Three springs ago, I lost the better part of my mind.

I remember it starting with my feet.

I woke up one February morning and my feet were so swollen, I could barely fit them

into my roomiest sneakers.

You're listening to Code Switch.

I'm BA Parker and that voice you're hearing belongs to Naomi Jackson.

So I'm Naomi and I'm a writer born and raised in Brooklyn.

A few years ago, she wrote an essay for Harper's Magazine titled Her Kind on Losing and Finding

My Mind.

She wrote it as a way to come to terms with her mental illness.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2018 and it really upended my life.

I wasn't sure what it meant for me.

I didn't know if I would be writing anymore.

I lost my job.

Just a lot of the things that I had assumed about myself and the way that I was moving through

the world really were transformed by that moment.

Bipolar disorder is a lifelong condition.

It causes intense shifts in mood from periods of mania to episodes of depression and it often

runs in families, which was true for Naomi.

Naomi is mental health awareness month.

So for this episode, we asked her to come in and read from her essay.

Just a heads up, her essay contains some intense experiences with mental health and it does

...