Gum on My Shoe

To mark World Bipolar Day 2025 Fran and I are offering our books for FREE on Kindle for five days between Saturday March 29 and Wednesday April 2, inclusive. In High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder we share what we’ve learned about growing a supportive, mutually rewarding friendship between a “well one” and an “ill one.” With no-nonsense advice from the caring friend’s point of view, original approaches and practical tips, illustrated with real-life conversations and examples. Buy it here . Friendship is a beautiful part of life and an important component of long-term wellness. No One Is Too Far Away: Notes from a Transatlantic Friendship is a collection of articles from our blog which shows that mental illness needn’t be a barrier to meaningful connection; indeed it can be the glue that holds people together. Buy it here . Once the free offer is over the prices will go back to normal. World Bipolar Day is celebrated each year on M...

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the almost fourteen years we’ve been friends, it’s that living with bipolar disorder isn’t a one day at the end of March thing. It’s an every day of every month thing. Dear Fran. It’s World Bipolar Day in a few days, and I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. This letter is my gift to you. For World Bipolar Day, yes. But really for each and every day. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the almost fourteen years we’ve been friends, it’s that living with bipolar disorder isn’t a one day at the end of March thing. It’s an every day of every month thing. That’s something not everyone realises. There are reasons for that. You have better days and worse days, and are more likely to engage with other people on your better days. You choose not to share everything with everyone all the time. It’s also true that the impacts of illness on your life are not equally obvious to others. As well as bipolar you live with chronic fatigue ...

Walking in the park, I saw an old man sitting on a bench. He looked sad. So I wrote him a poem about the ducks. It’s for your wife, I said. He looked at me. At the poem. Thank you, he said. She loved the ducks. He was crying as I walked away.   Photo by Guilherme Garcia at Unsplash.  

This blog post was inspired by a recent conversation with my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson. On her blog I’m NOT Disordered Aimee draws on her extensive personal experience. We were discussing some of those experiences when she stopped and told me she had something important to say before she continued. She said sharing what she’s been through in the past — and in some cases still goes through — is incredibly valuable and helpful to her. But she wanted to check that I was okay hearing the details. I told her I was fine, and reassured her I’d let her know if that ever changed. Afterwards, it struck me what an important exchange that had been. It said a great deal about our friendship. Difficult Topics That kind of trust isn’t unique to me and Aimee. It’s relevant to a wide range of relationships and situations. It’s particularly valuable where conversations touch on “difficult” topics such as mental illness, trauma, rape, addiction, abuse, self-harm, ove...

Everything changes. This is the key to feeling powerful, but also to being creative in the world. — Robert Greene Most of my blog posts are inspired by conversations with friends or things I come across online. This is a little different. Unsure what to write about next, I searched the vast selection of images on Unsplash. This one by photographer Toa Heftiba caught my attention, although I wasn’t sure how I’d answer the question. When have I ever felt powerful? Is powerful even something I want to feel? I mentioned it to my friend and fellow blogger Aimee Wilson. M: Here’s the title and image for my next blog post. A: I love that. What are you thinking about for content? M: I’m not sure. One thing I’m thinking about is music. Certain songs feel empowering. Also validation. I think that’s empowering too. I’m trying to think of times in my life when I’ve felt powerful or empowered. Not many come to mind! That’s what made me think it’s a good topic to explore. A: What abo...

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. — Gloria Naylor Fran and I live three thousand miles and five time zones apart. For most of the year I’m five hours ahead of Fran, so that when it’s nine o’clock in the morning for Fran it’s two o’clock in the afternoon for me. This works well and we’ve built the pulse of our connection, our friendship, around this time difference. Our scheduling is thrown out twice a year, in spring and autumn, because our respective countries switch to daylight saving time on different days. As I write this, we’re about to enter just such a situation. Clocks in the US advance one hour tonight, Saturday March 8. The UK won’t fall in line until the end of the month. For three weeks, we’ll be four hours apart instead of the usual five. Instead of calling each day at 7 am, 2 pm, and 6 pm (in Fran’s time) we’ll meet at 8 am, 3 pm, and 7 pm, assuming those times are convenient for her — and we know in advance they won’t always be. I coul...

Dear Fran. This photograph, Looking Out , is by Norwegian photographer Vidar Nordli-Mathisen. The moment I saw it, I knew I wanted to share it with you and explore its relevance to our lives and friendship. You’ve always been a traveller at heart. A gypsy, as you expressed it once, contrasting your wanderlust with my nature as a stay-at-home, rocking chair loving, “comfort creature traveling vicariously.” I’ve loved being your virtual travel buddy. We’ve seen some places together, haven’t we! From that perspective, you’re the woman standing on the lake shore, pack on your back, about to head off on your latest adventure. I’m watching from inside the house, experiencing the world though your eyes and your words. The scene is Hovden in Norway. We’ve never been there, but you stopped briefly in Stavanger and Bergen on your way home from travelling around Europe in the summer of 2013. The lake and mountains remind me of that trip, especially Germany and Austria. Those three months ...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. Shhhhhhh! A Friend’s Guide to Secrets The Box on the Shelf: A Strategy for Handling Difficult Issues and Situations It’s Not Enough / Never Enough It’s Time to Talk. But What If You Don’t Want To? One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: Encounters With the Absurd Man Thank You Anyway: The Gift of Ingratitude The Hidden Cost of Unreliability Because You’re Worth it! A Curated List of Self-care Posts IMHO: A Guide for Opinionated Bloggers How to Be There for a Friend: Seven Suggestions for Time to Talk Day Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources Our books About Us News and Appearances Testimonials   Photo by Eli Pluma at Unsplash.