Up High and Down Low

Have you ever thought about what a bridge can be? It can be a transition to another state of being in either a literal or figurative sense. It can help one cross over a difficult obstacle, or it can be the obstacle. Kathleen King's bridge was a metaphorical one. She saw normalcy as the bridge to happiness. She tried crossing that bridge in a variety of ways: career, marriage, and motherhood, especially adoptive parenthood. This book is her story of trying to cross the bridge built from a difficult childhood and mental illness into a normal life. As you read, some attempts may seem flawed now, but they were the only ways she knew of to be as "normal" (whatever that is) as other people she observed. She used a variety of ways to get to the other side. One was her insistence on setting extreme goals for herself. The more difficult the challenge, the more the sense of accomplishment. When she was a young woman, people with conditions similar to hers did not talk openly about their symptoms of unrelenting cycles of depression and mania, and it seemed not even professionals understood the highs and lows. Her unrelenting super goals gave her brief satisfaction. And then the crashes would come, accompanied more than once by suicidal urges. So, she would think, time to crank up the goals. Adopting a child? Eventually a baby was not enough. She had to adopt special needs children. She depended on those extreme goals as her coping mechanisms. You may see yourself in Kathleen's stories, or you may see someone close to you.

Have you ever thought about what a bridge can be? It can be a transition to another state of being in either a literal or figurative sense. It can help one cross over a difficult obstacle, or it can be the obstacle. Kathleen King's bridge was a metaphorical one. She saw normalcy as the bridge to happiness. She tried crossing that bridge in a variety of ways: career, marriage, and motherhood, especially adoptive parenthood. This book is her story of trying to cross the bridge built from a difficult childhood and mental illness into a normal life. As you read, some attempts may seem flawed now, but they were the only ways she knew of to be as "normal" (whatever that is) as other people she observed. She used a variety of ways to get to the other side. One was her insistence on setting extreme goals for herself. The more difficult the challenge, the more the sense of accomplishment. When she was a young woman, people with conditions similar to hers did not talk openly about their symptoms of unrelenting cycles of depression and mania, and it seemed not even professionals understood the highs and lows. Her unrelenting super goals gave her brief satisfaction. And then the crashes would come, accompanied more than once by suicidal urges. So, she would think, time to crank up the goals. Adopting a child? Eventually a baby was not enough. She had to adopt special needs children. She depended on those extreme goals as her coping mechanisms. You may see yourself in Kathleen's stories, or you may see someone close to you.

Kathleen King lives in New York. She is the mother of seven adopted children and three biological children. She has been a nurse for many years while at the same time raising her children and battling bipolar illness. She has been on a long journey as information and treatment options have been discovered and become available. She shares her story to provide knowledge and help to other mothers both adoptive and biological who may be struggling with bipolar illness and to closely related people who are puzzled about the best ways to assist the person in their family, including spouses, children, friends, coworkers, or acquaintances.