Yashi’s Story

I was living drug free in a loving family environment. But I was also living with deep internal pain and severe depression that I kept silent from my parents and siblings. I had no clue there was a name for what I was experiencing for several years. 

I never imagined that I would come to learn about mental illness through a family member—my daughter.

For a long time, I struggled. When I finally began my recovery journey several years after being diagnosed, I was true to my treatment and practiced effective coping mechanisms. But when it came to loving "me" just as I was, recovery was no more in reach than it had been before.

Well before I realized that this was the person I was going to love for the rest of my life, I realized that I would have to fully embrace her mental illness. As such, I would have to make her extensive involvement with NAMI my own.

I always felt that there was something different about me, but I was too afraid to face it. If I had known what I do now, I could have easily skipped the dark years, which involved lots of self-destruction with heavy drug usage and self-harm.

When I was 26 years old, I believed that I had created the picture-perfect life with a family and thriving business. But my life took an abrupt turn when I had my first series of manic episodes in 2002.

My first-hand experience with mental illness happened three years ago, when my older brother Sovereign had his first mental break. The day it happened, we—my three other brothers, my mother and myself—didn't have a clue of what was going on. All we knew is that for several days straight Sovereign wasn't his normal self.

How do I live a life of fulfillment? How will I accomplish all the things that I planned to do? Are the dreams I once had now gone now that I’ve been diagnosed with a lifelong illness? These are the questions I would ask myself daily when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 19.