Parent's Eyes: An Interview With Author Madeline Sharples and Her Powerful Memoir About Her Son's Bipolar Disorder

For today’s Parents’ Eyes interview, we are pleased to have author Madeline Sharples join us to talk about her new memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. She joined me over at my other blog ‘White Elephants’ on Tuesday as one of her first stops on her Book Blog Tour through WOW-womenonwriting. Today, we get to know this amazing woman a little better.

Madeline’s powerful book delves into what it’s really like to live with, care for and care about someone who has bipolar disorder. Her story will enlighten you, inspire you and break your heart all at once. But it’s an important story to share because there is so much misunderstanding and stigma surrounding mental illness. Be sure to read to the end of the interview to find out how to win a ebook version of Leaving the Hall Light On.

Let’s get right to our chat.

CHYNNA: Madeline, welcome to ‘The Gift’ blog. Thanks for making a stop here on your Blog Tour. let’s start with you sharing a little bit about your background with us.

MADELINE: I grew up in the mid west – in Chicago and a north suburb of Chicago. I am the second of three children. I had a brother three years older who died three years ago, and I have a sister nine years younger. My father insisted we all study music, so I learned to play the piano. I wasn’t into sports as a girl though I played a lot of tennis later on. Even today, I am a workout junky.

I started college at the University of Wisconsin, studying journalism. I finished at UCLA with a degree in English after my parents moved to California. I’ve lived in California almost all the time since.

My husband I have been married for 41 years. He is an engineering manager. I worked most of my life since college as a technical writer/editor, programmer, real estate salesperson, and fundraiser. Now I have the best job ever – working as a full-time writer.

We had two sons – the older was Paul. Our surviving son Ben lives nearby with his wife Marissa. He is an actor and a tennis pro.

CHYNNA: You mentioned taking journalism and working various positions in the writing field. That’s fantastic! When did you know writing was your ‘thing’.

MADELINE: I always loved to write – even in grade school. I studied journalism in high school and wrote feeature articles for my high school newspaper. I also studied journalism in college. I worked most of my professional life as a technical writer/editor, and I managed proposals to get U.S. government contracts in the aerospace industry. However, I always longed to be a creative writer. I started taking writing classes in the mid 1990s to prepare to fulfill my dream.

CHYNNA: Fantastic! Writing classes are a great way to fine tune your craft and help you figure out your personal niche. Great idea! You recently published, and are here to chat with us today about, a very powerful book called, “Leaving the Hall Light On”. Let’s start with how this book came about and your reasons for choosing now to tell the story

MADELINE: Even before my son Paul died, I started writing about him and his bipolar disorder. I kept a journal to get out the frustrations of dealing with his episodes and hospitalizations and erratic behavior, and I took several classes and workshops at the University of California at Los Angeles Extension writing program, Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA, and at a private class in Los Angeles. Thankfully, all my classmates were willing to hear me read my dark, raw pieces about my grief for years.

At first I thought I would write a memoir about Paul’s illness and how he recovered from it, not as it turned out--how I’ve worked to survive after his death by suicide as a result of his illness.

After many years of writing just to ease my pain and record my memories about my son, I felt I had enough journal entries, pieces from my writing classes and workshops and poetry to form a memoir about my experience of my son’s illness and how my family and I survived his suicide. I felt if my memoir inspires just one family in the same situation to survive, it would be a success.

CHYNNA: I’m sure it will, Madeline. I admire your determination and preparation in telling your story the best way possible. Your book discusses dealing with your son’s condition in his later years up to his death. You seemed to have a difficult time getting the diagnosis you needed to effectively treat him. Can you talk about this and what roadblocks you endured?

MADELINE: Actually once we got him hospitalized – just a week or two after his first manic episode he was diagnosed rather quickly. My husband and I thought he was on drugs and so did he because he didn’t understand what was happening to him. But right away the doctors suspected something else and immediately asked about mental illness in our families. With that tie established they tested him for a brain imbalance and quickly disagnosed him as bipolar.

A diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder came later – after he finally admitted to his doctors about the voices in his head and his hallucinations. However, once we had the diagnosis keeping him treated was a whole other issue. He didn’t like the treatment – a regular regime of medications and hospitalizations – and he didn’t want to follow it.

CHYNNA: That must have been so difficult for you as a mother. It’s one thing to get a diagnosis and know how to treat the condition but an entirely different thing in assuring the person follows the treatment. Were there earlier signs that your son struggled with bipolar? If so, can you share these with us?

MADELINE: Not really. He was a typical teenager with a great talent and interest in music and computers. However, since I learned later that mental illness can be triggered by stressors in our lives I asked myself: could some of the events of his early life been warning signals about how he would turn out? They were:

· an eight-hour surgery and four-hour recovery period at age two to separate his webbed third and ring fingers on both hands,
· his grandfather’s death at age three,
· his brother’s spinal meningitis,
· his social difficulty in school until he went to a private high school where he blossomed as a jazz musician and composer,
· an affair with a thirty-two year old woman when he was seventeen,
· attending college and living in New York City, and. most of all.
· a history of depression and manic depression in my family. Of course it is commonly thought that a great artistic talent could have a connection to becoming bipolar as well.

CHYNNA: What was it like for your family moving with your son along his ups and downs? How did you cope?

MADELINE: It was extremely difficult – especially when he was living at home with us. It was very frustrating because we had no control. He was an adult and he refused to give us legal control. I could only care for him if he let me. I cuddled him and rubbed his back, but I couldn’t spoon-feed him like a child anymore. As much as we tried to get him to take his medications – putting them out for him in daily doses or sprinkling them on ice cream to make them more palatable, he took them sporadically and later not at all. Even his girlfriend’s threat to leave him if he stopped taking his medications didn’t convince him to stay on them. He was an adult, and he controlled the outcome. He controlled his destiny.

Luckily our younger son Ben was away at school most of this time, but it was very difficult dealing with his brother – especially during his manic episodes when they were home together because Ben really didn’t understand that Paul’s behavior was a symptom of his illness. My husband and I – though our thoughts about his care were sometimes quite different – agreed that he was our son, our assignment, and no matter what, we would never turn him out.

CHYNNA: I can’t even imagine how difficult all of that must have been for you, your husband and, especially, for Ben. The chapter on the suicide was gut-wrenching. How did you get through this? Were there any hints that this was going to happen? Are there things caregivers should watch for in terms of behavior, etc.?

MADELINE: It’s a long list: friends and family, getting back on my exercise program, pampering myself, writing in my journal and taking writing workshops, attending the Survivors After Suicide meetings at the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services organization, finding a job outside my home, and being respectful of each other as a family. We stuck together as a family, we moved through our grief in our own way and in our own time, and we came out the other side as a family closer than ever before.

I was worried about Paul because I knew he was depressed. However he was working full-time and kept himself looking well-kempt, so I really didn’t think he was suicidal. I also thought he was too selfish to ever do it. He had a great ego and he loved his things. My husband expected another manic episode which usually followed Paul’s depressions. What we didn’t know was that his girlfriend had broken up with him for another man. In the past he was always able to get her back. This time the breakup was final, and I believe that was the trigger.

I suggest caregivers monitor depression – that is the killer. Learn what depression looks like and try to get help for your depressed loved one fast.

CHYNNA: Fantastic advice. We can deal with adversity best when we understand what we’re facing. Thanks for sharing that. The last half or so of your book is explaining how you and your family went on without Paul. You had me in tears many times. I loved the emphasis you had on strengthening yourselves mentally and spiritually. Can you go into detail a little bit about this important chapter for us?

MADELINE: What keeps me in balance and helps me feel better and experience joy is my spiritual regime of writing – especially writing poetry; working out – I workout everyday or I don’t feel right; going to Esalen at Big Sur for workshops and healing, meditating to relieve my stress; and experiencing some far-out cathartic work like visiting a sweat lodge and getting a tattoo.

CHYNNA: I love that you have strengthened all parts of yourself—physical, mental, emotional and spiritual—in order to heal. I hope any of our readers going through tough times learn from this. I also love how you have turned to creative forms of distraction (writing) to cope. How are things for everyone today? How have you used these experiences to move you forward instead of falling back?

MADELINE: We are a closer-knit family than ever before. And now we have a new member of the family – our son Ben’s new wife. She is loving and understanding and one of my biggest fans. We also enjoy being with our great nieces and nephew. We spoil them as if they are our grandchildren.

Of course we still have tears. Of course we still miss Paul. And of course we still feel our grief and guilt. But we live a very full life. My husband still consults, I write, we still attend all our plays and opera and go on trips, and Ben and Marissa are our greatest joy.

CHYNNA: That’s wonderful to hear. And I think it’s good to still have tears and miss Paul. It means he’ll still be with you no matter what the circumstances were before he left you. Your families unity is inspirational. What are the top things that you want outsiders to know about loving/caring about/caring for a person living with bipolar?

MADELINE: First find out as much about bipolar as you can – the best doctors, hospitals, medications available and how to get to them. Also know about suicide prevention. What I didn’t know when our son was diagnosed is that bipolar is a killer disease – especially in young men. And try to give your loved one with the disease the facts. That way he/she will feel less stigmatized and will be more likely to accept help.

CHYNNA: Excellent advice, Madeline; especially what you said about suicide prevention and educating the sufferer. Thank you. What top things do you want caregivers to understand?

MADELINE: Bipolar disorder is a disease of the brain just like asthma is a disease of the lungs. It can be treated. A person with bipolar is not violent, is not a sociopath, is not weak, is not stupid. A person with bipolar is like everyone else except with a treatable chemical imbalance in the brain.

CHYNNA: Thank you. Please share what main message you want readers to carry with them when they finish reading your book.

MADELINE: That it is possible to survive and be productive after the death of a child. Also it is important for both parents and the patient to know the facts about bipolar – that it is a potentially deadly illness, but it can be lived with if treated properly.

CHYNNA: Madeline, I’ve so appreciated you joining us here today to share your story. Before I let you go, there’s one question I ask all of my guests: Do you have any pearls of wisdom to share?

MADELINE:

· Take your time – don’t let anyone tell you that the time for grief should be over
· Pamper yourself – stay in shape physically, get massages and facials, eat healthy, meditate, be open to new friends and new things to take your mind off of it
· Playact – Pretend you’re feeling better by putting on a smiley face and pretty soon you will feel better.

CHYNNA: We’d like to thank Madeline for joining us here along her Book Blog Tour. We wish her success and hope that through her book, others who care about someone living with mental health issues will find comfort in knowing there are others out there who understand what you are going through.

Madeline has generously offered a chance for 'The Gift' followers to win an ebook version of 'Leaving the Hall Light On'. For your chance to win a copy of this powerful memoir, all you have to do is leave a comment, ask a question or share your own insight into this subject. Be sure to either Follow us through Google or leave an email address where we can find you if you win. And, as always, if you help spread the word through your media connections, it'll be another entry for you. We'll draw a winner next Thursday, June 16th. Good luck!
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BIO: Although Madeline Sharples fell in love with poetry and creative writing in grade school and studied journalism in college, her professional life focused on technical writing. It was not until later in life that she finally pursued her dream of being a professional writer.

Madeline co-authored Blue-Collar Women: Trailblazing Women Take on Men-Only Jobs (New Horizon Press, 1994) and co-edited The Great American Poetry Show, Volumes 1 (Muse Media, 2004) and 2 (August 2010). Her poems have been published in two photography books The Emerging Goddess, and Intimacy (Paul Blieden, photographer), and a number of magazines. Visit her at http://www.madelinesharples.com/.