Libby Baker Sweiger

Brainy Book Review

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

This quote reminds me of my brain as a person with bipolar 1 disorder! As a late

gift from my husband on my 65th birthday (photo above), I purchased and have read the most beautiful book on the bipolar brain, or any brain ever written by Dyane Harwood. It’s called: “Birth of a New Brain: Healing from Postpartum Bipolar Disorder.” It is perfectly named. As anyone with active and uncontrolled bipolar disorder will tell you! Healing is needed to function. Needed to live. Needed to thrive. This book will be certain to lend more insight into the quagmire of the bipolar brain than anyone else has until this point in history ~ and from the inside out! The place of true insight!

Dyane is brilliant, honest, deep and very brave…and bipolar after the birth of her second daughter…stricken with an extremely medication resistant unusual type of bipolar disorder: postpartum mood and anxiety disorder. She fought her way back using everything her highly intelligent, gifted, research driven mind, with the help of sometimes incompetent and some gifted and competent psychiatrists could offer her.

After trying almost every type of anti-depressant on the market, she found her salvation in ECT Treatments to pull her from the pit, followed by the lesser-used MAO inhibitors. These anti-depressants are by some considered old fashioned and have many eating and drinking restrictions. Looking for answers, Dyane researched them and found them to be highly effective. A former personal trainer, she added exercise and good nutrition to the mix. All along, it was a daring road she took, along with the love and support of her husband and for the love of her two daughters.

I have more admiration for Dyane than I can say. She chose to have these treatments. I agreed to them myself, when I found myself in a very serious depression, also bipolar, also postpartum. I believe I left that page out of my book. My book, which is on this blog isn’t finished yet. I still have a chance to be braver and more like my new role model and heroine: gifted writer, mother and soon to be very celebrated author, Dyane Harwood!