When I was 22, I was hired to fetch coffees and work overnights at NBC News.
As a child, I dreamed of becoming a journalist. I imagined myself in a director’s chair across from astronauts, authors, rock stars and everyday people who face extraordinary situations. The human experience fascinated me. It still does.
Eventually, I graduated from fetching coffees and was offered the opportunity to tell stories. Finally! It was the beginning of a decades-long career questioning politicians in the Oval Office, crouching in the back of blacked-out vans on sting operations and comforting families in the wake of natural disasters. I was always drawn to this type of high-stakes storytelling.
All the while, I was living my own high-stakes story, navigating the highs and lows of a debilitating mental illness and keeping it a secret for fear of being judged and rejected.
Hiding my bipolar disorder became my other full-time job. I justified it because I was often able to use my symptoms to my advantage. The adrenaline of my manic highs fueled me. I was hopping on planes at all hours chasing stories, using my newfound creative bursts to write scripts at 2 a.m., down more coffee and meet the camera crew at 7 a.m. I was on fire. My bosses praised me.
During the lows that followed, I sobbed in the safe confines of lonely hotel showers, feeling swallowed by black clouds of darkness. These were the extremes. Mostly, I lived in the middle — on a never-ending roller coaster with anxiety riding shotgun.
I became an expert at the illusion of happiness, of normalcy. A cold spoon under swollen eyes before the press conference. A forced smile in the hallway.
I became an expert at the illusion of happiness, of normalcy. A cold spoon under swollen eyes before the press conference. A forced smile in the hallway. When I did have time away from work, I worked even harder to conceal the signs of my reality — medication packed away and carefully tucked into a side pocket of my overnight bag, no mention of therapy or psychiatry. I buried my truth alive.
Eventually, I married the love of my life and had a child, a precious baby boy. I soothed his newborn cries through bottles full of formula from the local drugstore because I could not breastfeed, due to my medications. As I looked around at all the breastfeeding moms, I felt tremendous guilt for being unable to do the same. My shame grew heavier and the despair crept in. By comparing myself to other moms, I concluded that I was, in fact, not enough of a mother. And so it grew stronger — the illusion that everyone around me was normal and I was broken.
In a short period of time, I had two more children. The disparity in my life confused me, and it confused the people who loved me. I was, in fact, happily married with three healthy kids and a meaningful career in Hollywood. The periods of darkness in my inner world did not reflect the beauty of my outer world. I felt like a fraud.
I had started a podcast, All The Wiser, which was growing more popular by the day. The heart of the show was brave truth-telling. I interviewed people about unthinkable circumstances — shark attacks, wrongful conviction, kidnappings — and the lessons they learned on the other side of suffering.
It started to sink in that each guest on the podcast had grown stronger in their suffering. I spent hundreds of hours valuing the truth in other people’s lives — it now felt dishonest to hide my own.
I was asking people to do the very thing I had not been willing to do. To be brave in my brokenness. In listening to their stories, I realized I could no longer bury my own story.
Finally, three years ago, I decided to stop hiding.
The day of my 43rd birthday I asked my dear friend and a fellow journalist to interview me about the secret I had been hiding for two decades and shared it on an episode of the podcast. In an instant, my story went from being known by less than a handful of people to thousands of people around the world, including old friends and colleagues, and faceless strangers I will never meet.
The day the episode aired, I shed my old narrative and took a bold leap into the light of being seen. I could barely open the door to leave my house. What would the neighbors think? The moms at school drop-off?
The responses came slowly: a voicemail here, a text message there, an email from a friend I knew in high school. I put my phone aside and logged off, too scared to look at them all at once. I just needed to keep breathing. And then the flood happened. I returned to my phone a few hours later to find hundreds of texts, direct messages and emails. Love washed over me. People leaned in a bit closer when we spoke. As if they wanted me to know they saw me.
The piece of me I had labeled unlovable was the very thing that made me human. I had been judging myself while the world was patiently waiting to embrace me.
As a mother, wife and podcaster, speaking my truth about living with a chronic mental illness has been my most powerful and liberating act. I moved from shame and secrecy to freedom and service to others. I stopped denying my mental illness and, like magic, it stopped defining me.
I stopped denying my mental illness and, like magic, it stopped defining me.
In the story I live now, I am not defined by a secret. Today, my faith defines me. My family defines me. My friends and the work I do in the world define me.
I’ve come to understand the truth defines each of us, and it’s only in claiming and sharing our truth that we can be truly set free.