I arrived in Toronto on June 23, 2026, with a sinus infection after a 25-day road trip to get here. I have learned to be comfortable with discomfort and uncertainty, with constant pivoting, most of my life, but more acutely so in the last three years. Three years ago this month, my diagnosis of 27 years was called into question. It seemed a couple medical professionals were not convinced I had Bipolar Disorder. This was disorienting news. A few friends reflexively thought this was good news, but I didn’t. Although Bipolar Disorder is not my entire identity it had become a significant part of my personal narrative. Although having Bipolar Disorder is not desirable, I don’t believe it is categorically good or bad. It was something I had come to accept about myself and felt a calling to help others-so finding out that I might not actually have it was disorienting to my sense of self and purpose.
I have worked through the last three years to consider an alternative narrative of my medical history and diagnosis and had a psychiatrist in 2024, in her opinion, confirm I was misdiagnosed. (That’s the flaw in mental health treatment, diagnoses are just opinions without a lot of empirical evidence to support any mental health diagnosis. Most diagnoses are based on a checklist of symptoms experienced over a two-week period. I have become comfortable with not knowing and uncertainty. I don’t know whether I have a medical diagnosis or just experienced symptoms. Yet, in a humorous twist, I am now dating a man who is vexed a bit by the uncertainty of my life as I explore the option of living in Toronto temporarily and long term. I don’t have enough information to answer his reasonable questions. My plans are evolving in real time as serendipity leads the way in my life. I can empathize with how he is feeling, and yet I am unable to really offer answers that may ease his discomfort.
I came across the following poignant quote of Emery Hall’s this morning:
It spoke to me in a way that is a soul’s recognition. Being present is the only way through the valley of uncertainty. As you let go, maybe readily and begrudgingly of your past that no longer serves you and await the arrival of future that fully aligns with you, you are in a valley where days, weeks, maybe months will go by without any clear answers. You are in a period of transition and transitions take time. The average butterfly spends two months in metamorphosis before emerging wet-winged and then will only live two to four weeks. So, it shouldn’t surprise us of the possibility that we spend more time in transition, metamorphosis, then in the actualized version of ourselves.
Yet as those days turn to weeks, and then into months, the way through is to be a collector of singular moments of gratitude. To be in the present moment observing a rising sun, a butterfly landing on a bush, or the contrast of songs made by the wind when rustling through a palm tree or an oak tree. Enjoy the slow bloom of getting to know someone without mapping out a future that should be uncertain this early on anyway. Uncertainty can teach you to show up fully now and detach from the outcome of the near and distant future. Enjoy the bloom, its delicate scent, its bright hued petals, the deep green of the stem and leaves. Inhale it as if this moment is an entirety.