Good Life Project - Mark Lukach: When Mental Illness Changes Everything.

Episode Date: September 11, 2017

Guest: Mark Lukach is a teacher and freelance writer. His work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Wired, and other publications.He is currently the ninth grade dean at The Athenian School, where he also teaches history. He lives with his wife, Giulia, and their son in the San Francisco Bay area.His latest book, a heart-wrenching memoir, is called My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward. Mark first wrote about Giulia in a New York Times “Modern Love” column and again in a piece for Pacific Standard Magazine, which was the magazine’s most-read article in 2015.Story: During his freshman year in college, Mark spotted the love of his life across the quad and immediately knew he would spend the rest of his life with her. They became inseparable: they graduated together, married, and began building an exquisite life with dreams, hopes and expectations. Until one day he came home to find his lovely wife living in a radically different world – a state that he now knows to be deep psychosis. Staying profoundly committed to each other, Mark and Giulia learned to navigate the challenging times and rebuild their lives and their family.Big Idea: In today’s world of the "ideal life", as portrayed by social media, people yearn to be open and vulnerable, and have authentic conversations about what they are going through. They are desperate for deep human-to-human connection without trying to pretend that things are better.You’d never guess: How Mark and Giulia, as a couple, came up with a plan to deal with potential future psychotic relapses without totally disrupting their lives.Current passion project: Mark works as a 9th Grade Dean, helping families with the transition from middle school to high school.Rockstar Sponsors: Audible has the best audiobook performances, the largest library, and the most exclusive content. Learn more, start your 30-day trial and get your first Audible book free, go to Audible.com/goodlife.RXBAR Kids is a snack bar made with high-quality, real ingredients designed specifically for kids. It contains 7 grams of protein and has zero added sugar and no gluten, soy or dairy. Find at Target stores OR for 25% off your first order, visit RXBAR.com/goodlife.Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn’t depend on candidates finding you; it finds them. And right now, GLP listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for FREE, That’s right. FREE! Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/good. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I mean, Julia was never really what I would consider a very religious person. So for her to even talk about God at all, let alone like to be in conversation with God, I was like, this is not typical, you know, especially while not sleeping and not eating. And she was losing a lot of weight. But then they turned where it became much more negative, where it was like, not God saying everything's going to be okay, but the devil saying everything's not going to be OK. And you're not worth taking care of. You're not worth protecting or saving.

And that was the moment when I woke up and she was talking about devil. That's when I was like, OK, we need to we really need to go get help. So imagine falling in love at the age of 18, seeing that person freshman year of college across the quad and knowing you would spend the rest of your life with them. That's the story of today's guest, Mark Lukacs, who saw that woman across the quad and became immediately inseparable. They graduated together. They married. They started building an exquisite life with dreams and hopes and expectations until one day

he came home and found her living in a radically different world in a state of what he now knows to be deep psychosis. What he discovered, what they discovered in that moment, the journey that they would then start to take together, and how they would navigate some really, really challenging times and rebuild their lives together differently and stay profoundly committed as they do that. That's where we're going in today's conversation. Mark is also the author of a book that details this entire journey called My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. So I kind of want to dive into your story here. So the reason we're hanging out is you have a book out now, which is really powerful on so many different levels.

You fell in love when you were 18. Yeah. Like, hard. Like, really fast, really hard. Julie and I met, like, the first few days of college. We were sort of at this like orientation reggae festival thing. And everyone's kind of coming together as a group and trying to introduce each other. But I had already heard about her.

Like people were already talking about this beautiful Italian girl because she's from Italy. And so when I met her, it was like, yep, this is definitely a beautiful Italian girl. And I hope that I get to know her, but I was really intimidated and kind of thought it would be someone I'd have a crush on throughout college, but never really get to know. But then I would say like within a month, we were at some party and bumped into each other and started talking and actually ended up talking all night. And I walked her back to her room, which ended up being just, I didn't realize she's just one floor below me. And I, you know, I went for it. I gave her a kiss goodnight and she kissed me back. And then that was really it.

Like from then on, I think even that quickly, we sort of saw each other as like the, each other, you know, it became very quickly Mark and Julia as compared to just Mark or Julia. And that was super interesting because we were only 18. So we really formed our sense of adulthood around the concept of being together. I mean, now I'm 30, I turned 35 in a couple of days. So I've known her for almost half of my life. And again, it's been the time where it's been, as I've learned what it's like to hold down a job and try to run my finances and all that has been through the lens of this partnership. Yeah. I mean, it's so powerful. It's interesting too, because when you're 18

years old, I mean, I look back at myself and not only did I not know who I was when I was 18, but I'm a very different person now than when I was 18. And of course, like, you know, things unfold and you learn a lot about who you are and who each other is in the nature of the relationship. So it's like this beautiful love affair. Yeah. And you know, the thing about, it's interesting. I kind of did know who I was when I was 18, because when I was in fifth grade actually living in Japan where there's no drinking age, my friends started going to bars and that freaked me out. I was 10, right? And I decided I'm never going to drink alcohol. And then I moved back to the States

when I was like 13 and the cool kids were drinking and smoking cigarettes. But I was like, that's not me. And I kept reaffirming this decision and to the point where it was really central to my identity, but not just like not to drink, but like to live up to a promise, to live up to a commitment that I made, you know? And so when I met Julia, actually something I really liked about her is that she's European.

She wasn't like an american binge drinker she was someone who more was like a social drinker but i think that i saw like yeah i want someone who has similar values to me because i kind of felt like i had identified i was really into punk rock and i kind of identified with the straight edge movement so you know when you're 18 you like really your really, really matter to you. And so I, I really held onto those and it was really psyched to meet her and see that there was so much overlap, you know, not that she was straight edge, obviously, but like that she wasn't going to be doing this sort of like the wild college scene, but instead more like she was there to learn, to get ready for the next stage in life. I was there to learn and sort of explore

what I wanted to do with my life. I just knew that I wanted, like I was kind of ready to be done with the social side of college. I just wanted to be there and learn from my teachers and hopefully from my peers too, and then go on and have a family. Like I knew when I was 18

that I wanted to be a dad someday and settle down as a family. It's kind of weird, you know? Yeah, because that is not the intention of most kids when they go to college. The intention is like, let me take these four years to have a lot of fun, figure a little bit out of life. And they're like, I'll figure out all the rest of this stuff down the road. But your thought is so like what's happening right in front of me.

Yeah. I was totally. So you were wired differently from a young age. I really do think so. Yeah. And I don't know why. And I'm really glad I didn't get into drinking. Cause I know I have a major addictive personality. I know that alcoholism runs in my

family. I didn't know that in fifth grade, but I've subsequently learned it. But I, yeah, I sort of, I'm the type of person that I know what I love and I love it really, really big, you know? So like my passions are very clear because I'm super into them. And my passion at that time, I mean, it's funny, my mom, when I was growing up, she always used to say that her ultimate job that she knew she wanted to have her whole life was to be a mom. And so I've, I've been a teacher. I was a freelance writer for a while. I've got this book, but I, I think that my ultimate job that I've always wanted to have was to be a parent. And so I knew that I wanted to find a partner to get up ready for that stage. So interesting.

It's almost like that wiring was sort of inherited. I wonder, yeah. Maybe it's the Catholicism I was raised with where it's like family, family, family, you know? Yeah, but there are so many people who are raised in like almost any type of faith where family is, you know, at least part of the teachings and part of the culture, but in practicality, when you look out like a thousand congregants, it's like people make radically different choices. It is really interesting though. Now I'm curious about what you saw when you were 10 that literally made you make a commitment at that age that was so fierce that you decided to keep it for life about not

drinking. Yeah. It, I think it was just, I didn't, it's not like I actually went to the bars, but I was hearing these stories about kids drinking and getting sick. And I just, I was so scared. I was like, that's so adult and bad, you know? And then I was like, I don't want to do it. And again, it was like, you know, it felt like every year I was presented with an opportunity to change that choice, but I never reconsidered it. I was like, no, I've already made this decision. I think the irony is like the closest I ever got to reconsidering that was like in my late 20s around marijuana, where I was like living in the

Bay area and everyone I know is like smoking and it was, you know, medically legal. And now it's become officially legal. And I'm like, what's the big deal. I'd so I've, I've, I've been around a lot of high people and a lot of drunk people. I'd so much rather be around people who are just like chilled out getting high as compared to someone who's like raging drunk, you know? So maybe that would just take the edge off, but I never, I still, to this day haven't done any drugs, alcohol, and I've never even drank coffee before. Wait a minute.

I'm sorry. We're going to have to end this conversation right now. We have like a certain cutoff. I mean, I do the occasional tea and like I will drink soda. Like, I don't know. What's your outlet?

My outlet is twofold milkshakes. Okay. So you do have a go-to. I have a go-to and also exercise, but that's like good for me outlet, you know? But milkshake is my guilty indulgence. Got it. I love milkshakes.

Because you were a skater as a kid right surfer primarily yeah but also got into skating mostly like long boarding like skating downhills as compared to going in a park although i've gotten into park skating i know where we're going with this conversation but actually when my wife got sick when i couldn't rely on the ocean to be good because you need good conditions. So if the waves weren't good, I started to go to a skate park because it was like the closest alternative I found. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's dive back into your story. Sure thing. So you fall in love. You guys are basically inseparable. Yeah, pretty much. Leave college. Leave college. She moves to New York.

I moved to Baltimore because that's where I got a job. And we did that for two years i was taking the chinatown bus up to visit her every weekend she was just crosstown she's like on upper east side and it was great and i love visiting i i never really liked new york but i would go running in central park and that's where i realized it's a yeah that won my heart you know yeah it's the only thing that keeps the city livable for me. For me too. I was like, if it has this park, this place is pretty cool. But after a year of doing the distance, we got engaged. And actually before we got engaged, knowing that we didn't want to do distance forever and knowing Julia probably didn't want to live to move to Baltimore. And I probably

didn't want to move to New York. We, um my spring break, flew out to San Francisco and rented a car and drove down to LA. Took about a week and a half. And we were literally in San Francisco for, I think, about six hours when we decided we can move here. Let's do this. After we get married, let's do it. And we got married. And the very next day we got on a plane and moved to San Francisco.

So, and what was the plan at that point? I had found a job. So I was going to continue with teaching. Julia had not found a job, but she's so, she was so successful throughout college and the first couple of years out had like stunning recommendations and was always exceeding expectations. So we moved there pretty confident she was going to find a job. And I think we moved on like August 1st. And I started work like the 20th. And she was already working. She had found, been hired, and started before my first day of school.

This is like she's a hardcore motivated, driven woman. Super motivated. Yeah, totally. Tell me a little bit about her upbringing. She grew up in Italy. Her dad's an Olympian. He played water polo for Italy in the 80 and 84 games. She's got a younger brother.

So it's the four of them, mom, dad, and then two kids. Moved around a lot for his water polo for Italy in the 80 and 84 games. She's got a younger brother. So it's the four of them, mom, dad, and then two kids. Moved around a lot for his water polo career. Then he got out of water polo and got into banking. And the same year my family moved abroad to Japan, Julia's family moved abroad to the US. So she was in New York for a year and then Chicago for a while and then back to New York for high school. Yeah.

It's funny. There seems like there are all these freakish sort of coincidences between the two families. It's bizarre. So like my mom is Mary. Her birthday is June 22nd. My mother-in-law is Maria Rita, which is Maria Rita in Italian, but her husband calls her Mary. Her birthday is June 22nd. Julie and I are both left-handed. We moved abroad at the same year. I mean, it's unbelievable. Like we still keep finding little things that it's like, oh wow, you had this. I had that too. There's some sort of cosmic thing. It definitely felt, and as I write about in the book, like it played into this sense of ourselves. We had like built this like myth about

us that we were destined to be together, you know? And that helped us stay together, you know? Yeah. So you start life, everything's going great. A couple of years in, stuff starts to change. Yeah, so what happens? So what happened was in the 2008 recession, Julia's, the company she was working at, closed down. So for the first time, she was out of a job

and not certain what she was going to do. I So for the first time she was out of a job and not certain what she was going to do. I was just coming up on summer break. So we drove across country together, went to my sister's wedding, drove back, had this awesome summer. And while we were on the road trip, she found a job back in the city. So she flew home early actually. And that was when things started to change where this new job, basically it was a company she really wanted to work for. It was a group of people she really wanted to impress, but it was a position that they created for her.

So it wasn't clear what the expectations were. And I think for someone who's used to hitting expectations and an environment where there weren't clear expectations was really hard. And so she got kind of stuck, you know, where she would, um, she wouldn't really know what to do in the day to day. And I'd never seen this from her where she would, I mean, literally call me and say, Hey, I need to send you an email. Can you proofread it and make sure it's okay. And the email is like a one sentence reply. Um, and she wanted feedback on it. I'm like, yeah, this is fine. She's like, okay, good. Cause I worked on it for an hour, you know? And then a couple of days later, she'd be working on it for three hours. And so. Did you went like at that moment,

were you questioning anything or were you just. I was like, what's going on? Right. Like this is a big, big shift. Another part of the narrative is that we had decided we were ready. We were 27. We'd been married for three years. We were ready to try to become parents. So she had just gone off birth control. And I wonder if the anticipation of motherhood may have just been like a big question for her. Her mom, similar to my mom, kind of defined themselves around motherhood. But here, Julia was a working mom, or she was going to be, and she kind of defined herself around her career. So I think there was a little bit of questioning there. I actually, but with the job, I distinctly remember calling a friend of mine who was getting a PhD in psychology and sort of explaining it. And he kind of gave this like, oh, maybe it's like, I forget what exactly it was called, but it was basically like when a new situation is hard, it can become a trigger point to just like ramp up your anxiety and you have to address that transition and then it's going to be fine. That's kind of what I was hoping it was,

but it was really hard to be patient because I just didn't get it. I was like, Julia, like you're so accomplished. Like what's, why are you freaking out like this? It's no big deal. You know, just go back to what you've always done. And then it began to manifest in lack of sleep. This became really the hardest part of it was that she was so in her mind thinking about things that she would just stay up all night.

And I would try to stay up with her to keep her calm. And, you know, like we do like meditations on our phone kind of thing and massage and all this other stuff. But she wasn't able to settle down. But I, who was going to work the next day, I'd eventually fall asleep and then wake up and maybe she had slept a little bit or maybe she hadn't slept at all. So we had like being stuck at work, no sleeping, loss of appetite as well. And then it just like turned really dark where she started to actually have delusions where

she was hearing. And I don't think she was ever actually having visual delusions, but certainly hallucinatory delusions. She kept a journal at the time and she'd wake up and read, like she'd read to me what she had written in the night and these conversations about like God talking to her. Like what were some of the, do you remember anything? Yeah. So she was really God apparently. Okay. So one of the things I remember she fixated on was this concept that there was this little girl inside her that she had to protect and take care

of and that God was going to come take care of that little girl and make sure she was okay. And it was weird, but it was also at least encouraging. I mean, Julia was never really what I would consider a very religious person. So for her to even talk about God at all, let alone to be in conversation with God, I was like, this is not typical, especially while not sleeping and not eating. And she was losing a lot of weight, but then they turned where it

became much more negative, where it was like, not God saying everything's going to be okay, but the devil saying everything's not going to be okay. And you're not worth taking care of. You're not worth protecting or saving. And that was the moment when, when I woke up and she was talking about devil, that's when I was like, okay, we need to, we really need to go get help. What did you think was happening? I don't know. I thought it was like maybe some sort of like nervous breakdown or something. I didn't, I really didn't know. I mean, she had seen a therapist. She had started to see a therapist like a couple of weeks into this. And the therapist had said, maybe you have depression, but it didn't look like depression to me. You know,

I didn't know what depression really was. I just didn't think it was like anxiety. This was more like an anxious thing, you know? And so her father had flown out from Europe to kind of help things out because you'd reached out to the parent, her parents. So you had reached out to her parents? We did, yeah. We reached out because, you know, what was interesting is, again, like this felt like it was work connected and Julia always reached out to her dad for work. Other stuff she'd reached out to her mom for.

So since it felt like it was a work thing, dad flew out. And then when it became bigger than just a work thing, mom flew out too. So it ended up being both of them there. And so we took Julia to the emergency room together and had no idea what was going to happen, what they might do. I hoped and kind of expected to be honest with you, just because I didn't really know

anything about mental illness that like they were going to give us a pill and they're going to say, this is it. She'll take this. She'll get a good night's sleep tonight and she'll be fine. Maybe not tomorrow, but like within a couple of days and everything's going to say, this is it. She'll take this. She'll get a good night's sleep tonight and she'll be fine. Maybe not tomorrow, but like within a couple of days and everything's going to be fine. So you're like, this is just, it's crazy stress, new job, no definition. Maybe the thought of motherhood, whatever else is thrown in

and not sleeping and it just compounded. A couple of days, some good night's sleep, everything's going to be okay. Yeah, I really thought a good night's sleep was going to fix everything. Right. Yeah, because it seemed like not sleeping was making everything bad. So you make the good sleep and everything becomes good again. What did her parents think at the time? They were totally overwhelmed, totally out of their element.

I mean, they're from Italy, so this isn't their first language. They'd certainly never seen Julia like this before at all. They also were coming into that at the tail end where things were really intense. So I had sort of seen this ramp up, but for them, it was like, you know,

when we saw them over the summer and then we're seeing them now in the fall, they were like, what has happened? You know, like you can, you can only get so much through Skype, you know, but when you're in the room together, they like this is this is really freaking us out so they literally fly come off a plane and see and find their daughter in deep psychosis yeah and that's what it was right it was psychosis we didn't know that we didn't even

know what that term was but that's what they said at the er like yeah she's psychotic so we need to take her to the psych ward where she's going to get treated for a little while. And with no real sense of what a little while was going to look like, you know, how long that might last. To where do you go from there? That was tough. Those were tough, tough, tough times because the person you turn to in times of crisis is your partner, you know? And I think even if one of us had a physical illness, we would still consult each other around what was going on and what some of the decisions would be. But Julia with a mental illness, that was her entire reality.

I couldn't talk to her about any of the day-to-day things that I was going to have to decide, like what to do about her job, what to do about my job. I was researching private hospitals that were like, you know, out on the beach in Malibu or like in the mountains in Arizona, where I thought she'd be like riding horses and doing like this therapy stuff, you know, and that was going to cost us basically our life savings. And I couldn't ask her if that was the right thing for, to spend our money on. I don't know. I just, I felt so

overwhelmed and scared and alone. And even though her parents were there, and even though I was talking to my parents a lot, you know, Julia, my concept of family had shifted to be around her and to lose her, it was just so difficult. And so I was allowed to visit her for 90 minutes a day and that was it from eight to or seven to eight 30 at night. And the rest of the day I was on the phone. I was trying to like get second opinions by just explaining to people like friends would recommend, Oh yeah, we've got a family friend who's a psychiatrist. Give him a call, talk for an hour and maybe I'll help you figure things out.

So that was going on a lot. Like I said, researching alternative treatment places because I didn't know how long this hospital was gonna be. I thought maybe she'd be there a day or two and then I'd like drive her out and I'd like live in a hotel for a month while she's in this center. I truly didn't know the realm of what was gonna be. All I know is that she definitely did not get better overnight.

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The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. And also, this is the person, I mean, this is your other half from the age of 18.

Exactly. And this was 27. Yeah. Right? So for nine years, like, you were each other's person. Everything. Totally. Like, you were the people that, like, you would eat both. Like, if anything was going good, going bad, going hard.

That's who you check in with. Yeah. And all of a sudden, because that person is sort of not in your reality anymore. Yeah. Yeah. What was your conversation with friends? Because this is, I mean, not only do you need help,

but also one of the things that I've become aware of over the last few years is that we don't have conversations about mental health in this country. And there's still such discomfort, so much unease. And even among close friends, you know, and I think it's happening more. But what was going on sort of in terms of like how much you'd share with friends or what was the conversations were like? So we had a pretty good friend group in the city by this point. And I remember emailing them and sort of explaining what was happening,

that Julie was in the hospital. And these are all really good people. We really like them. But a lot of them weren't quite sure really how to respond. And I didn't really know what I wanted from them either. Like one night, I don't know, maybe it was like week two that Julia was in the hospital. They were all getting together and they invited me. And I said, well, I'll be coming straight from the hospital. And they're like,

that's, we don't care where you're coming from. You should come see us. We miss you, you know? And I went and it was like, it was not a good idea, you know, because they're trying to just be in their reality and have fun. And it's a Friday night out. And here I am like coming from a 90 minute visit to the psych ward, which I've been doing for two weeks straight. And I was trying to make it a fun night. It just couldn't really make it happen. You know, I think that what friends aren't certain about what to do is do they either, they're not clear if you want it to not be something you talk about or if it's something that you have to talk about you know yeah so i think that night out they were like let's just let mark pretend none of this is happening maybe it'll be like he's he don't he

won't have to think about it for exactly a short moment and i appreciate that intention but in execution i couldn't get there yeah you know and but then there are other times where friends it's all they want to do is talk about it and i'm like you know what i'm i'm not up for talking about this right now like this is this is my entire existence right now i do need a break so it's it's it's hard to get on the same wavelength of your friends and uh i was so focused on how hard it was for me i didn't really think about what it may have been like for them or like my siblings, for example, who live all over the country and wanted to support but didn't know how to. And I've become a lot more empathetic to how I felt really out of like loss of power. But they must have felt a lot of loss of power, too, to be like, we want to let Mark and Julia know that we're there for them.

But we don't know what they want from us. And we don't know how to provide that unknown support. And on any given moment, it may be the exact opposite. Like on Thursday night, I might need to call for a three hour, just like get it all off my chest. And then the next day it might be like, I just want to go for a run and not talk about this at all. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. So days start to turn into weeks for you. Yeah. She was in the hospital for 23 days, which is a really long time because I've learned that inpatient treatment is just about stabilizing people and then they kind of turn you loose. What does stabilize mean? It means you're not considered a threat to yourself or others. That's kind of the only criteria. So that is a real basic definition of stabilize. And so I saw a lot of people come and go while Julia was in there,

but she just kept staying psychotic, even though they were giving her meds. And ultimately, actually, they let her out when she was still kind of intermittent psychotic, but she was definitely doing better. The doctor just sort of speculated, you know what, we think this environment has given her the most that she can, that she'll get from it. And she was going into an outpatient program

a couple of days a week. So she's like, maybe the home environment where she'll spend a lot more of her time will actually speed things up because she can return to a greater sense of freedom because you have little to no freedom in the hospital. Yeah. On the day that they let you know she's good to come home. Yeah. What are your emotions? I was really happy. So we have a dog and it was actually his one year birthday. So I was like, this is our dog's birthday present that

the family gets to come back together. I remember waking up with the first like pep in my step since things. And I drove over feeling good, listening to good music. And when I went in there and to pick her up, Julia just looked at me and goes, I'm the devil. This is a mistake. They should lock me up forever. And then we went to sign the paperwork to let her come home. So that sense of positivity evaporated almost immediately. Yeah, it was gnarly. But thankfully though, when we get back in the car, she wasn't psychotic anymore. That's what I found. Psychosis is not a persistent, it's not a stable. It's instead way more intermittent where there are moments where it's like these thoughts, she has to get them out. It's all she can talk about. And then there's

others where it's, they're gone and then they'll come back and gone and come back and gone. And when you, like on day 23, where they're like, she's good to go home, at that point, did you have any faith that you understood why this happened in the first place? No. And that's a great question. And we've already kind of speculated it, like I was talking about anticipating motherhood and stuff. If someone breaks their arm, you don't spend a lot of time wondering how they broke their arm, right? You fell out of a tree, you broke your arm. That's the deal. Let's fix the arm, right? But when someone has a mental illness or some type of mental health crisis, it's like inevitable that people start to speculate where this came from.

You know, is it childhood or is it work? Is it this or is it that, you know? And I did a lot of that. I was like, is this something spiritual? Is this something like a manifestation of inner turmoil? Is this just biochemical? I really wrung my hands over that a lot because I thought that since I knew Julia best, I needed to provide the clues to the doctor

that would help them understand what caused it and therefore what could fix it. I just had this really straightforward, rational expectation of psychiatry. And I mean, also it's like the broken arm analogy. Like the big difference to me is that if you break your arm, you take an x-ray, you see the arm is broken. You put it in a cast. Six weeks later, the cast comes off. Like there's no expectation that the break might recur. Exactly. It's just like, you're good. So there's no real reason to have to dive deep into, okay, what happened that led to this? Exactly. Unless it then happens again, and then you actually start to say what's going on systemically.

But with mental health, it's different. It's completely different. Yeah. So we kind of hoped that this was actually a one-time thing. And a lot of her medical team was supporting that assumption and hope. You know, they kicked around the diagnosis. The first diagnosis they actually kicked around was schizophrenia, but that was a short-lived diagnosis. Then they changed it with what they called major depression with psychotic features, which I felt was a made-up diagnosis.

I thought that was like they're just giving it some label so that I'll be quiet and stop asking them what this is called. But one of her psychiatrists warned us that 90% of people who experience psychosis have a relapse at some point. But Julie and I were convinced that she was the 10%. And they were really hopeful that she had gotten until 27, which is pretty late to have your first sign. And there really weren't any warning signs before. So the question of what caused it, I don't know. I was so fixated it, but I was also like, you know what, as long as we can get through this, it's going to be okay. You're still the optimist. Oh yeah. Total optimist. So when you get home, I mean the months following the way you describe it were, it wasn't just like, hey, everything's better.

No, I would actually say they were even worse than the hospital because with the psychosis gone, Julia was heavily medicated and she was completely and totally depressed and didn't want to do anything and wanted to give up. She's like, the hospital took my life away, basically. When she moved in and out of moments of, well, depression is a whole other layer, where you may or may not move out of moments of feeling better. But in terms of the psychosis or whatever else was going on, in moments of more, I don't even know what you call it. Is it lucidity?

Yeah, lucidity or clarity, yeah. Was she aware of what was going on when she wasn't there? What do you mean by that? Was she aware of the fact that she, of what was happening with her life? Was she aware of the fact that she was spending substantial amounts of time in like a very altered state?

Absolutely. I mean, like she, for example, even early in the hospital said to me and her mom, I'm never gonna get to be a mom now. Like this is, I'm crazy. I don't get to become a mom. That moment must have been really hard. And she asked a lot of, oh God, yeah.

Yeah, it's so heavy. And then she asked about her job a lot because she was really insistent she wanted to go back to her job. And I had to sort of diplomatically tell her at a moment where she felt a little bit more lucid, you know, Julia, the job recommended that you stop working. So we're not going to focus on that yet. Your job is to get better. Then we can talk about your work job, you know? But yeah, I think like she got it that life was still going on. And especially when she came home and we were

occasionally seeing people whose lives were going on you know it was it was this weird year where like some of our closest friends they had like their best year ever you know huge success on the work front or relationship front and julie and i are just kind of like in the side on the sidelines watching feeling like our year was loop passing us by like can i just make it through this one day? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so to get back to kind of the narrative at all, that, so she was in the hospital 23 days, this prolonged depression where she was actually really intensely suicidal as well.

That was something that did come and go a lot, suicidality. And that's actually something I learned a lot about suicidality. The depression might be more long lasting, but the impulse to actually hurt yourself is not as long lasting. It can come and it can go. And I had to learn that if I was with her in a room like this, and if she was so desperate to kill herself, which she was, that I was with her and she was actually okay. And she had no means to kill herself. So rather than try to talk her out of that suicidal feeling, which I had been

doing for a long time, maybe I just needed to let her express it and I needed to hear it and not reject it, you know, which was really, really hard to do. It was hard to just be able to accept that these were feelings and they were scary feelings for me and, you know, heartbreaking feelings to know that my wife is feeling them, but that she couldn't actually act on them because I was there and we were safe, you know, but that lasted, that whole window lasted nine months. She was in this outpatient program for a solid nine months when the average stay is three to four weeks. So Julia was on her own timeline

and it was a slow, slow timeline. Yeah. I mean, clearly this is a brutal, brutal experience for her and for you. Yeah, totally. And also, I mean, for you as just a feeling sentient human being who deeply loves this person. And for the nature of your relationship. I mean, because it can't be the same anymore.

Yeah. You know, we wanted it to be the same. But in the moment, it was so clearly not. It was so clearly, Julia is dependent. She needs help, and I'm the one that's going to be there to do it. She would get up, and if it was up to her, she'd either do nothing all day, or she might literally go and attempt suicide. So I was the one who needed to create a day plan for us. What are we going to do today? Okay. Let's sign you up for our classes. Let's go to yoga together. Let's go bike to play

tennis, all this other stuff that I was hoping like might be physical and help her feel a little better. So did you feel like you had to literally be with her? Oh yeah. 24 seven. And I was, I was, unless my only break was those outpatient programs, which was three hours, three days a week. Otherwise I was by her side nonstop. So how do you take care of you? I would, those three hours were huge. I felt like the universe was keeping an eye out because the surf seemed to always be really

good whenever she was in her outpatient program. So I could drive her to her program, have my board in the car, get out to the beach, put on my wetsuit, get in the water, keep an eye on the clock, and then just go get her and spend the entire time in the water. Then I, after a few months, or maybe it was after about a month where the medicine would knock her out super early. She'd be asleep at like seven or 730. And it was just such, it was like the sleep of the dead. Honestly, she'd lay down and not move and sleep for 14 hours and not move, be in the exact same position. And after I kind of got

trusting that when she went out, she was out, I was starting to run at night. We lived close to the beach. And so I would go down to the beach and run in the sand barefoot for like an hour. And that became a big way for me to take care of myself. And then the third thing I did was something also at night, again, while she was asleep, was I was writing. And this is where I found that I liked writing and that writing was an answer for, or not an answer, but a method for me to manage all my feelings. And I wasn't writing for a book at this point. I was just writing to keep her and my parents in the loop because they were super curious about what was going on. So I would send these really big emails and it was like, by writing, you know, I've heard some of your other interviews that talk

about the writing and like the narrative, like what it means to be the author of the story. And this was my chance to get to try to reclaim a little control of what felt like a life circumstance that was completely out of control because I could describe it. I could choose how I was telling it and what patterns I was identifying and how to, you know, in my optimistic way, spin them in a way that felt like it was a sign of progress or whatever, you know? And so that.

It's also like, I mean, to a certain extent, it feels like it was a way for you to claim your role and the experience and the story. Absolutely. That was the other thing too. I mean, I kind of felt like I was mission control in some ways, you know, because all information was kind of coming through me and then I was distributing it out to those who needed it.

But simultaneously, it's also your mission control, you're the police, you're the caretaker. Yeah, it was all of it. And this is with a woman who like you know who you described as like fiercely intelligent bright driven like incredibly self-reliant as she starts to you know after nine months as the clouds start to lift that's when we get to the inability to be able to it will never be the same yeah and that And that was really, really hard for us. Because in our mythology of our relationship, we had a pretty darn charmed life, you know?

And now all of a sudden it was like, no, life is not always fair and fun. Was the assumption still though, like once she started to come back to typical, back to the way she was, that that was it? Were you guys still working on the assumption that like, that's it? We made it through. Yeah, absolutely. Now let's just figure out, you know, like, you know, let's get back to living the life that we lived before. Let's get back to the plan that we were on. Let's get the first thing we did.

We traveled for a while to kind of decompress, but then she got right back to work and we checked in with her doctors and wanted to have a child. So she got pregnant. But yeah, we got right back on. So you're like, we made it. We survived. Yeah, exactly. Let's just like. Move ahead.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's not let this be forever. Something that like ruined things for us. Yeah. But, you know, you open and you said when you're 18, you don't really know who you are and you change so much, right? I changed a tremendous amount, even though I thought I knew who I was. And I think I did know who I was when I was 18. But the role of caregiving for

Julia and the role of her being so dependent changed us deeply, where she had always been the planner and the organized one. And I was more of the like, whatever, we'll figure it out. You know, don't worry about it. Like, let's just kind of be spontaneous or live in the moment. But now Julia wanted to be the spontaneous laid back one because she had just gone through this brutal year and all she wanted was some fun. And I was like, well, I mean, if we're going to do this, we have to have this backup plan because this could go wrong and we need to be anticipating that, you know? And all of a sudden, I'm the worrier and the planner. And so we switched roles and didn't, I don't, I certainly didn't like how I was all of a sudden nervous about everything. You know, this gets to my

marijuana point from earlier. This is where I saw a therapist and said, do you think I'm a candidate for medical marijuana? Do you need to chill out a little bit? And she said, because you've never done it, I think it'd make you even more neurotic right now. But yeah, this was there. I just needed to chill out. You know, I was so on edge because I knew that if something went down and Julia had another relapse or if things got bad again, the cleanup was going to be on me, you know? And I didn't want to have to deal with it again. It was so tiring. Like my life came to a screeching halt and it was only this. How'd you survive like just financially? So we, for those first three years of marriage, we had saved aggressively because we wanted to

buy a house. So we were putting like, I'm not kidding, maybe 50% of our paychecks towards saving. We're just not that big of spenders, kind of minimalist. The city was still really cheap then, at least where we lived. So we were paying not much in rent, not spending a lot of money, just saving. And so thankfully, we were able to just count on that. Right. And I guess that was one of the things that let you basically say, okay, let me focus. Let me be home 24-7. Yeah, exactly. Because I knew that those savings were going to start to go away, obviously.

But at least we had them. So you start going back to work. She's going back to work. And then, like I said, she gets pregnant. And I mean. Let's not skip over a huge detail, right? Right. Because there's that decision.

I mean, there's the- And the decision was something like, we both want it so badly, you know? Right, but it's based on the assumption that we're in the clear now. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so she went psychotic in 2009

and got pregnant in 2011. So it had been a year removed from her episode, from the end of her episode. So it'd been a year of good health. And again, we also talked to doctors. It's not like we just like, whatever, we'll just give it a shot. We checked in with this multiple psychiatrist, her OBGYN. They all said, go for it, kind of figured out the right way. And the pregnancy was amazing. I mean, Julia was the happiest she's ever been. And it's interesting because since this book's come out, I've talked to other people and some of the women I've talked to who are bipolar have all said, like literally to a person that pregnancy felt like their most stable time for them.

I don't know why, but it was just like Julia loved it. She was so, it was really incredible because she was so in love with herself. And this is a person who literally hated herself and wanted to kill herself. And instead now she's loving how she's taking care of this growing baby. And it was so, it was just like, you know, it felt really good after all that heartache. And then our son Jonas was born and all was going well. I was going to be the stay-at-home dad. Julia wanted to keep working.

And then three weeks after she returned from maternity leave, she's back in the hospital. What happened? I mean, she had four sleepless nights, only four nights, and that was it. She woke up on the fourth morning saying which by which i mean in the context of sort of like everyday life of having a three-week-old child isn't that unusual for your average person so he was actually five months at this point she had taken five months of maternity leave okay and then returned to work and then three weeks in okay got the return to work so but you're right. I was actually really worried.

Are these nights going to be disruptive for her? But we got through five months of them. And so I thought, that's great. Even though we're up throughout the night and really tired, no problems. But it was, again, that return to work. And then boom. And then that was like, so Julia has a friend who really tragically committed suicide. This is one of her closest friends in her recovery.

And she used to spend a lot of time at our house. And they were really a big part of each other's support team. And the friend said to both me and Julia, the second episode's the hardest episode. Because the first one is just so disorienting. You don't know what's going on. It freaks you out. But you're like, whatever, one and done baby. Like that's in the past. I'm over it. The second one is where you have to

really confront the reality of this as part of your forever. You know, this is your life and you don't know how many relapses you're going to have, but, um, it's not just one and done. And now you have a five month old. And now we have a child. Yeah. And so I was that, you know, I, I naively thought like, Hey, I've done this before. Like I know what to expect. I know what to look out for. It's going to be easier. And that the ER doc was like,

you've never done this before because you didn't have a baby, you know, this is completely different now. And so then, yeah, Julia was in the hospital actually that second time, even longer, 33 days the second time. And me being at home and of course my mom coming out and Julia's mom coming out so that they could keep an eye on Jonas while I was going to the hospital and vice versa. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Yeah. So during that second window, I mean, now you're faced with the reality that, huh, this may be our lives. Yeah. And that's actually where my thinking around all this, I had to change my thinking because knowing that it was part of our lives, I was like, all right. So the first episode was really emotionally difficult because of just the tragedy of it. But it was also, as you pointed out, it was really hard on our marriage and how we related to each other. I kind of glazed over, but the years in between our first and second episode, we had some really hard issues to figure out as a couple. And so when she had her second one,

I was like, okay, if this is going to be something that we have to deal with, then we have to come up with a way that this doesn't disrupt everything so dramatically. Like she can't quit every time she gets sick and I can't shut down everything I'm doing to take care of her. And most importantly, we can't go through a crisis of marriage every time this happens. You know, like we need to figure out ways to make this be better. And that was where the magazine article I wrote in Pacific Standard really was about that question. It was like, how could we as a couple come up with a way, like a plan even, to not prevent relapses? Because obviously we're doing everything we can to prevent them, but there's still a degree. There's still a lot of it that's out of our control.

But that if they happen, how can we make it so that it doesn't feel like it's a recumbologist leveling everything in our lives, but instead an obstacle, but we navigate it and then we're able to keep going along. Yeah. Did you learn any more about the nature of her diagnosis around then? So the second episode, the diagnosis has bipolar,

and that's where bipolar one, and that continues to be her diagnosis around then so the second episode the diagnosis has bipolar and that's where bipolar one and that continues to be her diagnosis but what is that did you have a sense for what that means yeah well i mean that so like there's in bipolar there's mania and there's depression i'd obviously seen the depression in julia the mania julia's mania is not the fun freewheeling mania that a lot of people experience. It's instead psychosis, which strangely enough, actually, I think, made it easier to convince her that she needed to take care of herself. Because for a lot of people who have bipolar, the mania is so fun that they really miss it.

So it's like you get off your meds when you feel better from the depression, you get manic, it feels awesome. Then you come crashing down and then you're like, crap, I need help again. You know, and then once you get out of the depression, maybe you're feeling fine, but you miss the mania again. For Julia, the mania is just as miserable as the depression is. So I actually think it's in a weird way made her more willing to say, I don't want either

of those again. But around what sets it all off in the first place, we've definitely identified that work stress is something we need to be more proactive around managing and just like prioritizing healthy living and sleep. You know, it really feels like a matter of life or death because if she triggers psychosis that could i mean the worst case scenario that i had to confront as an actual possibility is that julia might find a way to take her own life you know and um so a lot of people the idea of taking care of yourself may feel like a luxury for For us, it feels like a necessity. And subsequently, I've actually taken it as much of a necessity for me too.

I really live that philosophy as well. I mean, you asked me, what was I doing to take care of myself? Now I do a lot of things during the day to try to take care of myself. I really deliberately schedule time that's for me to do the things that I need to do to feel good so that I can be at my best in the other times of my life where I'm around other people, doing my job, being a parent, et cetera. Yeah. It goes from being something where, you know, wouldn't it be cool if I could squeeze this into like, no, like this is, I eat, I breathe, you know, like I do

these self-care rituals and it just, it is a fundamental part of life. Yeah. And you know, and I'm a guy for whom happiness came pretty easily my whole life. I never really had to work for it, you know? So the idea of actually having to really work hard to make sure that I maintained happiness took some getting used to, but it's something I like fundamental, like, like I completely agree with it, you know? Yeah. Like no compromise. I literally on my outlook calendar on my phone, I will schedule time. That's just for me. Like I schedule appointments with myself in the day where I will not book meetings. I obviously do it around my class schedule, but you know, as the day where I will not book meetings. I obviously do it around my class schedule.

But as the dean, I have parent meetings. I have student meetings. I have meetings with colleagues. And I just won't book them during that. Yeah. What was happening with you and work as this was all going down? So I got into teaching high school at age 22. It seems like I do a lot of things young. I was teaching 18-year-olds

and I was 22. And when Julia got sick, independent of that, I was starting to question my commitment to teaching. And I believe that if teaching is a vocation and if you're not 100% in it, you're doing a huge disservice to your students. So her getting sick, I took that as an opportunity to quit, not just because I felt so overwhelmed, but also to kind of re-examine what I wanted to do with my career. So actually, I took a few years where I was trying to make it as a freelance writer to very, very mixed success. You know, some great clips and then a lot of just like nothing. Yeah, that's a tough life.

Very tough. And also it's even for the most successful of writers, it is a fiercely uncertain life. And in the context of the sort of pervasive uncertainty that you've got to live with on a day-to-day basis and Julia lives with on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. It's not easy. And that's why it didn't last. And I realized, A, I realized I missed the classroom. Like I refound that, yeah, I'm a teacher at my core. And B, I missed the stability, the predictability of having a salary, having benefits. And so I got back into the,

you know, I put my name in the hat at a couple of schools and found a great job. So then Julia did have a third episode. And this happened when our son was two and a half. And that was the one where we kind of had a plan in place for what to do. And it connects to our careers because it's the one where I did not shut down my job. I kept teaching throughout it. I did take a week off, but that's it. And Julia did not lose her job either. She took, I think, about a month off,

but she returned to work at a part-time basis and then a full-time basis. And it actually ended up being a huge anchor throughout all this was to have this rather than her job being to go to these outpatient programs and go to these art classes that I was scheduling for us and yoga, her job was her job. And she had someone, you know, like a huge part of her identity was success and work. So she got to go and re-immerse in that. I think it was really helpful. How did you or she or both of you, whoever it was, have the conversation with her job, with the company that employed her.

Like, did you go, as was part of your plan, we need to share something about Julia and about the possibility of what may or may not happen down the road. And like, were they a part of your plan? Yeah, that's a great question. One part of the plan is that I was not going to talk to her job because in the first episode, I was the liaison with work and they presented me two options. One was that they would fire Julia. She'd only been there for six weeks and she hadn't accrued enough

time to take a medical leave. Or the other was that I quit on her behalf. So I quit on her behalf. And that was, Julia took a long time to get over that. She was really unhappy with me for that. Granted, it was like two negative choices, but I think she wonders if maybe that job could have been salvaged after all. So first and foremost, we decided just to take that potential resentment out of the equation. Let's not put me in the driver's seat around her career.

So instead, we used her social worker. That's kind of the social worker's job is to communicate with work. And they were very vague at the beginning. Just Julia needs time off. I mean, and that worked, you know? And then when she returned, the social worker with Julia explained that a part-time would be better for, and like for her immediate supervisor, they explained what was going on a little bit. And I think that that, the supervisor, I mean, Julia's work environment is like the best she's

ever been in because they're, I don't know if this is something they do as a mission or if it's just the culture, but they are so supportive around her importance for a work-life balance. You know? I mean, and maybe, I don't know, like I have friends who live and work in New York here.

Yeah. That's, that's not an easy sell in New York. No, no. My brother worked in finance here and I, I'd be in, it'd be nine.30 on a Friday night in California. So 12.30 here and he's calling, taking a quick break just to say, hey, like, what are you

doing at the office? It's crazy. Yeah. I have a past life as a lawyer. Oh, you do? It was the same thing. Yeah. That is not something that's part of the job description for a lot of these.

So for her to be at a place that understands and values that go home to be with your family, have your weekends to yourselves, that's amazing. And how supportive they were for her to reintroduce slowly over a couple of weeks and not pry, respect her privacy. But then when she chose to share to support the context of what was going on, it was really awesome. Yeah. You mentioned her resentment over that one decision. Was resentment potentially going both ways? Something that you had to deal with, just not around a lot of things. Yeah. And that kind of gets to the challenges of our marriage that I referenced earlier. We both had deep resentment for each other. I think mine was more subconscious. Julia's was clear.

She didn't like that I made her take medicine she didn't like. She didn't like that I quit her job. She didn't like that I was having conversations with her doctors when she wasn't there. And she expressed that clearly. Mine was more, I didn't quite know what it was, but I think it was, I was madder that she ruined or could have ruined our future, you know? And again, this wasn't like I was choosing to resent her for these things, but that was just happening, you know?

I was just like, my entire future may have just gotten thrown out the window. What's up with that, you know? How could you do that to me? Not that it was any of this was her choice, but resentment isn't always rational, right? The subconscious doesn't always act the way you want it to. So yeah, that resentment was definitely a two-way street and it took us a long time to address it. And I think the other resentment was that Julia, when she got better, she was so eager to just live life to the fullest. And I had bottled up so much around her.

And now my partner was back. And I was so desperate for validation and reciprocity. And instead, she's like, I just want to go shopping with my friends. And let's go camping this weekend. So it's almost like, do you know what I've just been through on your behalf? Exactly. Not, yeah. I mean, right or wrong.

It's just, if you feel that. And in fact, that is where writing emails to my parents turned into writing a book because we tried to talk about it and could not, we just couldn't make it work. And we even went to couples therapy and it just wasn't working. Was there a moment where you, you, either one of you or both of you questions whether the marriage would last? Absolutely. On our around the world trip, actually, we were just like, I don't know if this is going to work. I think my therapist who I saw had a great analogy, which was, it was like we survived a tsunami, which had leveled everything. And so then we had to rebuild our relationship. And in order to rebuild, we had to kind of look at the foundations of our relationship that preceded her illness. And we were, I think,

both seeing things that we had glazed over because we were so in love. And we were kids. We weren't looking at this closely yet. You know, I have friends who met their partners later in life and really knew what they wanted because they had dated a lot and they knew themselves really well. And so they, they knew what they wanted from a relationship. We just were like in love and riding that wave, you know, and didn't realize like the way we interacted about certain things wasn't always that healthy. And so now it's like, okay, well now that we're more aware of it, we need to try to address that in order to make it better. So it was, it was brutal. And,

and the book became the medium for it where my way to explain to her just how brutal this whole thing was for me and her way to hear it out and try to accept it and try to validate it. And also for us to like see those patterns and try to fix them was I'd read a chapter, I'd email it to her. She'd read it and we'd talk about it. So, cause this is all fiercely personal. Yeah. Right? And you've now written a book which has taken really intimate things and very vulnerable things and things that have happened to both of you and choices that you have both made that very often are subject to judgment and a lot of people's opinions. And most people, we talked about earlier, there's still such a stigma around mental

health and around conversations around it. How do you navigate the conversation with Julia about like, hey, listen, you know, everything we've been going through for years now, and you know what you are living with and what we have to look at as our potential future together and what we may have to continue to dive into. What do you think about me telling the world? Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny.

I've been asked this question before, and this is the thing that I don't remember completely. You blocked it out. I may be, but I know why we did it. I just don't remember how we got to it. I don't think it was one sit-down conversation. I think it was an idea that we both came up with over time independently, but then together. Yeah. And it sounds like she

was really intimately involved with the creation of the book. She was, I mean, Julia, you know, I was definitely the author of it, but she read everything multiple times and we talked about it a lot, but really the driving reason behind it was to try to help people. You know, it was this, this hope that we could share a narrative that could maybe give people some optimism in this, you know, because now look, she's been hospitalized three times, but we've kind of found this path that's working. Yes. We realized she might be hospitalized again, but we're not as scared of that possibility. We don't have this terror that's working. Yes, we realize she might be hospitalized again, but we're not as scared of that possibility. We don't have this terror that it's going to ruin everything,

but instead like, yeah, it'll be a hiccup. It'll be a big hiccup, but we'll be okay. And so, because I think the people who had some of the biggest impact on her recovery were people who had taken that vulnerable step to share, you know, people who she maybe wouldn't have suspected that they had gone through these things. And so Julie's like, you know, I don't know, it's like in a way to pay it forward almost even like they took that courageous step. So she wanted to take the courageous step, but rather than on a personal level, more on a broader level. And the second thing I want to say is like, I actually have three things. That was the first one is like the hope of helping. For me, it was a little bit more targeted. I felt so alone when this happened.

And I'm a historian, right? And I go looking for answers. And I was looking for answers for what Julia was going through, but also what I was going through. I found books that helped me better understand Julia's experience that were really great, and I found great resources, and I found almost nothing about my experience of it, you know, what it's like to have your spouse go through this. I found a couple that were quasi, like I read this great book about a husband taking care of his wife with breast cancer. And I related to some of it, but there were huge parts where I was like, I can't relate to this at all. Like they're, they're getting to talk about their care choices together. I don't get to talk to Julie about those because she's talking about the devil, you. You can't ask her if she likes this

pill over the other because she thinks they're all poison. So for me, it was not just to hopefully help people, but really more clearly, hopefully make people feel less alone if they're in my shoes. And those have been the most validating emails that I've gotten. I literally had a guy email me and say, I'm sitting here in the waiting room in the hospital. My wife was just admitted and I Googled psychotic wife and I found your story. And just like, thank you. And that's the kind of email that brings me to tears.

Like this is why I wanted to do it to connect with Julia. I wanted to do it. It was a part of creative therapeutic outlet for me, but I really wanted to connect to people like that. And then I would say the third thing is around this question of stigma. We've had an unbelievably positive response to this, which I think that response is like the message of eradicating stigma because we were scared of how people might react. And if I had people who were really snarky or mean about this, then I would say, you should be scared about how you share this stuff. But the response has been so supportive from friends, family, and strangers that instead, it's like, I'm not saying everyone goes and broadcast everyone.

They know like, Hey, here's all my life struggles. But like, if you get in a situation where you can have an authentic conversation about what you're going through, I think it's okay to have that authentic conversation. You don't have to put on the smile and pretend you can be open and vulnerable. And I have just found that people, they want that. They're like desperate for it. You know, we're like in this like social media world, which is all about these like really impersonal, very like photoshopped versions of life, you know, and we're in a completely overwhelming news cycle. And I just feel like there is this yearning collectively for just authenticity and like human to human connection that's real and

deep and not trying to pretend things are better or not just like hating on the other side of the political spectrum. And it seems like that's really what we spend most of our day doing, you know? And so, I don't know. It's been really, really amazing how people have responded. And it has made me just question the stigma in the first place. And this is such a pervasive problem too. Mental illness, everyone knows someone who's had it. Either it's them or someone in their family or a friend. It's rare that I've met someone who's like,

I've never had any experience with mental illness ever. I don't know any people who say that. They've all got some connection to it. Yeah. It's a topic that's come up many times over and over in so many different ways, shapes and forms during the conversations that I've had over the years. Of course. I mean, because you're talking about how to live a good life, right? Yeah. And part of that, I think sometimes there's an assumption there that a good life is like a perpetually happy-go-lucky life. And the truth is, both through my own life experience, through my own ups and downs, through ups and downs of people who are very close to me, and through tons of research, and through now hundreds and hundreds of conversations and years, what I've come to realize is that it's about the full spectrum of experience and emotion, you know, that, and that the expectation that it's about being perpetually

giddy, actually, number one, it's an impossible expectation to ever measure, which is why the research actually shows that if you use that as your primary sort of pursuit, you end up less happy than when you started. But yeah, so it's really, it is the full spectrum. I mean, this term has popped into my research these days called emodiversity, which is this sort of like the term that says, you know, like the full spectrum of emotions. And it shows that people generally say that they're happier and they're living better lives

when they experience a full spectrum of emotion on a regular basis. That's amazing. And that doesn't mean like spend like, okay, so if I'm really, really good, like I should go find a way to like go dark side for a while because that's going to make it okay. It just means that, you know, life happens to all of us if you're on the planet long enough. And if you move through stuff, it's not a signal that everything's going to be bad for the rest of your life, that you're not living a good life or capable of living a good life. And also, yeah, the conversations around this, when you start to normalize it and realize, okay, so at some point we're all going to get smacked. Externally, internally, we don't know how long it's going to last in so many different potential ways. And if we actually just talk about it, it's that one point that you made. You know, if during those moments, at full spectrum, I believe in that hugely.

And I think that was actually, a lot of us shy away from confronting those harder, darker times, you know? Don't worry, be happy. Or an analogy I have that I was reminded of, it's like you can't give it 100% effort all the time. That's impossible. You're going to burn out. You're going to collapse.

You know, you have to take times where you're like at 5% effort, just sitting on the couch, or you're going to have to take times where you're not feeling well. And I think about this as a parent a lot, because we want to protect our kids. We want them to grow up with, you know, I think a lot of parents say, I just want my child to be happy, you know? And I of course want my child to be happy, but I want him to be able to navigate that spectrum fully, not be scared of either side of it or anything in between. Because I think a lot of people freeze up when it gets too dark or scary. And Julia wrote this beautiful letter to Jonas that she's going to give to him when he's old enough to read the book. It's funny. That's where I wanted to go.

So I was curious about that. And she basically says like one of the big lines in is like, don't be afraid of the power of your mind. Right. Cause we don't know if he has what she has or if he's ever going to go through something like this. I mean, we know from science that these types of conditions can be passed on,

but regardless what happens is going to happen, and it's okay. And we're all going to go through tough spots, but that's going to help us live fuller lives. Yeah. You know? And talk about it. Yeah, and talk about it. Absolutely.

I'm glad we're talking about it. It feels like a good spot for us to come full circle. So as we're hanging out here, this is a good life project. So if I offer that term out, to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life? Yeah. I would say take care of yourself. That's like step one.

Even the people who love you as much as anyone's going to love you, they can only care for you to a certain degree. I mean, I love Julia so deeply, but what she faced, I couldn't fix. And ultimately she had to make the choices around her care and my family who wanted to support me, there's only so much they could do. And I had to make choices to care for myself. And I just feel so much more empowered as a result of it. You know, I've learned what boundaries are and like why I need to say no to certain things.

And so I think that caring for yourself is a huge part of living a good life. For me, that means being active. And I don't want to assume that even though it seems like every day there's a new article out in the New York Times that's validating how good exercise is for you. And for me, that is definitely the case. But like,

whatever that passion thing is that you love, where you put your phone down and you go out and you do it, whether it's running or surfing or biking like it is for me or knitting or cooking or whatever that thing is, do that. Make sure you make time to do that because it's so critical. Thank you. Sure thing. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take

just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life. Take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then, of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens.

And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. And as we wrap up, I want to give a final shout out to our awesome sponsors and supporters. RX Bar for kids. Chocolate chip, apple, cinnamon, raisin, and berry blast. Find them at Target stores or for 25% off your first order, visit rxbar.com and enter the promo

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