Bipolar State of Being listed as one of Healthline's Best Bipolar Blogs for the second year!

Exciting news everyone…it has just been brought to my attention that I’ve made Healthline’s list for the Best Bipolar Disorder Blogs of 2015!!! This is the second year I’ve been recognized by Healthline and well, I’m really happy about that. It’s nice to know that the work you’ve done is appreciated and ultimately helpful to others.

Here’s the review they gave my blog (which actually hasn’t changed since last year but since I never mentioned it, here it is!):

Each blogger brings a unique perspective to living with bipolar disorder. For Nicole, author of Bipolar State of Being, it’s surviving and thriving as a mom. Her insights into having this disorder and borderline personality disorder are pure inspiration. The blog should be required reading for all mothers battling mental illness.

Nicole posts a mixture of personal essays, poetry, and links to informative and useful sites. The posts are clearly a positive outlet for her, but they also provide hope and a sense of support and community for her readers.

You know, when I first started this blog, I didn’t think anyone would read it. I never intended to do it long term, but it spawned so much with just that quick decision to begin sharing with the online world. From my blogging beginning with Bipolar State of Being, I branched out and started video blogging on YouTube. I actually never intended to do that at all! I simply made a couple of intro videos for this blog, so that readers could see who I was. But my channel took off, and much like my experience with blogging, I decided to keep at it.

It’s now been 5 years and I do not regret this path at all…in fact, I would say going public has probably been one of the best decisions I ever made. I’ve come to feel comfortable in my skin and accept who I am, and that is worth more to me than anything. It’s been a long journey but completely worthwhile.

I have had so many amazing experiences and met so many wonderful people through this all, and that never would have happened had I stayed silent. It’s given me so much more insight, so much more perspective not only on what I live but the lives of everyone who is affected by bipolar or any mental health issue. I realized what a passion I have for this field, and have made it my career goal to enter graduate school so I can pursue mental health research, because it means so much to me. The experience of blogging/vlogging has been really, really great, and I thank everyone who has read, commented, emailed, shared their stories with me…everyone who has inspired me, thanked me, encouraged me…you all mean so so much to me! You truly do!!!

(And if you want to check out the list of Best Bipolar Blogs from Healthline for 2015…here it is!)

- Healthline Best Bipolar Blogs of 2015 -

It's time for a change: Bipolar State of Being is now Lit

Hey guys, so I've been needing to change the title of this blog for a couple of months but waffled on what to change it to. I knew I didn't want it solely devoted to bipolar anymore. I used to use it mainly in a journal type fashion, documenting my life and the day to day happenings, moods, what not. I realized that I had so much more to say, and have moved in a direction away from that type of blogging. Now I'm focusing more on well thought out essays rather than quick updates and snippits. I guess you could say, I'm getting SERIOUS about it now! :)

I'm now going to be focusing a lot more on the psychological, sociological, spiritual and societal aspects in life. I plan to spend a lot of time discussing mental health issues, God, my personal experiences and the way all of this stuff collides together. I think so often we get caught up in one aspect of life to the exclusion of everything else. In reality, we aren't compartmentalized like that. It's not like I have all these "slices" that correspond to Nicole:Mom, Nicole:Bipolar, Nicole:Borderline, Nicole:Christian, Nicole:Writer, etc. Those are all parts of me, but I am a whole person, and so is everyone out there reading this blog. I think in order to truly understand ourselves we have to see ourselves in a WHOLE sense...not just pieces here and there. Everything is related to everything else, and it's really interesting for me to explore it all. In fact, if you've noticed I am blogging much more now because that is just how my mind works. It is always going, even when I'm not "having an episode". In fact I am in a completely neutral mood state now. I just always have a lot going on in my mind. I figured I might as well share my insight with others rather than let it ruminate around in my head where it does no good (except to me, hehehe.)

So that's the direction I'm going. I spend so much time journaling, researching, reading and having interesting dialogues with people about these "big" things that I think it's worthwhile to share.

And as for the name change, I simply reverted back to the blog title I originally chose when I signed up with blogger back in 2010. I had chosen Lit, as in, lit up; a fire (that refers mainly to my mental state of course, and not lit, as in literature, although I guess that could be an interesting play on words since this is a blog. Ha.)

I know it's kind of a flip from what my previous followers are used to so I hope you'll all stick around to hear more than just my sad complaints :)

AND!!! Since I changed formats, I can now get comments! (I never could in my old format because some kind of error was going on.) So yeah, comment away if you feel so inclined.