no longer considered bipolar – I am instead CPTSD, anxiety, features of EUPD, Historic Bipolar. Plus query psychosis or pseudo-psychosis. It’s quite a mouthful. I really do miss the days when I could say ‘bipolar’ and not have to keep count in my head.

Katie-Anne and I talked a lot about mental health – my adopted sister is, as I mentioned a few years ago, gone now. And I met and helped support several writing communities, gaining and losing friends along the way. People I cared for deeply have gone too – Valerie, Quinn, my gran, his grandparents. But so many important people too – Brianna, Mary-Ann, Ian, Katie. People we game with, and people we train with.
And if you know me from either of my other advocate blogs (Run Girl, Run for CPTSD and psychosis (and the sport I took up to help learn to be me again – that would be LudoSport, and shout out to LudoSport UK – Bristol and Cheltenham for training me, UK in general cause they all rock, as do International!) and Typing a Blank for the migraine/headache I’ve had for close to four months), you’ll know that there’s a lot more that I’m now talking about.
But this place. This was my first online home, and I’m so proud of the campaigns we’ve helped with, the voices we supported, and the lives we may have helped, or even saved. In 21 years I don’t know where I’ll be, but I hope, that if there’s still an internet, that Bi-polarbears remains as a place to come get a bit of common sense solace in a world that might seem a little bit upside down.

I’m lucky – I’m absolutely surrounded by people that care for me and make my world a place that I can manage – from David and the kids, my family, to the kids partners, and all the friends I’ve made along the way, in the writing community, gaming and at LudoSport. It’s all made my life what it is, and shaped what I wrote about on this blog.
When I felt like giving in, it was those people that kept encouraging me.

So. One and all, thank you. I couldn’t have done this, and couldn’t do what the next bit is without you!