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by Laura Joy Palma (Author)
What happens when a woman of faith stops hiding the diagnosis she was taught to be ashamed of?
Laura Joy Palma spent decades masking the symptoms of bipolar II disorder - the sleepless nights rewritten as ambition, the crashes explained away as stress, the secret-keeping that became its own kind of illness. As a teacher, writer, and lifelong Christian, she built a life that looked stable from the outside while quietly unraveling within.
Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Bipolar-ly Made is the book she needed to read and couldn't find - a memoir for readers of Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind and Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking, grounded in the clinical foundation of Dr. Francis Mark Mondimore's Bipolar Disorder: A Guide for You & Your Loved Ones, but written from a vantage point those classics never offered: a woman who refused to choose between her diagnosis and her faith.
In four parts, Laura Joy traces her journey from shame to sanctuary - through misdiagnosis, self-medication, broken relationships, and the slow, painful work of accepting a brain that doesn't operate on anyone else's terms. She explores what bipolar disorder actually looks and feels like before and after diagnosis, how to build a treatment team and a stability toolkit that works, why the church can become either a refuge or a barrier for the mentally ill, and how faith and clinical reality can coexist without contradiction.
"Bipolar disorder is not a sin, and we in the Christian community must cease treating those who struggle with it as if they suffered from some form of spiritual leprosy. If you live with bipolar disorder, or if you know someone who does, this is the book for you." - Dr. Sam Storms, former professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Wheaton College
This is not a clinical textbook. This is one woman's voice saying: I am fearfully and wonderfully made - and I also live with bipolar disorder. Both things are true.
For anyone living with bipolar disorder, loving someone who does, or leading a community that doesn't yet know how - this book is your invitation to stop hiding and start healing.
