By Paige Sheffield
Michelle Yang is a writer and former NAMI volunteer leader who lives with bipolar disorder. In her new memoir, “Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love,” she writes about struggling with her mental health as a teenager, navigating life after diagnosis, and finding love and hope. We spoke to Michelle about her book, her experience with NAMI, and her decision to share her story.
How Michelle first got involved with NAMI:
My connection to NAMI started in NAMI Seattle. Even though I was very ready from the beginning to accept the treatment for my bipolar disorder, I was not ready to tell anyone that I live with bipolar, and I had a lot of internalized stigma. It was really eating away at me because I was keeping this deep, dark secret that I always thought if people found out, then my career would never advance, and people would look at me differently. It was really affecting my confidence at work and my relationships. After a while, I was like, ‘This is not sustainable, like I want to overcome this,’ and so I started looking for a support group because I didn’t want to feel alone anymore. I can’t be the only one feeling this way. And, of course, I’d known about NAMI for a long time; I was just too afraid to go.
I started to go to a NAMI support group, and it definitely made a big difference, and I loved it — loved having the community, loved being able to talk openly without feeling the shame, and knowing that all these people were in the same boat.
How she became a volunteer leader:
About three months after I started going, the NAMI support group leader had to quit, so then I became the leader. It was just totally wild and unexpected and not planned, because I had a small child and a busy job and everything, but I knew this had already become such an important part of my life. Not only that, but I could sense the panic in the room. I couldn’t let this support system go away, even temporarily. I talked to my spouse and said, ‘I think I’m going to do this.’ It was really scary (at first). I volunteered as the facilitator and had a co-facilitator for a lot of the time as well, for about three years. That was really rewarding. I learned a lot from that group.
What she learned through her involvement with NAMI:
NAMI helped me nurture my voice as an advocate. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today, where I’m writing and speaking openly about my bipolar I diagnosis, and just being a mental health advocate in general, without those little steps in the NAMI group. It helped me overcome my internalized stigma, my shame, and I had a lot of fear.
NAMI helped me with those final stages of healing and realize that my bipolar disorder is a part of me, a lot of people have it, it’s not shameful. I learned from NAMI how to talk about mental health when people at work say inappropriate things, for example. It really helped me find my voice and my strength.
How she decided she wanted to write a memoir about mental health:
I was working in a corporate job for several years and I was pressuring myself to do more, so I applied for a promotion, and I got it. On my first day of my new job, it was announced that the department was sold to an even bigger corporation. The nine months that followed were some of the toughest in my career. It was super high pressure. Then, by the end of the nine months, I had gone through a period of about a week where I wasn’t sleeping because I was so stressed about the job and I knew that, for me, living with bipolar, this is life or death–it is that dire, that important.
Yet up until that point, I couldn’t tell people at work about my condition, so I couldn’t tell them why not sleeping was extremely dangerous for me. I knew that it was either my life and my family, or my job, so I picked me and my life. I quit my job.
I had been crying at my desk, asking myself, ‘How did I get here? What am I even doing here?’ It was never my dream to work in a corporate office. I asked myself and really reflected, and that’s when it occurred to me that I want to write this memoir because even though I was having this miserable time, I had a master’s degree, I had a good job (that I hated, but it’s a job that a lot of people wanted), and I was happily married, I had a child — all these things that my 20-year-old self didn’t know were possible. My 20-year-old self was terrified that I would have no future ahead of me at all. I thought my life was over once I had that diagnosis.
At that time, I grew up in my family’s takeout restaurant. There was a library across the street in the same parking lot and that was my sanctuary. I went and looked for a book.
I thought, “I need to find someone, there must be at least one person who lives with bipolar and lives a normal life and is okay.”
There wasn’t really much back then, especially something that was accessible and not clinical. Nothing for somebody who’s BIPOC, nothing written by someone who’s an Asian American or immigrant.
In my late thirties when I went searching again, I found there still hadn’t been, at that time, much out. I heeded Toni Morrison’s quote, “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
That’s how I began writing my memoir. I wanted other people to not feel so alone and so terrified. I also read Lindy West’s memoir, Shrill, and she wrote, “You can’t advocate for yourself if you don’t admit what you are.”
And I realized that’s what I had been doing: I hadn’t been admitting to anybody that I lived with bipolar, so how would I be able to advocate for others who live with mental health conditions, or for myself? That’s when I decided to disclose and just become very public.
Who she wrote her book for:
Part of it was writing to someone who is like my 20-year-old self. There are so many of us. There’s so much stigma and lack of awareness. It’s not gone away. In some ways, it’s gotten better, but in certain communities, it’s as bad as ever. I’ve been doing mental health advocacy talks at universities and different groups, especially Asian American groups, and I get these types of questions all the time, like, ‘How do I deal with my parents?’ Or I have parents coming to me all teary-eyed, like, ‘How do I help my child?’ I wrote my book for those people, to provide a first-person lived experience.
Why the chapters in her book are short:
I did it very intentionally because I knew that when I first came out of a hospital stay for my mental health, that I had no focus ability. With my book, I wanted the chapters to be short for people to be able to read easily even when they are having struggles with focus, and also because a lot of my topics are challenging, so it’s easier to put down and digest in smaller bites if they need to.
How she decided to focus on the topic of finding love:
I wanted this narrative, from the beginning, to be an optimistic story, to contain lots of hope. For me, the hardest thing that I had to overcome was feeling unlovable, that there wouldn’t be love in my future because of this condition that I have, because I have this body that I do — that no one would intentionally, knowingly choose me.
Most mental health narratives out there are not that happy. Even if they end on a somewhat hopeful note, most of the story is about the trauma so it doesn’t leave the reader coming away with, ‘Oh, that was a really hopeful story.’ And I really wanted to have it be mostly a hopeful, joyful story even though it has some difficult parts. That was definitely my intention from the beginning.
Why she feels storytelling plays an important role in mental health advocacy:
When the first mental health article I wrote for a major publication came out, what I didn’t expect was for all these people from my past to reach out to me and (say things) like, ‘Oh, my so-and-so also lives with this.’ I also heard from people who I actually knew. There was somebody else I went to high school with who lived with bipolar disorder, and we were two of the few Asian American students at the time at the high school, and I guess her parents were always telling her, ‘Why can’t you be more like Michelle?’ Because she was struggling. She didn’t know we actually were like each other–we both were struggling with bipolar disorder without knowing it at the time.
I just cannot imagine, if we had had each other to confide in and support each other during that really challenging time, what a difference it would’ve made. Instead, we were both so alone and feeling so ashamed for what we were going through. That still makes me emotional. That’s the thing. That’s the thing that I want to do: to make people feel that they don’t have to stay in the dark and be alone, that they can reach out for help, there is a community, and that it’s OK.
Michelle’s Upcoming Book Event:
Hosted by the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program, this event will feature a reading from the memoir, followed by a discussion about Michelle’s mental health journey and the intersection of arts and healing. The event will close the evening out with a signing and selling of the memoir.
Paige is NAMI WC’s Content Curator. In addition to writing, she loves going for walks, studying languages, and spending time with cats.