Brienne Hicks: Author of bipolHER

Christina chats with author Brienne Hicks about her favorite time of year, taking risks in business and life, and her experience living with a mental variation.

BipolHER, the first book by Brienne Hicks, is a gripping memoir about the reality of living with mental illness. Her frank and honest style chronicles not only her personal struggles but also those of a parent and a member of society. Brienne, a native of Sarnia, Ontario, credits her Grandpa, John Sawer for inspiring her to write bipolHER. 

A passionate advocate for addiction and mental health, Brienne’s other interests include cooking and entertaining (on her good days), exploring new places with her daughter and enjoying the beauty of nature.

Visit Brienne's website: bipolHERbook.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Greetings from Christina
• 0:30 Theme Song - Talk About It
• 0:55 Introduction by Christina
• 3:02 Welcome Brienne Hicks
• 4:54 Brienne's definition of bipolar disorder
• 13:04 Brienne's 'why' for writing bipolHER
• 16:03 What's a mental variation?
• 23:37 Brienne asks for a break
• 30:20 Surviving the Holidays
• 42:33 Breinne's next adventure - Escape Room!
• 52:09 Heartbeat Hotline 1(902)-669-4769
• 53:13 Podcast Credits
• 53:35 Support the Podcast on Patreon

Transcript

Christina: [00:00:02] (Theme song - Talk About It - playing in background)Welcome to a Chat with Heart Podcast. I'm your host, Christina Martin. I'm here to help guide heartfelt conversations with new and old friends I've met from just being alive, or touring my music around North America and other parts of the world. I chat with people I feel a kinship with, and that I genuinely believe we can learn from. Our personal stories have great power to heal, influence and inspire. All we have to do is show up for the conversation.

Podcast theme song 'Talk About It': [00:00:30] If we just talk about it, we can shine a light, we can break a dark day. If we just talk about it, we can cut away, we can make a brighter day.

Christina: [00:00:55] Hi, everyone. I want to dive right into this episode. I'm chatting with Brienne Hicks, who put out a fantastic book. It's called BipolHER -The Truth and Nothing But the Truth. It's a true story told by Brienne, written by Katie Kuperman. So in this episode, when you hear Brienne mention Katie, that's the person she's referring to. The book is packed with recipes for how to navigate living with a mental variation. You don't need a clinical understanding of what bipolar disorder is to listen and appreciate Brienne's personal experience in this episode. I'm not going to define what bipolar disorder is. You can look it up later on if you want. I do want to mention that this chat does contain subject matter that can be triggering. We mentioned suicide, substance abuse, drug overdose and mental illness. So this is a good time for you to choose to skip the episode altogether if you think it will be a trigger for you or maybe just come back to it in the future. After my brother died from a drug overdose, I couldn't watch so many shows that included substance abuse for so long. Many, many, many years. And sometimes it's, it's just wise to avoid things. That doesn't mean that you need to avoid conversations or certain situations forever. There might be a time in the future that you can come back to something, so you never know. This is an important episode for for anyone to hear, especially for someone experiencing mental illness and trying to just live a healthy life and wanting to pursue their calling. Brienne has dreams and goals and so many gifts to offer others, as you'll find out. And through her hard work, persistence, determination and a hell of a lot more, she makes shit happen in her own time. I love that she paves her own path with heart.

Brienne: [00:03:02] How are you?

Christina: [00:03:04] I'm so happy to see you.

Brienne: [00:03:07] I'm so happy to see you.

Christina: [00:03:08] I didn't answer your question. I'm great. How are you? How are you doing today?

Brienne: [00:03:16] That's always a loaded question for me.

Christina: [00:03:18] I thought it would be.

Brienne: [00:03:19] Yeah, well, I'm really excited right now. I'm anxious. Normal. And I also feel like. I feel like today is a great day for us to be talking, because the last couple of days haven't been easy. And then I thought that by just doing this today, I'll be, like, magically better. So I'm like, in this moment right now, I'm feeling happy and excited and overwhelmed in all the good ways. But generally today, yesterday were pretty low days.

Christina: [00:03:58] So I always appreciate an honest response to that because so often when we're talking with even our close friends and family, we're so used to just going, you know what? Just say I'm fine, I'm great. You know.

Brienne: [00:04:11] The whole 'say great and you'll feel great' or 'if you say I'm okay, then you will just be okay'... but then they give you these, like they make sense in the moment. They get you thinking, which is what we're supposed to do. So you go about starting to tell everybody you're great all the time. And I would do that. And then. It just didn't feel authentic anymore. I mean, I know there's times when you don't get into that.

Christina: [00:04:42] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:04:43] Certain people at the grocery store, with the cashier 'How are you doing today? I'm good.' But authentic questions need authentic answers.

Christina: [00:04:54] This is A Chat with Heart Podcast, and it is absolutely the place where I would hope that my guests would feel comfortable being authentic, feeling comfortable just speaking their truth. You know whatever you're comfortable with, it doesn't mean if there's something that you want to keep private, that doesn't mean that I'm expecting you to bare all, but I definitely like, it's just nice to have these safe times and spaces where you can breathe a little bit easier. Although, I will admit I'm excited, and my anxiety was up as well because I think it's something new. You know, we've never met before. I think there might be some listeners who have no idea what bipolar disorder is, who maybe heard some things but were misinformed. So I'm wondering if you can tell us what bipolar disorder is from your experience.

Brienne: [00:05:50] So bipolar to me is hell on earth, to elaborate on that. Undiagnosed and unmedicated or wrongly medicated, bipolar is hell on earth, and however people choose to medicate, when I say medicate, I don't always mean what the doctors prescribe. I mean for me, when medicated, which I have been for over 20 years now. No. Edit that, that's a lie, for like 18. So when I am doing well, I get the chance to be living my life and not just be alive. With that being said, people that don't know about bipolar or understand about it from a personal perspective, count yourself lucky that you've never had to see anybody go through it or you've never experienced it. If you are a medical professional or somebody who likes the medical aspect of it, I don't even know the proper definition of it. I don't care because you open a textbook and it's going to tell you these are the symptoms. You may or may not experience them, whatever, but how everyone experience it is different. Everyone experiences their highs and their lows different. So pursuing anything before I was diagnosed, was looking back, I don't know if it was a dream, or just doing what I was supposed to do. Growing up, you're supposed to dream of what profession you want. So my dream was, I was going to be a teacher at one point, but my real callings, they were beyond my dreams and my goals. My real callings, any time I would pursue them, they were different, and received a lot of negative feedback. Honestly, looking back, it was uncalled for. The negative feedback, people putting their fears of failure onto me. But after my diagnosis, all my dreams just kind of became what I thought was a spin off of a high or the result of a low. Just thought that my brain couldn't have dreams. And if it did, they were crazy dreams from a crazy person. So everything got shut down. Then my brother died.

Christina: [00:08:12] That's a big one.

Brienne: [00:08:14] It is. That's where I think depression, and that part of mental illness is just so fucked up, because losing my brother did not put me into a depression. I've been in depressed states and suicidal phases over literally nothing. And you would think that losing a family member would, would do that or would, could be the thing that would certainly drive someone with mental illness into depression. It didn't. For me, it made me take a step back and think 'You get one shot?'. 

Christina: [00:08:58] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:08:59] So why not start taking chances?

Christina: [00:09:04] I'm glad you did. When my father died, I went through a really rough time. But it sounds really weird to say, but, like, had he not, I don't think I would have done the things that came after he died. I don't think I would be doing what I'm doing now. I mean, maybe. But I mean, everything changed. And it was. It was having somebody close to me die that made me realize life is fragile, you know? And and sometimes I think the way the people that we love die can have that effect. You know, like when I was a kid, it was always like a grandparent that was dying of natural causes or old age. And there wasn't that same effect. But when it was a parent or as you know, I lost my brother as well. And he was yeah, he was one year younger than I am now. And when he died and it was a reminder, this horrible reminder. What is it about someone that we love so much, or that is just such a big part of our life and our upbringing and all of a sudden just gone in, in a way that is tragic. Or is it that all of a sudden it washes away some of our fears or we're numb to them? You know, in some ways that's how I felt. I was like, I don't, I don't feel anything right now, so I'm just going to do all the things I want to do for as long as I can, and ya know fuck it. Like I don't care about what anybody else thinks. And I'm just going to, I'm going to do, I'm going to ask, I'm going to try. Kind of thing. Do you think it was a little bit of that?

Brienne: [00:10:45] I don't think I've reached that point in my life where I don't care what people think. And I, and I've accepted that. I think because I acknowledge that I will eventually get to that authentic place where I genuinely don't. But after Ryan died, it was this piece of me that was, so he, my brother died of a drug overdose and he had been using for many years prior to. So for me, I compared his life in my life. I always said his life was hell on earth. And he took medication to get, his was illegal, too, no matter. And I took mine to. I took my medication prescribed and legal to numb it as well, I guess. But in what is seen as a healthy way. His medication, and I'm going to call it that, his drug abuse had side effects that would end up taking his life. Those are the listed side effects. If you become a drug addict to a hard drug you may die.

Christina: [00:12:02] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:12:03] There's a side effect for you. My side effects are memory loss. Go on and on. And then your liver fails and blood cell count goes down. And so it was quality of life over quantity of life for me.

Christina: [00:12:20] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:12:21] In that moment. And that's. That's what the the shaker was for me. I knew then. Okay, now, now I got to, now I got to get on this. It wasn't until certain people came into my life and other things started happening that I was able to do that. But that quiet voice of 'you've got to do these things was never louder'. And I never felt that, that missing piece that was like, not only is this your calling, you're going to do this come hell or high water, where there's a will there's a way. We'll figure this out. You've got to, you've got one lifetime to figure it out.

Christina: [00:13:01] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:13:02] And that's where it all started.

Christina: [00:13:04] Tell us about your why for writing the book.

Brienne: [00:13:07] I was just going to cry.

Christina: [00:13:10] Hey, it's great for the ratings.

Brienne: [00:13:12] Okay, hold on.

Christina: [00:13:15] Yes. Pour it on.

Brienne: [00:13:18] I don't know why I'm so emotional today, but like I said at the beginning, this was not a great day. So this is perfect for people to see that I'm smiling right now, oh they can't see me.

Christina: [00:13:27] You are smiling. We can tell them, yeah.

Brienne: [00:13:31] I am smiling, but I am crying. I am happy today. In this moment I'm happy, but I'm also feeling sad so they can coexist. So I promised my grandfather that I would write a book. He always told me that's what I should do. I think sometimes it was his nice way of saying, 'Go write a book and stop talking to me so much.' All right.

Christina: [00:13:59] Thanks, Gramps.

Brienne: [00:14:00] Yeah. But my grandpa was unlike any other human I've ever known. They don't make him like that anymore. And so when he would advise you of something or tell you that he thought that's where you could make the most difference, he was probably right.

Christina: [00:14:22] Sounds like a smart man.

Brienne: [00:14:24] Smart wise. How long is your podcast? I could keep going. So when I promised him that I didn't know what I was going to write about, and this is where listening to your podcast came in, because I remember hearing you say, I don't know or I didn't know where I wanted this to go. And everybody kept telling me to to find that one thing and then go there. And I couldn't find that one thing. I was like, I want to tell my whole life story. So when I finally decided I wanted to name my book bipolHER, and that just came to me, one day I was like, okay, well, if I want to name it bipolHER, I think that I should probably just stick with the mental illness part. And then when I realized that was what I wanted to write about, that's where the calling lied. I then became so scared and started to think about every other type of book that I could write. Because if I really did this, that meant the content of the book would be the content of the book, which was a difficult read in a lot of ways. Right? So why I wrote the book was so that even if one person picked it up and read it, and didn't say, 'Wow, this girl is a fuck show.' But rather picked it up and said, 'I can relate to this. I think I need to go talk to someone.' That's it.

Christina: [00:16:03] I wish I had had this to read when I was a teenager and that my brothers and my parents had had it to read. You know, I wish we could have talked about it around the table. We can talk about it now for sure. But I don't think I mentioned in this episode yet that my brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and we didn't know anything about it. I mean, he was diagnosed late, and bipolar, no diagnosis, even the the manic stages and the very low depressive stages, ya know, those were two things. We just, nobody had the tools, nobody had the vocabulary and the understanding. We didn't know what kind of questions to ask or how to help. And I just think a book like this has the power to really help quality of life, for not only for individuals living with a mental variation, which I'm going to ask you about that in a second, but also their family members, their friends, everyone that knows them, anybody who knows anybody living with mental illness, mental variation. This is a good chance now for you to explain, because it comes up in the book a lot. Mental variation. Can you tell our audience more about what that means? It was the first time I had ever read it in anything I've ever read about mental health or illness.

Brienne: [00:17:28] Katie did that on her own, and I remember the first time she submitted to me the chapter or the page, whatever it was, at the time that used that term. And I remember that I highlighted it and circled it and underlined it like four times because I thought. Like the first time I heard it, I thought, wow, you're really ripping us off here like a mental variation as opposed to an illness. Like, I felt like it was like saying about somebody dying of an excruciating, painful cancer and saying they were very sick. No, they weren't. No they weren't, they had fucking cancer. And that sucks. And now my illness is just a variation? Thanks, Katie. Right? And I was kind of upset with her in that moment, which was odd because we had this, we have this insane connection. Insane. I use all the terms I tell people not to. One of the shirts I actually have, it will be on the website shortly. It's says 'it's pronounced mental illness.' Or 'it's pronounced mental illness, not crazy. Fight the stigma' Um, but I might have to change that and call it a variation. So I asked Katie about it and said, I don't know, man. Don't you think that might offend people? And I don't know. And she's like, but, well, here's where I see it. And she explained it and I sat on it and thought, okay, not only are you a brilliant writer, an amazing person. Now you're just a frigging genius. Because I think that might be the best way I've ever heard it explained. It's a double edged sword. We just have a brain that doesn't work like everyone else's. And it's a variant. So credit to Katie. Brilliant. It is absolutely brilliant. And it's so ironic that you brought that up because just the other day somebody said to me that reading that line changed their perspective and didn't make them feel like monster.

Christina: [00:19:53] Yeah. Wow, That's amazing. When I read it, what I took from it was that it was kind of a more compassionate approach to not just saying, you know, a diagnosis is like this one thing and everybody's the same, and this is what it's going to be like. We have to realize that it's, it is different for so many people. And I actually have a personal belief, and I don't know how you feel about this, that there's really no guarantee for any of us like that, you know, that we're all kind of two steps away from being in a position where we need to seek help for a mental variation or mental illness. And that that can be in part, it can be genetic, it can be a combination of environment, it can be situational. And I'm absolutely no expert.

Brienne: [00:20:43] But here's the thing. Yes, I have read up on it. Of course, when I was diagnosed, I tried to learn all the medical, but when I was diagnosed and I went on the Internet and looked up bipolar, the only thing that came up was bisexual and a lot of bisexual porn sites.

Christina: [00:21:04] Not a lot of resources.

Brienne: [00:21:06] Yeah, I'm not an expert either. I don't care that I don't have letters that follow my name about this. What I do have is experience. And if you spell out experience, survival, and put that at the end of my name, that's a whole lot more letters. And those are the letters that matter. In the book, I share the story about the man that fell down the well and that the only one that was able to to help him was someone who had experienced it. So I'm not saying that we don't need doctors. By all means abso-frickin-lutely. But I think we need more doctors that understand the concept of - education and knowledge without compassion doesn't count. It just doesn't. Because when it comes to mental illness and this part of the medical field, if there's no compassion, if there's no anything beyond what your textbook says, you're not going to help people. You're just not.

Christina: [00:22:08] Speaking of helping people, you want to segway into some really cool ways that I think your book helps people.

Brienne: [00:22:17] Sure, because I forget. Go.

Christina: [00:22:20] You're good. No, you're good. Listen, your book, as you know, your book has recipes for navigating living with bipolar disorder. By the way, here, I digress.

Brienne: [00:22:31] It makes me feel better.

Christina: [00:22:32] Just I just every time I say disorder, I don't know why, but it makes me feel like I wish we didn't say, I don't know, I don't like the word disorder because I, I feel like I wish there could be anothe, bipolar. Bipolarism. Bipolar.

Brienne: [00:22:49] Kate calls it that, too. Yeah. In the book, she calls it bipolarism. And I actually said to her, can you look that up? Because, like, is that even a thing? And it is. 

Christina: [00:23:00] Okay. Well, I prefer it to disorder, and only because I don't think, having a label for one thing, can be not the greatest thing, especially when there's a stigma attached to it. But it's, if we're working to be more compassionate in how we talk about mental illness, then I just, I don't like labels that kind of, some people live their entire lives with something. Does that mean they are broken permanently or. Do you know?

Brienne: [00:23:37] Okay, this might be the first time on your podcast, maybe we should leave this here and not edit this part. Can we do a, I need to, I need to refocus, break. I'm like, can you tell that I'm like, Woo, woo woo? And so for your listeners, it's okay to say. 'Okay. I'm starting to feel really, really anxious and overwhelmed. I need a break. I need to maybe go meditate, yoga. Maybe it's your physical medication. Maybe whatever it is, we'll go have a glass of water. For me right now. I'm going to go have a lemon candy. That's a recipe for anxiety, by the way, people. Lemon candy in your purse.

Christina: [00:24:28] Nice.

Brienne: [00:24:28] And. Also, it's okay to, for example, if you're doing a podcast or a public speaking event, my first public speaking event, I asked for a certain time that I would be speaking. Like I wanted to go last and I wanted to know exactly how long I had to speak for and all these things to get rid of the anxiety of the unknown. And when you reached out to me, I reached back to you and said, okay, absolutely, 100%, without question. I'd totally love to do this with you, because I listened to your podcast and your music, and stuff that my mom has shared with me about you. Yeah, this is this is a yes, like a no brainer. But I came to you and said 'Would you be okay with sharing a couple of the questions with me or giving me sort of the setup of how it's all going to go?' And just so you know, I read that, and I worked on some answers for a couple of minutes as long as I could focus. But then I didn't. It was just having it to read over that that helped. The fact that you wrote back to me and said, 'Absolutely. Here's the outline, here's the few questions, style things that will will do. Does that help? Immensely. Like, I don't know, clearly, it didn't help with scatterbrain, it didn't help with having a straight to simple answer like I wanted to.

Christina: [00:26:23] You're doing fantastic.

Brienne: [00:26:26] But I just appreciate, and I, I don't think, I know I speak for everybody who goes through what I go through. And when we say thank you to people like you.

Christina: [00:26:44] It's my absolute pleasure. And I can say that I in my life, I'm an over planner because it helps me with my anxiety. And I ask, I ask and I ask. And I know that at times in my career, that's maybe for people who don't plan or don't, you know, make the space or the time, that could be irritating. But I keep, if somebody says no, then sometimes I can accept it or if they just ghost me. But I've done all I can do and then I can let go a little bit. So I, I appreciate you saying saying that. I think it is important for listeners to know, and I know a lot of people listening that live with anxiety. Yeah, I second that notion that it's okay to ask. And at my shows, that's something I want my audience to feel comfortable asking if in advance if they aren't sure and they want to come out, but they're nervous or have social anxieties or sensory sensitivities, you know, I try my best and I don't always achieve this, but to put a notice on my all my shows and ask the promoter too, here's an email, here's the phone number you can call to ask questions in advance. If you're bringing somebody along with you for support, you know, they're not going to get charged a ticket. And whatever you need, let us know and we'll try and accommodate, because I think that's just kind of the world that we should be living in.

Brienne: [00:28:24] I'm driven by kindness and. Yeah, That's amazing of you. Yeah.

Christina: [00:28:30] I'm going to go take a pee break. I'm going to drain my main vein, get some water.

Brienne: [00:28:34] Don't edit that out.

Christina: [00:28:37] We'll be right back. (Instrumental music - Keep Me Calm - playing in background)

Brienne: [00:28:49] I joke about my illness. I don't make a mockery or a joke of the illness itself, but I joke about or laugh about what I can't change and the things I do that the people around me, see them as as quirks. Now, for example, when I have people, a lot of company, I love having company and entertaining and cooking, doing all that. But oftentimes I end up just literally going in circles because I get overwhelmed and,  my family will say, 'okay, you're going in circles, did you take your pills?' And I'm like, yes, but I could probably take a five minute meditation break and maybe I'll take a Lorazepam. Yeah. And then a half an hour I'll get back to the kitchen.

Christina: [00:29:48] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:29:48] So that being said, what I just did is I went for my smoke. Thought about that. Well, I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't talk about that. It might trigger people that do abuse it. Then I'm like, Oh, shit, I know why I'm down so many rabbit holes. I didn't take my mood stabilizer at one, because I was on my podcast. Your podcast.

Christina: [00:30:15] No, Brienne, you can be the host of this now. I'm happy to hand it over, though.

Brienne: [00:30:20] All right. So Christina, what I wanted to ask you was, you said that you have a favorite holiday. And I'm dead serious. I actually wrote this down on the thing of questions, it's the only thing I wrote that you said. What was my favorite holiday, and why, would be one of the questions, and that you have yours but you have made certain traditions and all of these things that help you get through it easier and make it feel less hectic, stressful, and so that it's not a shit show. So, yeah, Christina, my question to you is, what do you do?

Christina: [00:31:05] Oh, Brienne, that is a wonderful question. I'm glad you asked. Thank you. And I'd love to hear more about what you do at the holiday season, what your favorite one is later. But you know what? I would start by saying that I, I have thought so much about this, and holidays and family get togethers. So here's some of the things I do around holiday events. I, I like making plans, plans that are going to be fun for everybody. I want everybody to have as much fun as we can together. Because I think when you're having fun and you're relaxed, so playing games like games that really kind of get you out of your comfort zone and where everyone realizes it's okay to be goofy, it's okay to be, say whatever, no one's going to judge you or criticize you. We might laugh, but just at the absurdity of it all, do you know what I mean? Like, so I don't, I'm not a fan of making, bullying or sort of really making people feel bad. But I, I am a fan of just really laughing at myself and laughing at other people who are okay with laughing at themselves. I guess. So games, that's a big one. Season one of this podcast was sponsored by a conversation game called FLUSTER, and that's an example of one that I could bring to a dinner party with my family. Or we'd play charades a lot of the times. I haven't gotten so much into them myself, but I know puzzles are a big one for some of my family members. So making puzzles together. I know my husband's done that with my mom. So, you know, when you just, when you're just sitting around with your family and you don't have anything to do, sometimes you revert to like the old processes or questions or behaviours that can sometimes make people feel like shit.

Brienne: [00:33:01] What a great idea. So simple and so great.

Christina: [00:33:04] Yeah. You know what? Obviously I'm a huge fan of physical activity and I know that, that is not something that you know, if you are in a depressed state, it's nice to say 'oh go for a walk.'

Brienne: [00:33:21] Oh I love that when people say 'Why don't you just get up and go for a walk?'

Christina: [00:33:27] That's not always. But if it's possible, some kind of, like, activity, if it's going for a walk or like, we started to go bowling once a year. That was before the pandemic. Now, I think we'll probably throw that into the ring again. So going bowling with everybody. Again, just kind of getting out there, getting some fresh air with everybody. I mean, there's, there are so many free things to do. Like I mean, last year we, a couple of years ago, my husband Dale, my brother and my mother and I in Halifax went just for a walk downtown to see all the Christmas lights, you know, and instead of just sitting around again eating too much. And I'm a fan of eating, don't get me wrong. And we'll talk about that. Yeah. But, you know, when you eat too much, for me, it affects my mood. And it just really brings me down and like, I'm just sitting still for too long. It's just not good. So, yeah, getting out, planning activities. How about you? Favorite holiday.

Brienne: [00:34:36] Oh, okay. No brainer, Christmas. And why is because presents, and presents both definitions. I would be lying if I said I didn't love getting presents, but I'll get, I love gifts every day that ends in a why. Not just Christmas Day. And I love giving. Like if I became the lotto max winner. Whatever. That's what I'd do. I would just go and give, give, like that's joy to me. 100%. I love gifting presents because I get to get out of my own brain and focus on putting all of my thought into a gift specifically for someone. And I put a lot of thought. I put a lot of, you know, and it, yeah, it gets me out of my... A lot of people don't like Christmas shopping and all of that. I love it. I love that. I would rather Christmas shop then go clothes shopping. But that being said, when I'm on a high, clothes shopping, I'll empty my entire closet and I will go buy all new clothes that are not even me, because I'm just going to be this new person and whatever.

Christina: [00:35:59] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:36:00] Anyway, the feeling of and the smell of Christmas. And people think it's like the pine and the whatever. I think it's, this sounds so weird, but it's the smell of like my family's home and being present in that time. It's one of the times where you can just literally excuse the rest of the world. Everybody is on holidays, usually. Usually, I mean, not our front line workers, but you can just be, and you can accept graciously and you can give lovingly and and be free for, for a day.

Christina: [00:36:34] I feel like that's what like playing charades and games. Like, I think that you nailed it. Why it's so, why I love it so much, because it is really that, you're in the present moment. You're, nothing from yesterday or even tomorrow. You're not worried about the past or the future. You're not being triggered. You're just. You're so there with everybody making eye contact and, like, laughing. And I don't know, it's like everyone, it's it's sort of like.

Brienne: [00:37:01] A feeling that nobody can describe when you look around the room at Christmas.

Christina: [00:37:05] So favorite comfort foods and let's stick to Christmas around that time of the holiday. I know you are an amazing...

Brienne: [00:37:12] I'm going to say, why would you ask me that?

Christina: [00:37:15] I know. Well, let's let's try to think of, you've got to have, like maybe you don't, maybe you don't have like top three.

Brienne: [00:37:23] Comfort food for me, my grandmother's spinach casserole. After that, I just I love sushi and everything. I love food. And at Christmas, my other ones just trying to think like, is there anything that you have to wait only till Christmas?

Christina: [00:37:43] For us, it was, we didn't have to wait but Mom always made, like, amazing chicken stew, like a real thick, hearty chicken stew. What else? Was there something, I mean, and then, but the main meal, which was incredible, the turkey dinner, was always also Thanksgiving. It was like the same meal, but there were like three months apart. So you were ready for it.

Brienne: [00:38:08] You're ready. Yeah. Round two. Bring her on.

Christina: [00:38:11] The gravy with mushrooms and.. 

Brienne: [00:38:14] My mom's not a good cook. We acknowledge that in the book.

Christina: [00:38:17] I remember that.

Brienne: [00:38:18] She does a lot of things. But cooking not one of them.

Christina: [00:38:20] Sorry Laurie. Sorry.

Brienne: [00:38:22] Sorry about that. And she, however, makes the best Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Like how, how do you go from canned spaghetti, to all of a sudden like. And it wasn't like she just started making great Christmas dinners. We just, I just never appreciated how good they were until I could really acknowledge how much her other food sucked, and that she was always just really good at that. And and I never, but again, specialize in one thing, perfected. There you go.

Christina: [00:39:03] Sometimes that's the best you can hope for. But, so is The Lunch Ladie still operating? Currently operating.

Brienne: [00:39:12] I took a step back during the pandemic. Obviously, there wasn't a lot of business to be had really, since The Lunch Ladie is a lunch delivery service to your place of employment. Well, nobody was working. So what I did was set it up for only large orders. So I would do only large orders of a certain amount. And that got me through. And then my heart started to go in a different direction, which was the book. And pursuing that, I was torn with this feeling of guilt, like of abandoning the one thing that I started against all odds. And so right now, what I, for example, this weekend I have a wedding that I'm doing, there are dips and that kind of stuff. Of course not their full meal. It's a smaller business than that. And again, just the larger quantities pre-ordered. But what I would really, really love to do with it now is sell it to someone that will utilize it the same way I did, use it to help others. And there was a lot of that behind the scenes and without being - no, I'm just gonna say it - I was in a place where I was a single mom at the time, wanting to show my daughter that you can have a passion and turn it into a business.

Brienne: [00:40:56] If that's what you choose to do with it, you can pursue a dream. You can do it against all odds. Kind of like that was one of the motivators. And finding joy, true authentic joy, making the lunches and coming home happy after the interactions with the people. It helped me to conquer a lot of anxieties and fears. So I would like to sell it to someone with that vision in mind. Like I don't want someone to just say to me, Oh, I'd like to do it. And I think I could put it down in a little shop downtown. And that will be that. But I'll make some good money, you know? No, not good enough for me. It's a, it's a love based business. And if, I get it. If it's a business, you're in the business of making money. And I understand that. But this is also a business for love, to love others, love yourself, learn from, grow from. And if it's all just about the money, then you can't buy it.

Christina: [00:41:59] Yeah. Wow. I love hearing how you've made your dreams come true and you have done it while coping, living with some serious shit. It's remarkable. You are remarkable. The books remarkable. Can you tell our listeners where they can get the book? And I'm certainly going to share all of your links, but where do you want them to buy the book?

Brienne: [00:42:27] It'll be www.bipolHERbook.com.

Christina: [00:42:33] What's your next adventure? No pressure.

Brienne: [00:42:36] Oh, well, the secret's out of the bag now. Already in town here, but I'm doing my first brick and mortar, I think is the term business. It should open in a couple of weeks. It's an escape room. It's called Sherlocked Inn. And again, another thing that I've wanted to do for a very, very long time, since the first time I played my first escape room, I've traveled all over doing them.

Christina: [00:43:08] And what is this? I don't know. I guess I've heard of this. I don't know what it is really.

Brienne: [00:43:15] Okay, well, don't watch the movie Escape Room and then think that's what mine is because people die in that one.

Christina: [00:43:23] Oh, okay.

Brienne: [00:43:24] But no, it's a huge trend right now, and has been for the last few years and up and coming where essentially you are locked in a room and you're given a certain amount of time, most cases 60 minutes to find clues, decipher codes, unlock locks and solve riddles to advance in the room to the next, to the next, or the next, to complete your goal and escape the room.

Christina: [00:44:01] Holy shit.

Brienne: [00:44:03] They are so fun. And if you want to talk about another thing, for some reason being locked in a room is legally, you can't actually lock them in, the doors open. But you would think locking me in a room under insane pressure to get this done, being on a camera, because they have to watch you, right?

Christina: [00:44:28] Making me anxious.

Brienne: [00:44:30] Right. And you would think that I would fall apart. It's another hour where I'm out of my own brain.

Christina: [00:44:36] Wow, that's incredible.

Brienne: [00:44:39] So. And I love it because I'm thinking of everything else other than what drives me to feel not okay.

Christina: [00:44:49] Yeah, I love that.

Brienne: [00:44:51] So, yeah. So it's been super, super fun. I've learned so, so much trying to do this again. Almost didn't because, is it a high? Every day I wake up and go in there and look around. I'm like, was this a high?

Christina: [00:45:08] Right? Yeah, that was another thing I'm going to throw in here and ask you about now, because I've asked myself this about myself sometimes. Like you're just overly excited right now. It's not the greatest time. You know, like. Like calm the fuck down. Like, don't make decisions in this moment because you're, you know, you're not. Again, for me, it can sometimes lead to maybe it's shopping or. I don't know. Sometimes I don't know the difference. And so I just try not to make decisions until I feel. How do you know? How do you know for yourself?

Brienne: [00:45:46] And this is the thing. So I'm with you on, like I talk about in the book, the tens of thousands of dollars on my high to open a daycare. And that got out of hand so quickly, that I had no idea. I went from thinking, okay, well, I need to make some income. So I went to school for early childhood education. So I'll have a daycare in my basement because that made sense at the time. But that wasn't good enough. It just escalated from there. I redid the basement. I, all of a sudden I just became this construction worker that I don't know how. And then it just kept going and going and going until I talk about that high in the book in great detail. So it is really, really hard to have a goal or a vision, dream, whatever it is, and be able to sit back and analyze it on your own, knowing that your brain probably isn't the best brain to be analyzing it. But if you put it in front of certain people in your life, they're not even going to give it a second thought. They're going to say no. Well, simply based on stuff I did before. Fair or not fair? I don't know. So for me, like with The Lunch Ladie and again, I talk about that in the book, that I needed to make sure it wasn't a high. So I started in secret and I would sell little things around my house and saved that money and then bought the little things I needed to start preparing these lunches. And that's again, what I did with Sherlocked Inn. I could have went and rented an entire building and done 15 escape, different escape rooms and all these things. But I went small, and really small, and learned that the vision that I had for that was going to take only two months to get up and running. We're now four months in, opening in a couple of weeks. I didn't account for all my bad days actually having that much of an impact. And I also kept it a secret from the people that would shed doubt. And that's why I was able to get as far as I did with it before I shared with anyone about it. Because I didn't tell anybody that would interfere or stop me from getting it in place until it was already in place. Here's the double edged sword of a mental variation is that in keeping it from them, it could have been insanely dangerous as well?

Christina: [00:48:58] Yeah.

Brienne: [00:49:00] Because nobody that knows me or that could have said step in and went, Whoa, whoa, whoa. This could be a high. Yeah. They didn't know. So that was on me to control my illness, to only share it with the people around me that would cheer me on in a mentally healthy way.

Christina: [00:49:19] So this is a great next adventure. I'm excited.

Brienne: [00:49:23] Yeah. And it's been fun. I met a lot of great people and I am just really excited for all the fun that everyone else is going to get to have. While they play.

Christina: [00:49:33] Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing about our dreams. And like, I think it's important to have that attitude of, I'm going to do this, I'm going to rock it. I really can't control what the world is going to, you know, how they're going to respond. But for me personally, I always skip ahead to the end of my life and go, Am I going to regret not having tried this thing? Is it, is it reasonable? Can I do it, like, is it realistic? And then am I going to regret this if I don't do this, try, if I don't just try like, you know, will that be worse than, I tried and then I maybe it didn't pan out or whatever, but it's itching inside me. I'm itching. I've got to give it a go, you know. Like, so I really commend you because you are putting yourself in a position to be ultra vulnerable and to, to have the added stress. And you can't help it. I know for myself living with anxiety. But boy, the times that I don't, I'm not stressed are the times I'm not busy. But that's not, that's not how I want to live my life. I have dreams and I want to connect with people and I want to do these things and make content, and I, because I choose to do that, I accept that there's this element, these elements of triggers and anxiety, and I take on a lot of risk. You're taking on a lot of risk. You know, I really commend you and I, I'm so inspired by it. Really. So thank you for, thank you for sharing parts about your journey. There's more about it in your book, bipolHER, which I'm going to just be blasting for everybody. I don't know. I don't know if it'll help. I don't know. But you never know. Maybe Oprah will be listening.

Brienne: [00:51:30] Well, if she's not, listen, I'll give her, listen, I'll have my people call her people. Yeah.

Christina: [00:51:37] And I know someone who has, maybe has an in with Steadman, perhaps, in a roundabout way.

Song playing in the background: [00:51:56] (Song - I Don't Want to Say Goodbye To You) It's love. I don't want to say goodbye. Oh, I don't want to say goodbye to you.

Christina: [00:52:09] (Music playing in background) Brienne wanted me to let you know she would love for listeners to reach out to her directly. If you have questions or comments after reading her book or listening to this podcast, you can contact Brienne at bipolHERbook.com. That's how I got in touch with her after I read the book. If you're looking for help with anything related to mental illness in Canada, there are resources right on her website. Thank you so much, Brienne. I'm going to go now and hunt for a spinach casserole recipe online.

Heartbeat Hotline: [00:52:41] Welcome to the Heartbeat Hotline. 1-902-669-4769. I'm the host of A Chat with Heart Podcast Christina Martin and I'm so excited you called. Leave me your question, suggestion for the podcast, or a comment about this episode. Please be aware your message may be used on the podcast and social media. Tell me your name, where you're calling from, and it's also fine if you want to remain anonymous. Thanks for listening. Have a great fucking day.

Christina: [00:53:13] Thanks for listening to A Chat with Heart Podcast, produced and written by me, Christina Martin, and co-produced and engineered by Dale Murray. Check out Dale's website dalemurray.ca. The podcast theme song 'Talk About It' and 'I Don't Want to Say Goodbye to You' were written by me and recorded by Dale Murray. You can find my music on Bandcamp and all the places you stream music. Visit my Patreon page to become a monthly or yearly supporter of this podcast and my music endeavours. If you're new to Patreon its membership platform that helps creators get paid. Sign up at Patreon.com/ChristinaMartin. I would love it if you had time to share, rate, leave a review and subscribe to A Chat with Heart on all the places you listen to podcasts. Wishing you, my little heartbeats,a great day.