Rock Steady – Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life


By Ellen Forney (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-101-7

Ellen Forney was born in 1968 and has dealt with Bipolar Disorder for most of her adult life (even though she only got her official diagnosis in 1998).

At college she majored in Psychology and she now works as an illustrator, teacher and educator, but is best known as a (mostly autobiographical) cartoonist responsible for the strip ‘I Was Seven in ’75’ and anthologies Monkey Food, I Love Led Zeppelin and Lust.

In 2012 she published cartoon memoir Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me, relating her historical and ongoing experiences living with Bipolar Disorder. It’s an amazing piece of work and one I must get around to reviewing soon.

Don’t wait for me though, get your own copy and start reading…

Today though, we’re looking at a superbly uplifting follow-up from Forney. Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life is a graphic manual and almanac for living on an even keel from someone who has clearly experienced the best and worst the condition can offer.

Divided into logically-ordered chapters and subdivided into easily-absorbed learning moments and teaching points the book offers astoundingly down-to-earth, practical coping tools and hard-earned advice and is prefaced with a most engaging Introduction providing history and context for what follows.

The sharing session begins with Chapter 1: Basics; Wide-ranging but Totally Doable, Whats & Whys, all split into soundly-sensible swiftly-disseminated routines for staying well-fed and exercised, fully rested and on top of medication. That may sound rather superfluous to some, but let’s face it nobody likes taking drugs unless they’re expensive and recreational…

There’s also advice on developing routines, seeing doctors and maintaining support networks.

Winningly visualised and formulated, the tips and hints are expanded in Chapter 2: Therapy; Navigating your Many Options, 3: Coping Tools; Strategies & Techniques for Steadying your Mind & Body and 4: Insomnia; Going to Bed, Getting to Sleep & Sleeping All Night.

As a private aside here, I must say that I’ve only ever known well two people with BP (as far as I know) so the efficacy of much that’s here falls in the range of “bowing to experience”, whereas the section dealing with sleep disorders and getting enough rest is something I have first-hand experience of. There’s stuff here I fully intend to try myself at my earliest convenience…

Moving on to Chapter 5: Dealing with Meds; At Home, While Traveling, & Side Effects, there’s plenty of useful stuff here and in the next chapter Chapter 6: The Danger Zone; Identifying your Warning Signs & How to Deal with Them – especially if you have someone in your life coping with depression or anxiety disorders.

Wrapping up on a high note (gosh, that looks in poor taste when read back!) Chapters 7 & 8 take us on to an uplifting and hopeful conclusion with : You Have Company; Finding Like-Minded People; Getting Beyond Stigma, & Knowing for sure that you’re not alone and :You Rock; It’s a lot of stuff but you got this! Which stress the benefits of sharing thoughts and feelings and keeping those close to you in the loop…

The information included is delivered in a bright, breezy but never trivialising manner and Forney’s cartooning is warm, clear and deliciously accessible. It’s also fabulously funny – a remarkable achievement in itself considering the subject matter…

What shines through most brilliantly however is the artist’s deep desire to share and help fellow sufferers and those all who live with and around them.

Cartoons have long been one of humanity’s most powerful and enduring teaching tools. This superb tome is another magnificent example of how and why.
Rock Steady – Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life © 2018 Ellen Forney. This edition © 2018 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All rights reserved.