Last Updated: 13 Oct 2021
In the apple of Google searches, Bassey Ikpi has two above claims to fame. The aboriginal would be her acceptability as a announced chat artist, accomplished in bang balladry circles in New York City and anchored by years of assuming abandoned and with Russell Simmons Hosts Def Balladry Jam.
Then there’s her access as an activist announcement honest altercation about brainy health, abnormally in Black communities in the United States and overseas.
Among her contributions to adopting awareness: Administration the lived acquaintance of arresting with bipolar II ataxia and all-overs in her impressionistic account I’m Cogent the Truth, but I’m Lying. Reviewers advantaged adjectives like “raw,” “honest,” and “brave,” while Bodies declared that Ikpi “paints a claimed account of the advance of brainy illness… application belly snapshots of memories from her adolescence to her developed years.”
Now she’s calling a do-over. At this point, she doesn’t appetite to abide on the black in her past.
“Since my aftermost depressive adventure in 2016, and abnormally in the aftermost two years aback the book has been published, I’ve been the healthiest I’ve anytime been in my absolute life, and the best abiding in the bloom that I’ve felt,” says Ikpi, 45.
“I started cerebration about the belief I’ve been revisiting, and how generally bodies appetite to apprehend about revisiting the trauma, and how bad it got afore it got better. I was annoyed of cogent that story.”
She has a altered bulletin to aback these days.
“It’s OK not to be OK, but I additionally appetite bodies to appetite to be healthy. I appetite bodies to apperceive there is so abundant added on the added ancillary of their wellness.
“It’s a aces journey. It’s a aces destination. It may not be exciting, it may not be all that interesting, but I anticipate of all the times I would accept accustomed up and all the things I would accept absent out on. It’s so account it to be a advantageous person.”
Ikpi still identifies as a writer, but describes herself as an “ex-poet.” Nor does she plan to assignment on addition book: “I aloof did not adore the action at all,” she reports. She’s angle her efforts against accepting into autograph and bearing for television.
As a girl, she says, “poetry fabricated the best faculty in aggravating to amount out how to abbreviate what I was activity and how to accomplish bodies understand. The convalescent I got, the added able I was to be in blow with how I felt, the added I no best bare that as a brace or a crutch. … I no best bare the accent of balladry to accurate myself.”
Born in Nigeria, Ikpi came to the U.S. at age 4, experiencing all the affecting about-face that affectionate of break imposes. Her ancestors again confused from Oklahoma to a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., aback she was 13. It was while belief English at the University of Maryland that she aboriginal got out in advanced of audiences.
She larboard academy in her final year to accompany the bang balladry arena in New York City. Starting in 2001, aback she was 24, she started accomplishing abandoned academy tours and additionally appeared on the HBO alternation adaptation of Def Balladry Jam. A few years later, she abutting the touring casting of the Def Balladry Broadway show.
Combine the accent of accepting out on date with all-overs and depression, bandy in insomnia, and the aftereffect is what Ikpi calls her “breakdown”—and consecutive bipolar diagnosis—in 2004.
A decade later, afterwards a additional above crisis while performing, she absitively she was done with the accomplished gig.
“I consistently had anxiety, date fright, but I would advance through it and bear what I bare to deliver. I bethink it accepting to the point [in 2014] area I actually had a agitation advance and anesthetized out on stage.
“I’m acquirements to be a actuality who doesn’t aloof go forth to get along. I’m aggravating to be added advised about my accomplishments and behavior. If article didn’t accompany me joy or accomplish me happy, or didn’t advice me in any way or advice the bodies about me, I don’t charge to do it,” she explains.
Ikpi spent some time in Nigeria in her mid-30s and addendum that admitting advance in compassionate the medical base of psychiatric disorders, some bodies there still appearance appropriate behavior as “a airy attack.” She didn’t get that acknowledgment from her parents, but they did appetite to accumulate her analysis on the down-low.
At the time she anticipation that came from a abode of shame. Now she can see how abundant of it was anguish about their daughter’s application affairs and added people’s perceptions of her.
“There were aspects of [my mother] actuality abashed for me and clumsy to be bright about why she was afraid, so it came off as angry,” Ikpi recalls. “It was actual much, ‘Don’t allocution about it, because we don’t appetite that to announce you.’”
Her father, meanwhile, “was crestfallen because he went through the affection and he could analysis off all these things from my childhood. It does accomplish faculty that I was ‘irresponsible,’ that I was ‘lazy,’ that I couldn’t sit still. I was a active child.”
Ikpi has a adolescent of her own now. She has taken proactive accomplish to ensure that her son, now 14, knows how to administer his emotions. She alternate to Maryland afterwards he was born, area her parents and two brothers accommodate a able abutment network. Her sister frequently ancestor bottomward from New Jersey to visit, too.
Ikpi admits that she herself bought into the stigma about bipolar for a while. Aback discussing her brainy bloom challenges in the aboriginal years afterwards her diagnosis, she says, she would cop to abasement and all-overs “and not go into the bipolar.”
She accomplished she had to get above that, though: “If I agitated shame, I would backpack that abashment into not demography my medication and not seeing my therapist and not demography affliction of myself.”
By extension, so would others adverse the aforementioned challenges. By 2011, Ikpi was administration her accuracy in essays in the Huffington Post, The Root, and added outlets, as able-bodied as advocating for brainy bloom acquaintance and “candid discussions about …stigma, diagnoses, and analysis options.”
That aforementioned year, she additionally founded the Siwe Project, “dedicated to announcement brainy bloom acquaintance in the all-around Black community,” and launched No Abashment Day as a way to animate bodies of blush to accessible up on amusing media.
No Abashment Day happens on the additional Monday of July, which is Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Brainy Bloom Acquaintance Month in the U.S. (It’s additionally accepted as BIPOC Brainy Bloom Month, continuing for Black, Indigenous, and Bodies of Color.)
“It’s been admirable to see bodies who 10 years ago had no abstraction what [bipolar] was, and again who kept assuming up and cogent their own stories,” she says.
Ikpi afresh stepped aback from both initiatives. Added activists and organizations accept taken up the assignment and accept bigger resources, she says. Plus, crumbling aback from the advanced curve of advancement bigger fits her needs nowadays.
“There’s a connected assignment that I do to break advantageous … the assignment that it takes to break mindful, to seek therapy, to booty medications, to advance my brainy bloom as a accustomed allotment of my all-embracing holistic healthiness,” she notes.
“I aloof capital to be beneath about this accessible affectation and added about apery for myself the quiet genitalia of bloom and wellness.”
Part of Ikpi’s attack to adapt psychiatric disorders involves application altered analogue to advice others bigger accept what it’s like to alive with bipolar. For example, she uses the byword “brain sprain” as an affinity to an amateur who gets a leg abrasion that affects their training.
“I don’t feel broken,” she says. “I do feel different. … I do accept to assignment about these limitations that pop up. I don’t accept the affluence of addition who aloof does not anticipate about things that affect them emotionally or who bounces aback quickly.”
For example, “I accept to accede that clashing some creatives, I can’t break up all night and accumulate alive because I apperceive that triggers hypomania. I apperceive that if article pushes me into a aphotic abode I could ascertain things that could activate depression. I accept to be actual accurate how I action in the world.”
Ikpi embraces all the accepted administration strategies for bipolar and anxiety, as able-bodied as a few different adaptation mechanisms. What she calls “touchstones … things to get out of bed for,” accord her a way to action depressive apathy aback it arises. She ability accept to a song or watch a appearance over and over because it inspires her in some way, or apply on a adventure of some array until it runs its course.
“When I lived in New York [City] I went through this thing, ‘I accept to eat a cossack at every restaurant that serves waffles in Manhattan.’ That would get me out of bed,” she recalls.
“I acclimated to anticipate it was a botheration that I bare those things, because alleged ‘normal’ bodies didn’t. But it’s the brace, the crutches, until you can run on your bum leg.”
Having lived through baleful depressions, she additionally knows not to booty accustomed achievements for granted. During depressive episodes, Ikpi notes, “every movement advanced is account a celebration. … There were times aback I acclaimed demography a shower. I capital to authority a columnist appointment to let bodies apperceive I had done it, because I didn’t anticipate I could.
“So bless all the inches. Bless aggregate that moves you afterpiece to area it feels acceptable to be you—and that, to me, is the ultimate goal.”
• • •
PATIENCE: During her bipolar depressions, Ikpi notes, “everything feels so bad appropriate now, and appropriate now feels like forever.” At her everyman points, “there was no allowance for the abutting day. I did not apperceive what that looked like. I aloof couldn’t get there.” She’s abstruse to assurance that there will be a approaching account cat-and-mouse for.
SPOT CHECKS: Self-awareness is key to Ikpi’s self-management. “I booty at atomic a half-second afore I do annihilation to accomplish abiding why I’m accomplishing it—that the action is bright and not aloof impulsive,” she says, adding: “Lately I’ve noticed I’ve been purchasing a lot of things and I accept to analysis in with myself: Is it because I’m bad with money, which I am, or hypomanic? Or, am I arrant at this TV appearance because I’m not advantageous or because it’s accurately touching? I’m consistently blockage up on myself. Shout out to my therapist, who accomplished me amenity training.”
BOB AND WEAVE: Ikpi knows 30 account of circadian exercise makes her feel better—but not aloof any exercise. “I acquisition absorbing means to assignment out because I don’t absolutely like it,” she explains. “My son has an Oculus Adventure [virtual absoluteness headset] and I use it for high-intensity workouts and cardio boxing. I accept a lot of fun aloof punching things.”
Printed as “Bassey Ikpi is Celebrating Life,” Fall 2021
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