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Her Media Diary Episode 3: Bassey Ikpi
16 Plays4 years ago
It was a privilege to interview the writer, performer, and advocate Bassey Ikpi for the third episode of #HerMediaDiary podcast. We talk writing, finding yourself and mental health.
Bassey talks about her diagnosis of bipolar and her journey in developing a successful career. This interview was recorded in October 2018, and since then her book ‘I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying’, was published and became a New York Times Bestseller. The book “explores her life--as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist--through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety”.
I hope you enjoy this episode, I found Bassey open, honest and true. Her live journey and strength inspire me. I also share my experience with postnatal depression. Follow Bassey Ikpi on social media @basseyworld
Yemisi
About Bassey Ikpi
Bassey Ikpi embodies the brilliance of multifaceted creative minds. The writer, performer, and advocate is author of the instant New York Times bestselling book, I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying (Harper Perennial 2019). Essence Magazine esteemed this debut collection of essays as “beautiful and compelling,” while Audible defines the writing as both “visceral” and “comforting.” The compilation, which went into a second pressing on the day of its release, has earned the mental health activist stunning reviews from readers and media outlets nationwide.
Whether written or spoken, Bassey is effortlessly clever--an alchemy of intellect, humor, and pathos. Appearing on stages and screens across the world as a public speaker and TV personality, Bassey first gained public acclaim as an internationally recognized poet. In a past life, she was a featured poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and toured with its Tony Award-winning Broadway show. Also an active voice in pop culture commentary and the mental health community, Bassey has been published by The Root, Huffington Post, and Essence, as well as in anthologies including Rookie On Love from acclaimed editor Tavi Gevinson. Bassey has also been commissioned by Nike’s global nonprofit Girls Effect, writing and performing the short film, Invisible Barriers.
As the founder of The Siwe Project, a mental health organization, Bassey also created the global movement #NoShameDay, an initiative that aims to reduce stigma and increase mental health awareness.
Bassey is represented by UTA for film and television
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Transcript
Anxiety and Ambiguity
00:00:00
Speaker
You can't leave me a message saying we need to talk because between when you leave that message and when we actually talk, I've buried your entire family. I've mourned your funeral. I've written your eulogy.
Introduction to Basi Iqbi
00:00:22
Speaker
Just to get us started then, I'm going to ask you to kind of introduce yourself, mention your name and kind of what you do.
00:00:29
Speaker
where you're from and how you got started. Just kind of a word introduction to yourself.
00:00:34
Speaker
Okay, my name is Basi Iqbi. I am a writer, a former poet, author of the forthcoming book, I'm Telling the Truth But I'm Lying. And yeah, I got started fairly young as a spoken word artist.
Early Influences and Inspirations
00:00:54
Speaker
I was with Deaf Poetry Jam for a number of years until that ended. And oh, I'm also a mental health advocate. I have a
00:01:03
Speaker
nonprofit called the Seaway Project, which is targeted towards mental health awareness and raising stigma in the global Black community. Okay, brilliant. So let's go back to kind of the early beginnings, you know. At what point did you start getting into poetry and writing?
00:01:21
Speaker
I'd been writing since I was a child, since I was very young. Most kids would draw and I was never really visual in that way. I was a big reader. And so me reading certain books and certain things and seeing how these writers were able to, or these authors were able to
00:01:40
Speaker
capture so much of what I was experiencing as a Nigerian girl growing up in Oklahoma. And then these stories were about people from some other place and they still connected to me. I really wanted to be able to explain myself in that same way. So I fell into writing. And when I was in university, I would always write poems. I'd written them my entire life, but I never shared them. I never wrote them, read them out loud. I never
00:02:09
Speaker
place them anywhere was just something that I did for myself, but when I was in university I stumbled across an event on campus called Jazz and Poetry at the Pub and I heard some people reading their poetry out loud and the following semester with some encouragement from my friends I was brave enough to get up there and recite some of my work and then just from that point on I
00:02:35
Speaker
I started doing more in the city where my school was, and then I eventually moved to New York, not to do poetry, but just because every writer that I loved, every artist that I loved had spent some time in New York City. So I started toying with Deaf Poetry Jam, and Deaf Poetry Jam was pretty much what started my entire career, because up until that point, it wasn't a career, it was just something that I did for fun. Right, right.
00:03:03
Speaker
So let's go back a few more years.
Transition to the US
00:03:05
Speaker
When did you move? Were you born in Nigeria and then you moved to America? Yeah, I was born in Nigeria before you left. I was born in Nigeria and moved to the US with my mom when I was four and a half. My dad was already here, so I was bred in America.
00:03:27
Speaker
And what kind of authors were you reading at that early time? What kind of authors really kind of connect, did you really connect with at this early stage? There is a woman named L. Maud Montgomery who wrote Anne of Green Gables, which I adored. There was Judy Bloom. There was Beverly Clearly. There was, I loved Langston Hughes' poetry from a very young age. Nikki Giovanni's poetry from a really young age.
00:03:55
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I mean, it's hard to say because I really read everything growing up as I got older, you know, my tastes started to to form and I love reading novels, but
Spoken Word and Language
00:04:08
Speaker
I was also very drawn to nonfiction and personal essays, which is what I do now because I really I just love knowing about people. One of the earliest things that my mother tells me was that as I was learning English in the States, I
00:04:25
Speaker
was very fascinated with language and very curious as to how, especially English, because it was something that I didn't understand, how people made it work. And I kind of fell in love with the way words were created and the way that they sounded coming out of someone's mouth, which is where the spoken word came from, because there's a very distinct way that people speak. And having people convey a wide range of emotions just through
00:04:54
Speaker
just through the way that they speak was something that was very, very, it was kind of amazing to me because I just couldn't figure out how it was done. And once I figured out how it was done and also like just listening to people, I really liked listening to people. It just heavily influenced not only how I spoke, but also how I wrote because the writing that I'm drawn to is the kind of writing that is very fluid, that is
Writing Style and Criticism
00:05:18
Speaker
very natural in tone. I have to say that when I was in Nigeria for the last couple of years,
00:05:24
Speaker
I hated reading the newspaper because it was written in these like completely overblown, pretentious, just extreme language that no, I was like, nobody talks like this. Like why are they writing like that? And that was really discouraging, but just like listening to people, even like listening to the gate man speak was fascinating to me because pigeon to me is such an amazing form of communication. Okay, wow, that's interesting.
00:05:50
Speaker
You talk about forming tastes. So as a writer, as a poet, how did you arrive at, you know, your identity in those spheres? Is this kind of something that comes naturally or is there a process to go through? Is there a point in which you know, okay, this is my style, this is my identity in this area? I think that a little bit of both, it comes, sometimes it comes a little too naturally, I think, because it's not something, like I'll spend
00:06:19
Speaker
days agonizing over something and unable to like focus and I'm like very discouraged. And then let's say I have a project that's due. Well, I actually have a project that's due on Monday and I'm thinking about it so much, but I can't seem to sit down and write. And I get very, it happens literally all the time. I get so frustrated. I can't do it. I can't handle it. And then
00:06:43
Speaker
the day before it's due I'll sit for like two hours and in an hour of that two hours I'll write the entire thing and spend the next hour just editing and putting it together. So I'm thinking about it the entire time and my brain is working but I can't seem to settle or or convince myself that what I'm thinking about is what I should write about. So when I finally do do it it comes out and I think that
00:07:07
Speaker
Because of how much I read when I was a kid, I understand what my personal voice is. I know what I'm drawn to. My writing style is very personal, very accessible. I like to be able to articulate and verbalize
00:07:25
Speaker
what someone who wasn't able to, to write would write if they could. I don't know if that makes sense, but just going back a little bit as I was growing up and I was learning English and I kind of lost, you know, Yawker language, my parents were also learning English. So for a long time I had to, I was their translator.
00:07:44
Speaker
Even when they were speaking English, the white people would pretend they didn't know what they were talking about. So I'd be the one to say, what is she, she's saying this or my dad needs this or they mean that. So my being able to make people understand.
Redefining Success
00:07:58
Speaker
you know, what my parents were saying without making my parents feel as though they were being spoken down to was something that I developed very early and I think that it shows up in the writing because I want people to understand what I'm saying and I don't want them to feel as though I'm talking down to them or feel like I'm talking above them.
00:08:19
Speaker
So I try to meet people where they are as far as language goes and I try to do it as accessibly as I possibly can without losing anything of myself. I'm not sure if that makes sense. Yeah, it's kind of like if literature could be democratic and accessible to everybody, it would be this, right?
00:08:41
Speaker
and particularly when you compare that to what you were saying about the Nigerian press. Exactly. It's elitist. It's supposed to say, okay, well, I want everybody to know that I'm educated, and I want everybody to know that I'm more educated than they are, which is not the purpose of writing. If anything, it's a complete antithesis of what you do to communicate, because you want people to understand you. You want people to, even if they don't understand the situation,
00:09:08
Speaker
my job as a writer is to make them experience the situation through my words. And once you stop doing that, then my thought is, well, what's the point? Yeah. So you start off in this environment where you're in a new country, you're kind of helping your parents access language and vice versa. And you're kind of
00:09:30
Speaker
developing this natural sense of making communication accessible and exploring these new authors. So at what stage did you then start thinking of yourself as a professional, as an actual poet, as opposed to something that you do in your private space?
00:09:46
Speaker
I don't think I think that yet, especially now that I'm not doing poetry. I'm not doing it at all, actually. I haven't really done it in about two or three years, if not more. But I have very high expectations for myself. So when I think of the poets that I admire, when I think of the writers that I admire, I still think that I have work to do.
00:10:08
Speaker
And I'm always in a constant state of, I can do better. And it's not in the sense that I'm beating myself up. I've done well here, but I want to do it like that, like the book that's coming out in 2019.
00:10:24
Speaker
I'm happy with it. And I love what I've written. But then it's a book that came out a few days ago. I was like, Oh my God, that's amazing. Like I need to do that. So I'm always trying to, to see how much better I can get and how much bigger things can get. So I'm never ever just like satisfied. I always think things can be improved. So I mean, it's difficult, especially as a Nigerian too, because you've been told for so long that there are only certain professions that matter. So I've had
00:10:52
Speaker
for the last, I don't know how long, I've been learning to redefine what successful means to me beyond how much money I'm being paid or what the title is or, you know, if I'm Dr. Mrs. Reverend or whatever people say in Nigeria. And so what's important to me is how I grow and what my growth is. I like the way that narrative of kind of
00:11:14
Speaker
owning and making your own value system, your own kind of valuation of what success means to you. I just think that a lot of
00:11:24
Speaker
of us, and I'll just keep saying Nigerians, but I think it's Black people everywhere. We kind of get this idea from others that there's just Black excellence and it only means being a doctor when you're five or graduating university at 12 with seven degrees and all that stuff is so
00:11:45
Speaker
I've seen so many people living lives that they're so unhappy with because they've made these choices based on other people's definitions.
00:11:54
Speaker
I saw that very early, especially because I live with anxiety and, you know, I've had depression. I have to be very, very clear what it means to live by my own standards. Because there's just so much, like even in Nigeria, when I was in Nigeria, so many of my writer friends were brilliant. They have law degrees or engineering degrees, because they have to do that before they could do what they wanted to do. And I was like, imagine what you could have accomplished had you done this from the very beginning. If you didn't have to like,
00:12:22
Speaker
appease your family or try to make way I totally understand it because you want your child to succeed and to be stable financially stable and help the family and all that stuff is completely valid but I don't think it should take over your own personal journey because so many people are living these very very tragically unhappy lives because they're doing it for somebody else and I was fortunate enough to have a father who when I was about
00:12:51
Speaker
And I know I want to say like 11 or 12 years old. Um, he noticed that I was kind of like a people pleaser, like people wanted to hear. I wanted to be a lawyer. So I'd say, I'd be a lawyer. Other person wants to hear me and say, I'll be a doctor. Okay. I'll be a doctor. And he like sat me down one day and he was like, listen.
00:13:09
Speaker
But one day, this is my dad, the way he talks, he's like, one day I'm going to die. So if you think you're doing something to please me and I die, and you still have to do it, will you still be happy with it? And I was like, no. So I think he wasn't expecting me to take it so literally, because I went completely out of the realm of what it is they were expecting. But I heard that. I was like, listen, I got to be happy.
00:13:38
Speaker
How old were you then when you had this conversation? I want to say I was about 11 or 12 years old. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite a kind of shocking conversation to have at that age.
Mental Health Journey
00:13:52
Speaker
And you brought up your anxiety and your depression and you were diagnosed at some point with bipolar. When did that all kind of
00:14:01
Speaker
happened, your diagnosis with bipolar, did it make things easier to kind of have a diagnosis? Just tell me that journey of coming from this process of having anxiety and depression to a final diagnosis that you had with bipolar. I can trace back the anxiety and depression to when I was about 11 years old. I was very, I would take like world news very personally, like I'd just be
00:14:28
Speaker
depressed and sad and crying because there was a famine in Ethiopia or a plane crashed in Scotland or you know there was a coup I remember when I was younger in Nigeria and my dad was like on the phone talking to an uncle and he was like so many people died and you know they were killed in bloodshed and it just like I would absorb it the anxiety would show up because I was like okay what did I do did I did I mess up somehow and the world just went into chaos
00:14:58
Speaker
Or, you know, how can I help? You know, what can I do? What am I not doing enough of? Just things that most people would be like, oh, that's terrible and feel sad and then just go back about their business would just like live inside of me. I had like sleep problems in very early. I like, my brain was always running. I was always thinking about something. It's actually why I read so much because I wasn't sleeping. I would just stay up all night reading.
00:15:24
Speaker
people would praise me for how much I read and not even notice that I wasn't sleeping. It was impossible for somebody to read that many books a week and sleep. But they were more impressed with the books that I read and not asking the questions behind it. So I like to ask the questions behind, which is where the writing comes in, like what happens, what's on the other side of this thing that you see or you present. So that was really early. As I grew older, I kind of learned
00:15:53
Speaker
that my moods fluctuated. So when I was feeling sad or down, I would just get really quiet. And then when I felt like my energy come back, then I'd go and I'd do all the things that I needed to do, get all the work done. I would read my textbooks from beginning to end, just knowing that one day I'm going to wake up completely
00:16:17
Speaker
just in despair. I didn't have the word depression there, but just completely heavy and unable to concentrate, but at least I had the prior information that I could pull out. So nobody even really noticed then because I was still getting good grades. I was still writing the papers, but
00:16:34
Speaker
Um, it wasn't until my grades started to drop that people were like, what is happening? And that happened my senior year of high school. I was like, if I graduate from high school, I have no idea what I'm going to do for my entire life. You just went to school the next year school, the next year school.
00:16:51
Speaker
And if it was just go to university because it's school, that had been fine. But it's go to university so you can plan your life. But I got it all together. I graduated. I went to university. I had a very serious depressive episode while in university. I got a 0.0 my first semester because I just did not go to class. I was in my dorm room crying for most of it. And during the break, I
00:17:19
Speaker
took the break, came back, got better grades, but then was just, I just wasn't feeling right. Long story short, it's part of the reason why I left school and went to New York because when I was in New York to visit, I felt happy and I felt like, I felt this way that I'd never felt before, which is like, I can do something. Like I can be somebody and I don't have to wait for all these things to happen first. I like being here. It feels good in a way that I haven't felt in
00:17:47
Speaker
in quite a long time and I stayed and did all the stuff that I did. I was fortunate enough to be successful. But when I started touring on Deaf Poetry Jam, I realized that the system that I built for myself, which is when I'm feeling low, I'll just hide until I feel better, then I'll run and I'll do everything that I needed to do.
00:18:08
Speaker
to catch up. I didn't have that because I was on a schedule. I had to be backstage at seven to start my makeup. I had to be on stage at eight to do the show until 10 o'clock. I had rehearsal. I had this. I couldn't, I couldn't function. So I ended up like not sleeping. Like I'd be awake for
00:18:28
Speaker
days on end and if I slept it was B for maybe like 20-30 minutes and you know your body just can't handle that. I wasn't eating I was just completely wasting away and I had a breakdown backstage in my dressing room when we were in Chicago for a tour stop and didn't go on that day and they sent me home
00:18:50
Speaker
And I went to go see different doctors and one finally diagnosed me with bipolar two disorder. And to answer your original question, it was helpful because I was like, oh my God. Like when I read the symptoms, I was like, this thing, this is everything that I've been feeling for as long as I can remember. I'm not lazy. I'm not just, you know, irresponsible. I'm not useless, you know, nitrains.
00:19:14
Speaker
Like there's something that's medically wrong with me. And it felt great, but you don't want to hear that you have a mental illness. Like that's not what you want. But I was open to it and I was like, all right, great. So give me the medication. I'll take it for six months. I'll be cured and I'll go about my business. And when I found out that there was no cure, that it was just a constant process, that was very difficult for me.
00:19:40
Speaker
How old were you at the point where you were diagnosed? I was 27. 27, wow. Okay. I was 27 and 27 is actually the age that a lot of people with whatever symptoms they have become, I don't want to say full blown, but like they, they, they, they surface in a, in a huge way. I don't know why that is. If you know about like entertainment, they call it the 27 club where I think it was, it's Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix. They all died at 27 of.
00:20:11
Speaker
overdose or substance abuse or suicide. And a lot of it is because they're self-medicating. I know Amy for certain was diagnosed with bipolar and was self-medicating with alcohol and pills. And it's just what happens. You know you're not feeling a certain way. And if you're already in this kind of lifestyle that says, here, just take this, you're prone to do it because it makes you feel better. But then it makes you feel bad to take even more to feel better again. And then it's just disastrous.
00:20:39
Speaker
So from that point where you were then diagnosed, how did you process it for yourself to make it work for yourself?
Mental Health Advocacy
00:20:46
Speaker
Because you've got a couple of books on making friends with giants and your latest book as well. Come back next year. I'm telling the truth, but I'm lying. So which deal with mental illness. So how have you used your diagnosis to kind of work for you? If that's the right question.
00:21:06
Speaker
No, it is. Actually though, making friends with giants is what I'm telling the truth, but I'm lying, became. Or no, the other way, vice versa. I was writing making friends with giants, but it didn't feel authentic. Even the title felt like I was trying to teach people something or trying to say, oh, I'm doing so well now, here's how I did it. And that's just not the reality.
00:21:30
Speaker
I wanted to tell the actual story. I wanted people to experience this from the inside out so that, you know, if you look at someone, because people judge a lot. And if you look at somebody who's just like, has this awful attitude or just seems very irresponsible or just unlikable, I want to tell the story of why that person possibly could be that way. And I want people to read the book and feel what that is, just so they get a
00:22:00
Speaker
very clear understanding because it's different than when a doctor tells you or if you read some clinical symptoms or if you read statistics, that still puts you away from it. That creates a distance that makes it seem like this person is just so far away and I don't understand it. Like I want to pull people closer. So I'm telling the truth, but I'm lying is the more authentic
00:22:24
Speaker
version of that. Making friends with giants, I'll probably write in three or four years when I feel like I've told the story properly and I'm able to say I've been doing well for X amount of years and this is how I did it. But I'm sorry, I think I forgot your question. How you made your diagnosis work for you? Oh, it just gave me a very clear understanding of who I was. One of the things that was very important to me was
00:22:52
Speaker
to understand the reason behind my behavior without making excuses. So ultimately, I am very, very aware of my behavior. My doctors like to say that I'm sometimes too self-aware, but if I feel that I'm reacting or responding to something in a way that doesn't feel appropriate, I'll take a step back. I'll leave the situation. I don't kind of just jump into it.
00:23:20
Speaker
It helps me speak to other people. I'm hypersensitive to that experience. So even when I'm on Twitter and I see somebody like they're tweeting a certain way, I'll usually like DM them and I was like, here's my phone number. Just call me.
00:23:35
Speaker
And they'll call me and we'll talk. And I'm like, yeah, there's something going on. And it's showing up in the way that you write. It's showing up in the way that you speak. It's showing up. So I put myself out there in that way just because I think it's important for people to feel as though they're not alone. That's what the CA project is. To understand that it may feel very isolating, but it's not. Other people have gone through this. This is the experience. This is how you can get past it.
00:24:02
Speaker
It's going to be constant work. Even to this day, I have to be very, very careful. I have friends that I can call and say, Hey, I'm feeling this way about this situation. And they'll say, yeah, you know what? If that happened to me, I feel the same way. And I'm like, all right, cool. We're fine. Or they'll say, you know, I think that you may be overthinking this and, you know, pull it back. So I'm, I'm always self monitoring in that way. It's helped me because it's made me a more.
00:24:27
Speaker
I've always been an empathetic person from when I was a kid, when I was telling you, just taking things very hard, but it's made me even more empathetic towards other people and other experiences. It helps me write better because I'm able to feel things much more deeply, and in that sense, able to recreate them through words so other people can now experience them. It makes me...
00:24:53
Speaker
I'd like to think it makes me a better friend because I'm so overly conscious. I mean, I can be terrible too. I'm not 100%, but I'm able to catch myself, apologize, and then do better moving forward. I like the fact that there's a couple of things I've noticed based on what you've been saying that authenticity and accessibility are very important to you. You know, this idea of being authentic and being real.
00:25:19
Speaker
And that shows also in which you say you interact with these friends on social media, for example, where you're saying, hey, call me. And then that sense of self-awareness as well. I have a friend who's a journalist who suffers from bipolar. And it's always very kind of, for me, I find it challenging in terms of how do I communicate with her when I can see that perhaps she's taking things
00:25:47
Speaker
She says, I don't know what the right word is. Is it an episode or what what's the right word? I don't know. But so how do you as the person suffering from bipolar get to that level of self-awareness? How do you do it? Because I'm pretty sure somebody like her would love to, you know, and think about, OK, how can I be more self-aware about and kind of recognize the triggers and things?
00:26:11
Speaker
Or is that something that most people suffering bipolar have anyway? Well, here's the thing. Um, I am very careful about the language that I use. Like I don't say that I'm suffering from, um, I'm, I live with, um, I have bipolar disorder. I have.
00:26:28
Speaker
You know anxiety i have depression i live with these things they're constant part of how i see the world but they're not my world it's not my world so there's a constant state of mindfulness and mindfulness just means being very aware i know what my triggers are i'm discover i can discover new triggers but for the most part
00:26:50
Speaker
I know that when I'm feeling very, very anxious, I have to put my phone on do not disturb, because even the beep or the buzz will make me jump. And I'll think all these other things. I have friends who know you can't, you can't leave me a message saying we need to talk. Because between when you leave that message,
00:27:08
Speaker
And when we actually talk, I've buried your entire family. I've mourned your funeral. I've written your eulogy. It's all been so, I have to be very clear, tell me what it is we need to talk about. There are people who are
00:27:26
Speaker
I don't like to say, people like this thing now where they say, oh, this person is toxic or that person's toxic. And I don't believe that people are toxic. I think there are toxic situations, situations that are unhealthy. And I try my best to avoid those situations. If somebody is constantly lying to me and making me feel like I can't trust myself, that person has to go. And nine times out of 10, I have to, I have very close friends. I'm completely,
00:27:55
Speaker
fortunate to have the circle of friends that I have because they will say, listen, I know you feel this way about this thing or this person, but this is what I'm seeing from the outside. And a lot of us will say, okay, well, I don't trust you. You just don't want me to be happy. You don't, whatever, whatever. That's where the inclination is. But I know because of where I've been that I have to listen. Even if I don't agree.
00:28:21
Speaker
I have to pay attention and I have to keep them aware of where I am in certain situations. Because if I shut them out, they know that something else has taken over. They know that I'm falling into something else.
00:28:35
Speaker
And I have friends who are just present who will call and say, Hey, what's going on? Or they'll notice like, um, the way, the same way I noticed somebody else. If they see me online at three o'clock in the morning and know that I haven't slept, they will call and say, go to sleep or put your phone down, or I'm coming by tomorrow.
00:28:55
Speaker
to look at you to see if you're okay. I have friends who do that. But, and because I have friends that do that, I have to be more careful about the way I deal with things. There are certain things that are out of my control and I appreciate that, but I don't want to worry my friends. So what I've learned is that I have to find a baseline for myself. And the baseline for me is to stay alive. And staying alive means that
00:29:22
Speaker
I have to do whatever it takes to get there. If I have to increase my therapist appointments from once a week to three times a week, then I have to do that. If it means upping my medication from 100 milligrams to 400, which a couple of years ago I was on 400 because I just needed all the help I could get.
00:29:40
Speaker
to get to the point where I could think straight, where I could make rational decisions, where I could process my world in a much clearer way. And now I'm going to my therapist twice a month. I've gone from 400 milligrams to 150. I see that process and I'm like, you know what? You're doing well. If you compare this to where you were before, you're doing well. Stay here.
00:30:03
Speaker
stay well. And so now I know I'm at the point now, am I big age, that if I start to slip, I'm like, okay, immediately call this person, make that appointment, do this, do that, because I need to get back to well.
00:30:19
Speaker
I don't ever want to fall below again because that's not where I want to be. And it takes a lot of work. It takes a certain amount of, like, if I can just get out of the bed, somebody will meet me at the door and they'll help me take the next
Day-to-Day Success and Mental Health
00:30:35
Speaker
step. But it's my responsibility to get out of that bed. I just have to, even if I don't want to. And just little steps like that, day by day by day, they have to be, again, when I was talking about,
00:30:47
Speaker
redefining what success means. Some days, success means I stood up for my bed and went and lay down on the couch. So it's all about challenging your concept of what success means in order to convince your body and your brain that you're worth surviving and you're worth fighting for and then doing what it takes to do that. I don't know if that answered your question, but there we are. Yeah, it was more than answered my question. Thank you. I was going to ask you next about the
The Seaway Project
00:31:17
Speaker
And this is the SEWAY project. Yeah. And so it particularly focuses on the African community or the Black community. And would you say that's because of your experience of being bipolar while it's been Black or while it's been African? Yeah. One of the things that I noticed is that people just don't talk about it. And it'd be fine because I don't think there's certain people that their jobs
00:31:41
Speaker
It'd be difficult for them to work or their families aren't supported so they they can't talk about it But I wanted to provide a space with no shame day especially where people can just talk to strangers and be anonymous and have that conversation and get it out because I Real I noticed that
00:32:01
Speaker
people weren't talking about it. And because they weren't talking about it, they also weren't getting help. It'd be one thing for them not to talk about it, but like secretly went to see their doctor and secretly took their medication, but they weren't doing that. So because I'm in a position, I don't have a boss really, you know, um, I can't be fired. I can't be demoted. Um, my, my, my family is very supportive. Even if they don't fully understand they, they support me.
00:32:27
Speaker
I'm able to vocalize and I'm able to tell the story and I'm able to be out there and help people understand that this thing doesn't look like anything. You know what I mean? Like in Nigeria, people can point to the madman, you know, on the street and be like, oh yeah, that person has something or, you know, in Nigeria, that person has a spiritual demon or whatever, but
00:32:49
Speaker
And I was very clear because I do like interviews in Nigeria and I, you know, I like clothes, I like shoes, you know, I like to look pretty. And I'd sit there and they're like, oh, but you don't look it. And I was like, that's the point. I don't, the difference between me and the man who's begging at the gate is that people give me an opportunity to express this. Because if I looked like that, you wouldn't be speaking to me. So I'm speaking for him. I'm speaking for
00:33:17
Speaker
People who don't have family support. I'm not out there because I have a family who didn't throw me out. I have a family who didn't throw me away. I have friends who didn't run away from me. They understood that this is a medical problem. And if I had malaria or if I broke my leg, they wouldn't abandon me. So to abandon somebody for a medical condition is
00:33:40
Speaker
you know, Nigerians are very religious, it's a sin. You're a sinning by throwing somebody with an illness away. So the Seaway Project is to give people an opportunity to learn about these different illnesses from people who have them and tie that into the people in their lives so they understand them a little bit better. It's for people who have these neurodivergent disorders to
00:34:03
Speaker
to tell their own stories and feel heard and feel connected to other people. So they say, okay, well, I feel this way and I'm reading about this person halfway across the world who has the exact same thing. I'm not alone. And that sometimes is more important than anything else because you can sit there and convince yourself, you're the only person in the world who's feeling this or going through this or has that. And that's one of the things that I experienced because I Googled
00:34:28
Speaker
As soon as I left the doctor, I Googled. And I was like, okay, I don't see anybody, especially not a black person who has this. I saw a list of famous white people, but I didn't see any black ones. And it's because we don't talk about it. I remember when I had my first child and I was having postnatal depression. Obviously I didn't know I was having postnatal depression. But then kind of my mom pointed out to me like, look, you've not eaten for how many days now? You're breastfeeding.
00:34:56
Speaker
engaged, you know, and then there's something going on. And I thought, okay, is that what postnatal depression is? And I remember mentioning it to a friend of mine. And the response was, well, that's white people's problems, but you know, we don't have depression. And that was kind of how it was dismissed. And I didn't spend the next few months dealing with it silently because, well, black people don't have that problem. You know, but in the end,
00:35:25
Speaker
in the end, it was kind of my faith that helped me because I just kind of every morning, I would wake up back then every morning with dread in my heart, like dreading that this is the day that my baby was going to die or something terrible is going to happen every single morning. And until one day I said to myself, look, actually, look, why Christian? You know, and today just wake up and say to yourself, today's a good day. So I said, saying to myself, I believe today's a good day.
00:35:53
Speaker
And gradually the anxiety wasn't gone, but it was making it easier to deal with. And then after a few weeks, I said to myself, it is already good. Today's already a good day. And it was just through that kind of talking to myself in that way that I managed to get through it. At that period, it still came back at around seven months later when my baby was seven months. And I find that's quite common for it to come back at that point if it's not dealt with earlier on.
00:36:23
Speaker
So at that point then I then felt like I can't do this. I have to go see a doctor. You know, so that was when I did go and see a doctor. They did some kind of tests that then showed the level I was at. And then they said, yes, you do have postnatal depression. And then it just through the process, you know, I had to go see the midwife and it just turned out that what was going on was because my delivery became an emergency. I had to have a C-section. And then I was just kept dealing with this. What if, what if, what if this had happened? What if that happened?
00:36:54
Speaker
So those what ifs was what was causing me that sense of dread and anxiety. And it's just, at that moment when I finally got to realize that, okay, that was what it is, that I could talk about it with the midwife and say, okay, this is what was bothering me. And I said, oh, well, no, that couldn't have happened in that way because of XYZ. And just that simple explanation lifted so much off my shoulders.
00:37:19
Speaker
But it was just that process to deal with it silently because people around me were saying, well, that's white people's problem. You know, that was, that was the challenge. I'm having to keep quiet for so long. Yeah.
00:37:31
Speaker
I totally understand the benefits of your project and what you're trying to do with it. I'm sorry you went through that, but I'm also very glad that you were able to get help. I'm not a religious person, but I do have faith and belief in
00:37:54
Speaker
Whereas I don't think that just faith alone will cure or, you know, but that it's enough to get you out the door and enough to say, you know what, like you were saying, I'm going to have a good day. And that goes a long way, you know, to at least getting you to the point where, you know, you can go further. And what I don't understand about how Black people are in denial is that the God I know,
00:38:19
Speaker
doesn't want me to suffer. I don't know where you are from. Yours wants you to suffer and I guess, but mine doesn't want me to. So if I feel as though I'm suffering, something is wrong and I need to figure out what that suffering, where that's coming from. So, um,
Creative Journey and Book Release
00:38:37
Speaker
To finish yourself, it would be interesting to, so you've taken your mental health advocacy and your love for writing for your poetry and you've written this book, I'm telling the truth, but I'm lying, right? Which is out next year. How through that process of kind of converting all that into a book, like writing, how did you picture the publisher? That whole process of becoming a published writer. Well, I've been,
00:39:01
Speaker
essentially trying to write this book for like a decade, over a decade, but I don't think I was ready for it. Like I said before, I was trying to write this self-help, this is how you get over, this is how you win a tight book, and it just wasn't accurate, it wasn't authentic. Even the book that we sold
00:39:19
Speaker
my agent sold to the publisher isn't the book I ended up writing but thank god I have an editor who is very supportive who was reading stuff that I was sending her and she was like this is great but it's not there's something there I was like I know there's something missing right and I could not figure out what it was and what it was was that I
00:39:39
Speaker
As much as it wasn't poetry, I was neglecting the poetic voice. I was trying to write like a Nigerian journalist, I guess, like I was just trying to write words with absolutely nothing behind them. And that's just not authentic to me in any regard, like even my
00:39:55
Speaker
emails have at least a measure of something behind them. So once I gave myself freedom, well, my editor gave me the freedom, she's like, write it any way you want. Like if you want to write it in second person, do that. If you want to write it in third, do that. If you want to write it, you know, from the perspective of a chair, do that.
00:40:17
Speaker
And once I was given that freedom, like all the stuff came out the way, all the things that I, because as much as I'm open and as much as I've been forthright, I've also been very protective of myself. So I've been very selective about what it is that I share to the general public. And I was writing it.
00:40:37
Speaker
like a mental health advocate and not like a person who has lived through these things. So once I started writing it as a person who has lived through these things and a person who was living with these things, it changed everything. One of the things I'm really proud of is that
00:40:54
Speaker
I was able to tell the stories, because it's a collection of essays, it's not one memoir, but I was able to tell the stories the way that they present themselves, because for instance, there's an element of disassociation that comes, and again, that's your body protecting yourself, saying this is too much, so we need to help you forget it.
00:41:14
Speaker
we're going to pretend this part didn't happen because it's too painful. So what I did is like, okay, there's a thing that happened and I know it happened, but I can barely remember it. So what I did was I told it as though I was telling somebody else about it. And so it was like, remember that time this happened and you remember this. And once I was doing that, I started remembering, I started
00:41:36
Speaker
piecing together the memory and I understood oh my god that's why I don't like this thing because that thing happened but I kept it as though I was reminding myself reminding myself of a thing like telling somebody a story of something they can't remember once I was able to tell it in that way there's one that I told that I wrote in second person because I felt like a different person it was happening to
00:41:59
Speaker
It didn't feel like me. So I was like, I know it happened. I remember it, but it feels like an entirely different human. So I told it as though it was an entirely different human. And stuff like that, just being able to be opened up creatively. Because when you're writing nonfiction, people give you a very narrow way of the way of how you could write it. So being able to open myself up to it as a creative person definitely changed the way that the book appeared and the way the book was written. So the process of it was just
00:42:28
Speaker
doing it. I'm not a person who can sit like wake up in the morning, you know, get coffee or tea and sit at the desk and then write for eight hours and then go about like I can't do that. I write at different times. Some days I'll write an entire, you know, 200, you know, not 200, like 2000 words. And then the next day I'll write like 12.
00:42:48
Speaker
So I just had to kind of just give myself permission to do that. And then I realized that some stories only needed to be a paragraph long. They didn't need to be five, six pages. The paragraph was enough. I hope that it'll be a way for people who've never experienced it to really understand
00:43:08
Speaker
how frantic mania can be, how agonizing anxiety can be, how slow and numbing depression can be. I just really hope that it conveys things in a way that makes people feel as opposed to just understand.
00:43:31
Speaker
Brilliant. So when is it going to be released and when is it going to be published and out for sale and where can people get a copy? It is available for pre-order now on Amazon and everywhere where books are sold. It will be released on August 6th, three days after my birthday.
00:43:50
Speaker
in 2019, yes. And I don't know when it'll be available in the UK, but I think they're going to start selling it or start shopping it to publishers in the UK in about two, three months, because in the UK we'll have its own. I think anybody can get it for like Kindle or I think, I don't know, anywhere, but like the physical
00:44:13
Speaker
copy of the book. I don't know when that'll be available in stores in the UK, but in the U.S., it'll be out August 6th. If anybody wants to get in touch with you to say thank you for doing this interview or ask you any questions, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? The best way is through my social media. I'm at Basi World, B-A-S-S-E-Y World, on everything Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
00:44:38
Speaker
Um, and then you can make an email me at bossy. We'll say bossy world at gmail.com. I have a website, bossy.com. So there's all kinds of ways for people to contact me. Okay. Brilliant. Thank you so much for doing this interview. It's been really great. Connect.