What Does Peace Look Like? Reflections on Bipolar Depression and Grief

What Does Peace Look Like?
Reflections on Bipolar Depression and Grief

When I’m depressed, most people don’t notice.
I still work. I still show up. I’ve presented choreography on stage, supported my therapy clients, attended meetings. But beneath the surface, it’s fog. Thick and impenetrable. A barrier between me and the rest of the world. The people closest to me can sometimes tell—through my withdrawal, my silences, my absence in spaces I once filled.

Grief fuels my depression.
After my father died suddenly, it came like a tidal wave.
When my mother was diagnosed with two aggressive forms of cancer, it thickened into dread.
When the love of my life was deported from the United States, it hollowed out my future.
In winter. After a severe anxiety attack. When I feel truly alone.
It comes in waves.
It lasts for days, weeks, even months.
It takes me to the darkest corners of my psyche.

“What does peace look like?
An empty house,
sunlight and dust?
All alone,
without even my dog,
who will I find there?                                                                                                                           She’s gone,
she’s gone,
she’s gone, gone.”

These days, I’m flying home to an empty house filled with spirit and echoing history. My mother is gone. I won’t see her there again. Still, I go.

I go to be quiet.
To drink coffee.
To dance in the morning fog, cold sand beneath my feet.
To let the sea hold what I cannot.
To listen for her in the stillness.
To find myself.

“The sea, the sea, the sea, the sea—
swallow me,
swallow me,
swallow me,
swallow me.”

I know now that I live with bipolar disorder. I didn’t always have language for it. And I certainly didn’t want it. But I’ve come to feel gratitude for the shape it gives my life. It has carved out a vast well of empathy I can draw upon. It grounds me in the truth that I’m here to feel—fully, messily, beautifully.

“Will I find myself?
Is she in there somewhere—
blood pumping from my heart
only to flow back?”

Depression has taught me how to sit with pain, how to survive inside of it, and how to honor its passage. The work I do—creative, therapeutic, emotional—is not separate from my diagnosis. It’s deeply informed by it. And in the aftermath of loss, I surround myself with love. I practice gratitude every day—for the small things that make life worth living and the big things that bring joy and peace.

As a dear friend once said:
“It’s a club I didn’t want membership to, but wouldn’t trade for anything.”

I’ll end with this:
Peace isn’t a fixed state.
It’s a flicker, a fog, a quiet presence in the aftermath.
Sometimes, it’s letting the sea carry what’s too heavy.
Sometimes, it’s continuing to show up with a cracked-open heart.