MY JOURNEY BUY NOW MY JOURNEY Writing and mental health advocacy can affect both personal and social change. I started blogging because the thoughts and words in my mind simply had to get out. I hope this blog offers support, educates, and fights stigma against those living with mental illness. The following essays, excerpts from my memoir Balancing Act: Writing Through a Bipolar Life, recount my struggle with depression and bipolar disorder, the two decades it took to get a proper diagnosis, and how my journey has ultimately given me a sense of purpose. There is hope. Your life h ..read more

Balancing Act — Writing Through a Bipolar Life is for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble! Amazon Kindle ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y3Y1SXB Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1949351823 Barnes and Noble Nook ebook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/balancing-act-kitt-omalley/1133662748 Paperback: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/balancing-act-kitt-omalley/1133729222?ean=9781949351828 Books2Read Universal Ebook Link https://books2read.com/u/b5QBYk The post Balancing Act — Writing Through a Bipolar Life is for Sale! appeared first on Kitt O'Malley ..read more

Thank you, Lianne Sauvage, for inviting me to share my mental health journey at Belmont High School’s Mental Health Assembly! For my speech, I adapted content from My Bipolar Thoughts, my memoir work-in-progress. The speech was scheduled for 25 minutes! Honored to speak in front an auditorium of Belmont HS students! I plan to refine these speaking notes and use them again for future speaking engagements: My Mental Health Journey Expectations When my parents introduced me as a child, they always said, “Kitt is going to go to Harvard medical school and become a doctor when she grows up.” High ..read more

Fighting Hypomania Irritable. Hypomanic. Overwhelmed? Unfortunately, social stimulation triggers and worsens hypomanic symptoms in me. Upcoming events that may overstimulate me: NAMI Provider Education training this weekend. Look forward to learning NAMI’s new 15-hour in-service curriculum, but will need to recuperate. International Bipolar Foundation (IBPF) panel discussion next Tuesday. Again, look forward to it and fear how it will affect me. Parenting Fail Frustrated with my newly adult 18-year old son who struggles with social anxiety and migraines. Though highly intelligent, he h ..read more

Blogging for Bipolar Mental Health published today! Visit Amazon.com/author/kittomalley. Kindle e-book and paperback are live. Copyright registration claimed. Set up author page on both Amazon and GoodReads. Next will get it ready for IngramSpark for publish on demand through other retailers. So excited. About Blogging for Bipolar Mental Health Blogging for Bipolar Mental Health offers hope to those living with mental illness and their loved ones, educates the public about mental health, and fights stigma against those living with mental illness by challenging stereotypes. Kitt O’Malley’s w ..read more

Thank you, BipolarOnFire.com, for inspiring me to borrow and amend her resolutions for myself. Love more Worry less Exercise more Eat better Laugh more Stay stable Finish my memoir Bipolar on Fire‘s list included: Find a job [she] can enjoy Find a place [she] can call home that is peaceful and safe and affordable. Thank You, My Love, for All You Do Our wedding day kiss at Cal-Neva, North Lake Tahoe. Thank God my husband, a civil engineer, provides for us well. He makes life much less stressful for me. Honestly, he shoulders that stress. He does a lot around the house — too much, for wh ..read more

In 2017, this blog was viewed almost 17,000 times by over 10,000 visitors. Since I started writing this blog in September 2013, I’ve enjoyed almost 80,000 views from over 40,000 visitors. 2015 had the most blog activity with over 28,000 views from over 13,000 visitors. When my mother had a stroke November of 2015, I took on increased responsibilities and wrote less about living with bipolar disorder. Starting September this year, I started organizing my posts into a book. As the holidays approached, I temporarily set aside that task, for this time of year exhausts me. Even thou ..read more

Motherhood transformed me. My identity changed. Now it changes again. I have constantly reinvented myself over my lifetime. As a pre-med biochemistry major at UCLA, I was miserable and suicidal. Then I studied part-time at a community college, biding time to find my direction. Finding a niche as a legal studies major at UC Berkeley, I tried to reconcile my inner turmoil with very high professional aspirations. First I worked as a legal assistant, then went to graduate school, earned a master’s in psychology and became a psychotherapist, only to crash and burn. Recover ..read more

Dyane Harwood thrilled me when she sent me an advance copy of her memoir, Birth of a New Brain: Healing from Postpartum Bipolar Disorder. (I pre-ordered it and was anxiously awaiting it’s October 2017 release.) Her memoir fills a much-needed niche in sharing the experience of bipolar disorder, peripartum onset (beginning during pregnancy or within four weeks after delivery). With her friendly approachable writing style, her strong spirit shines throughout her memoir, even when describing the devastation of bipolar disorder. Her story shows how important it is to not give up. She had to underg ..read more

This morning I attended an OC Writers’ write-in. I haven’t attended a writers’ group in a long time. Been isolating myself and focusing on my son rather than my writing, rather than myself. Today, I left him home in bed, then left the meeting early to get him to class on time. When I got back home, he was dry-heaving in bed. Crap. Hate spending my mornings trying to wake him up to do his homework and go to school. He will be seventeen next month. Time to wake up and do homework on his own. Unfortunately, his private school is not within walking distance, nor would it be a safe bike ride, and ..read more