LAURA BASKALL SMITH
When my husband had his first manic episode, our world cracked open. I was twenty-five, newly married, and suddenly standing on the edge of something I didn’t understand. One minute, we were building a life together, and the next, I was in a hospital emergency room watching the man I love unravel in front of me.This book is for anyone who’s ever loved someone with bipolar disorder and felt completely unprepared for what that love would require. It’s part memoir and part survival guide. It’s a story with a lot of pain but an even greater love. It’s about what it means to hold on when everything tells you to let go and, conversely, how to let go when holding on is destroying you.If you’ve found your way to this book, I hope our story humanizes and sheds light on this highly stigmatized mental illness, and once you have read it, I hope you know that you are not alone.
