In the Red Dress

In the Red Dress: Addictions, Relationships, and Spirituality in my Bipolar World is the author's story of her hectic and unstable personal life living with untreated bipolar disease and how spirituality helped her conquer addictions and mend relationships. Addictions abound and relationships suffer when friends and family with multiple mental health disorders get together. The negative and positive consequences of their outrageous behaviors are described in seventy poems and multiple life experience narratives in this memoir highlighting the interactions among characters with untreated mental health issues. Joy and grief resonate in the narratives and in the serious and playful poetry. Hypomania and depression, friends and enemies at the same time, compete for the author's thoughts, actions, and ultimately the behaviors which led to addiction, abortion, adultery, avarice, anger, angst, ambition, and attitude. Survival and stability came with prayer and worship as the author experienced the power of spirituality in healing. Now, with eyes open and battle wounds healing, normalcy prevails, and character rebuilds.