Love Art and Illness

Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby play two people struggling with what it means to live with bipolar disorder. (40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks)

This film is just coming out and I look forward to seeing it. Not having seen it, I can't comment on the quality of the film. But after listening to Paul Dalio this morning who produced the film, that is based on his own personal experience with being bi-polar, and after he'd read Kay Redfield's book Touched With Fire, he was inspired him and I am convinced this film is both truthful and well done.
Any truthful media coverage and artistic expression surrounding mental health issues is a always a very good and much needed.

I know personally, what it means to love someone who lives with mental illness, including physical illness. I've several friends with serious illnesses and a brother who died from MS at 59.

 My late husband who was a writer, lived with paranoid schizophrenia since the age of 16. He died at the age of 26 from a combination of Brittle Diabetes and schizophrenia. This was the most painful time of my life but it was also the most intensely beautiful because of our love for one another and our spiritual beliefs. This experience changed my life forever.

For me it has become so important to know and to remember, when a loved one has mental illness or what ever the disease, it is absolutely vital to openly talk about it, to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room, that no one wants to acknowledge, and it is vital for everyone to get help.

Silence and denial I believe is worse than the disease itself, because it keeps everyone sick,  the person directly affected by the disease, and everyone else affected.

As a 22 year recovering alcoholic, I know for every alcoholic there are at least ten other people in their lives who have been affected. It is the same I believe for every disease.

Yesterday I listened to an online webinar that included a most beautiful, strong and inspiring young woman, Kris Carr who was diagnosed with cancer at the young age of 31. She went on to produce a film and wrote about about her experience.

 Kris is still living with cancer, but in spite of, and no doubt because of cancer, she has discovered who she is, gone on to help so many others, and built a thriving successful business.
People like Kris, and those like her, inspire and touch my heart beyond description.