Twenty years ago, I was one of what is now 18 million Americans diagnosed with emotional disorders. My depression, the good doctor said, was not situational nor your run-of-the-mill post-partum; mine was actually diagnosed as “rapid cycling manic-depression.”  My moods would very quickly shift from over-the-top to complete lethargy. 15 years ago I began a journey of self-discovery and came to realize the powerful healing a clean whole foods diet and active lifestyle has on the central nervous system. Today, I am a whole, complete person who has taken charge of her life and reclaimed her health, vitality, and joy. Let me show you my journey.

As a little girl growing up in Massachusetts, my brothers and I watched with total anxiety and utter dismay as my beautiful mother was carted away on several occasions by police, because she was absolutely delusional.  She was taken at the time to the McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Boston which was and is touted as being the finest psychiatric hospital in all the land. There, my beautiful, lovely mother would spend months behind locked doors, under observation, in psychotherapy sessions, having her medication adjusted (Lithium and Thorazine were the meds of choice at the time), before she would be stabilized (or drugged) enough to be released from behind those locked doors to return home.

The stigma of a mental disorder in the 1960’s is as it is today, oppressive. My Mom had very few close friends, but as a mother, other than her moments of delusion, she was the most beautiful, kind, loving and generous mother I could have ever imagined, so when she was “sick” my heart would just cry.  I never felt shame or embarrassment, I just felt a huge loss.

In the weeks prior to her release my brothers and I would shuttle in to have a family pow-wow with the well intentioned doctors to be briefed on her progress, their expectations, and their explanation of what was happening to her and how her condition would ultimately impact us as her children. The doctor’s covered many issues, one being heredity. While two of my brothers did not need to worry about the heredity issues because they were adopted, my blood brother and I had a future that looked bleak. The “condition”, if it were going to manifest itself, usually followed mother-to-son, but I could not be excluded. The “condition” would probably show up by our mid to late 20’s, maybe early 30’s if not sooner (so anytime) and at best could only be managed with psychotherapy and drugs. What I was supposedly witnessing was a preview of what was to become of me. “No, no, no”, I said to myself, “They’re wrong, this is not going to be my life.”

When I look back at my youth I went from an incredibly active kid who wanted to be an architect into this paralyzingly shy and uncomfortable teen, sleeping a lot, experimenting with drugs and trying to fit in.  It was all I could do to deal with myself and my feelings. Then around twenty or twenty-one, even at that time I can remember feeling, I’m free.  I felt comfortable, I liked myself, I enrolled in college, and tried to make up for lost time. I was working and going to school, but I was not able to keep my eye on the prize.

Working in outside sales, it was at this time that I began experiencing severe hypoglycemic symptoms.  Although I did not correlate the two at the time, every afternoon soon after eating, I would need to head to my car and sleep for a couple of hours, not a couple of minutes, a couple of hours.   I could not keep my eyes open or even think straight. I never went to a doctor about it and I knew nothing of hypoglycemia, but I thought it was the onset of “depression” and wanted to keep that little bugger under wraps for as long as possible.

At 26 I had my first child and began to experience postpartum blues.  Relatively soon thereafter bi-polar symptoms began. During the day I can remember barely being able to move, whilst at night, under the light of the silvery moon and into the wee hours of the morning, I would construct for my young son, single handedly, in my backyard, an elaborate playground. Then as the sun was up and outside it was absolutely gorgeous, I would lie in bed tearful, melancholic and utterly exhausted unable to move. Then, just as the afternoon would cusp, the evening would birth this new, incredibly creative, “conquer the world” energy. Those symptoms were all too familiar to me.  I thought I knew what was coming. Growing up with a mom who would in her most delusional moments think that she was Jesus reincarnate, the signs were clear that I needed help.

For me, time, reality and familiarity have a way of mitigating any feelings of shame and embarrassment.  I was not functioning normally I had to find a psychotherapist with whom I felt comfortable and who could begin to get me grounded. I started with psychotherapy once a week and the drugs of choice at the time were first Lithium, then Prozac, then Wellbutrin and then a combination of other drugs. I was ingesting about 5 or 6 heavy medications a day. I was taking pills to sleep and then pills to wake up, I was having sluggish days, vivid dreams and crazy nightmares and I could not tolerate the combination of medications. I can remember thinking, now overweight and a shell of who I used to be, “which is worse, the condition or this mad science.” I was not feeling better and the side effects of the drugs were horrific.

Maybe a year into the therapy the doctor suggested at the time that it would be beneficial for me to do a 30 day stay at a local psychiatric hospital to get my medications under control. She felt they may be better able to do that if I were under observation and being monitored. Maybe it was because “the well-intentioned doctors”  had been preparing me for this day ever since I was a little girl that at their mere suggestion I went in voluntarily and as expected. Once in, I became incredibly frustrated because there was just a lot of sitting around, no fresh air and horrible cafeteria food. I could not imagine a healthy resolution coming from that situation. After 30 days my insurance ran out and I was moved along with just a new medication. I was released.

I continued care with my outside psychiatrist for five years seeing her now three times a week to rehash and rehash my youth. She continued to juggle medications based on my tolerance. I held a job in outside sales and I existed. I battled chronic fatigue, mood fluctuations, bloating and severe constipation. Reflecting back, I can’t imagine what I was thinking, because it took me so long to become aware of a correlation between how I felt and the foods I was eating. When I began to wake up, I can remember telling my psychiatrist that I thought my condition was food related. I told her that I felt like I was allergic to bread because of how I felt after I ate it. She dismissed my correlation restating that my condition was inherited, bio-chemical and lifelong.

Searching for answers and understanding, I began by first reading a little book called “Fit for Life” by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. They had written at great lengths about how “you are what you eat.” As I educated myself I persisted with talking to my doctor about diet and it’s effect on the nervous system. I wanted to start backing off some of the medication as my new diet improved. In exasperation my doctor proceeded to tell me that, “I would be back in the psychiatric ward in 30 days if I stopped taking my medicine.” Now, not remembering if I just became fed up with the strangle-hold the huge psychiatric industry had on my life and my wallet or if I could not accept that this was how I was going to live the rest of my life, I kept reading and became ever more wary of their logic.

At approximately the same time my father-in-law was diagnosed with stomach cancer and was told that he had a 5% chance of surviving 5 years. Living in Baltimore, Maryland at the time, I had been watching a news report on television about a teenage boy who had been a patient at John’s Hopkins Hospital fighting Leukemia. They were hailing this boy “The Miracle Child” because he had just returned after leaving for 9 months totally Leukemia free. The boy had been a patient at the hospital and he was seeing no improvement in his condition.  As his health continued to deteriorate he got wind of a diet that held the promise of a cure and he wanted to give it a try. He convinced his parents and his doctors to give him a year, and if his condition did not improve he would return to John’s Hopkins and resume standard treatment. 9 months later he returned completely leukemia free – hence the nick name “Miracle Child.”

Hoping to provide my mother-in-law with some hope, but not able to remember the details of the news story, I called John’s Hopkins Hospital to see if anyone would have remembered what I had seen on T.V. and if they could tell me the name of the diet. I was shocked when without any hesitation the operator said, “Oh yeah, that was Macrobiotics”- like everybody knows about Macrobiotics! I headed immediately to the bookstore and began to read everything I could on the subject. It was the forward in one of the first macrobiotic books I read that changed my life forever. It stated something to the effect that manic depression was the outward expression of the most toxic state the body can be in and that by cleaning up the quality of your blood you will change the quality of your life.  I can remember calling friends and family like I had just uncovered the truth, the missing piece in an unsolved mystery and I wanted to tell the world.

That was the day I began living.  I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS TO ANYONE- but in utter defiance and protestation, I flushed all my pharmaceuticals down the toilet. I canceled any future psychiatric appointments, and I cleaned all processed food and junk food out of my kitchen. Then I sat on the couch remembering what the “good doctor” had said about ending up back in a psychiatric ward and I have to admit, I was a little nervous. I went to my couch and sat down and I waited. I waited for something horrible to happen. I waited and I waited… and nothing… nothing happened!  The next day I put on my sneakers and workout clothes and went for a power walk.  I must of walked 5 miles that day.  Then I began to study. I would only eat whole, clean organic foods, and walk every day and as I changed the quality of my blood and nourished my nervous system, I began to heal myself.  Within 30 days I was not back in the hospital, I was alive and I was whole.  My personality returned.  My spunk and ingenuity.  I was early to wake, sailed through my days and slept peacefully throughout the night.  Weight dropped off and a beautiful color blushed over my cheeks. I had begun to heal myself and recover my sanity with the help of some tremendous people and organizations.

The Kushi institute, a Macrobiotic retreat and education center in Becket Massachusetts, Michio Kushi, the nationally recognized father of Macrobiotics in the united states, Jane and Lino Stanchich,macrobiotic counselors, and Christina Pirello, a gal who cured herself of 4th stage leukemia, has written four books and lectures internationally. All of these fascinating people have guided and inspired me with their expertise, their wisdom and their joy and to them I shall owe my life. To my father I owe my critical eye that questions everything and who taught me to trust my intuition above all else, and to my brother Tom and my friend “H”, who have always expressed their faith and confidence in me, I give thanks to know that I am always anchored by their love and support.

“WE HAVE NOT EVEN TO RISK THE ADVENTURE ALONE, FOR THE HEROES OF ALL TIME HAVE GONE BEFORE US; THE LABYRINTH IS THOROUGHLY KNOWN; WE HAVE ONLY TO FOLLOW THE THREAD OF THE HERO PATH. AND WHERE WE HAD THOUGHT TO FIND AN ABOMINATION, WE SHALL FIND A GOD; WHERE WE HAD THOUGHT TO SLAY ANOTHER, WE SHALL SLAY OURSELVES; WHERE WE HAD THOUGHT TO TRAVEL OUTWARD, WE SHALL COME TO THE CENTER OF OUR OWN EXISTENCE; WHERE WE HAD THOUGHT TO BE ALONE, WE SHALL BE WITH ALL THE WORLD.”

– Joseph Campbell, THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

I hope this site inspires you to learn everything you can about yourself. 

Enjoy!

Kara