Dear birth mother, you may not have been there for us in life, but you sure were there for me when I needed you most

In 1991 my sister and I were immediately put into emergency foster care after we were born. Our birth mother was not well enough to care for us and left the hospital after our birth.

I grew up knowing three things about my birth mother: 1. She was Tongan 2. She was a big overweight woman 3. She had bipolar disorder.

The fact that she had bipolar disorder has stuck in my head even before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder myself. For most of my life, all that I knew about bipolar disorder was that people who had it were not good people. I thought people with bipolar disorder were “crazy” and did not have good hearts. I was scared of people who had bipolar disorder in movies and who were portrayed in the news. When I was little, I believed my birth mom might be that sort of person that I would be scared of. It was a hard thought to fathom because I wanted to imagine my birth mom being loving but as I grew older I believed more and more that she might be someone I would never want to know.

In 2013, after having a psychotic break and being diagnosed myself with bipolar disorder, for the first time I felt like I knew my birth mother, and deep down in my heart I could feel my birth mom was not the monster that I had imagined she might be when I was younger.

I’ve always questioned what made my birth mother not able to take care of me and my sister. I had a lot of lithium in my blood system when I was born, which was a sign that she was taking some medication, but I can’t ignore the fact that she did make the decision to give us up for adoption and that must have been hard.

During my recovery I felt incredibly close to my birth mom. For the longest time I had always wanted to know something about my birth mom, and I guess I got to know her through some of my bipolar episodes. Even though people experience bipolar differently, I knew at least some of my experiences with bipolar disorder could be similar to hers.

Of course I don’t know what she is like in real life, but imagining her being strong, courageous, and kind made my recovery seem not as daunting as it could have been.

Assuming that my birth mom went back to Tonga, I am almost positive that Tonga doesn’t have as great of a mental health care system as we have in the USA. Also the stigma among Pacific Islanders when it comes to mental illness is large too.

I do know, after going through my recovery and the experiences that I have gone through with bipolar disorder, that my birth mother deserves good mental health care. My wish is that she has been able to get help and flourish in her own way.

One thing that I have learned throughout my journey is that we all deserve to have great mental health and well being. We deserve to have unconditional love and support, and that is what I strive to do through advocacy for people around the world.