Our New Book
Loving Someone with a Serious Mental Illness
Loving Someone with a Serious Mental Illness
Like many families, we have been dealing with serious mental illness (“SMI”). In our case, my wife Katherine has bipolar disorder. We have been living through the challenges and, since her recovery in 2018, the possibilities of her mental illness for well over a twenty years. Through this journey, we have learned some personal lessons about what works and doesn’t work when adjusting to SMI as a family. Katherine and I have shared a lot of our story in talks and videos, and now we’re sharing our insights together in our new book entitled “Loving Someone with a Serious Mental Illness: Caring for Your Loved One and Yourself on the Journey to Mental Health Recovery”. We wrote this book to inform and empower other caregivers and loved ones who can benefit from our lessons learned.
We also wrote this book because we have some regrets. We regret that we didn’t know more about mental illness before it entered our relationship. We regret that we allowed mental illness, its stigma and stereotypes, to define us and our relationship. We regret that we isolated from each other instead of working together sooner. We regret that we struggled for so long when we didn’t need to, if we had just known more. We hope to spare you some of the same uncertainties that prevented us from reaching recovery sooner.
Our book includes the essentials and the big picture. It shares strategies that will get your journey to recovery started, keep you on your path, and make you better and stronger to navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead. It is evidenced-based and grounded in our hard-learned lived experience. There are many ways caregivers can benefit from the perspectives of someone living with SMI like my spouse and other caregivers. In all of her work, Katherine has always remembered the critical importance of caregivers and worked to empower them. She’s one of the very few public voices to do so.
For us, the goal for our readers is recovery. Recovery is to live a full and meaningful life with SMI — good relationships, work, and happiness. Every chapter in the book is about recovery in some form, ultimately to help readers see and seek the recovery they deserve. We also share a lot of guidance for caregivers, because to be the best caregiver and support your loved one you have to take care of yourself. Caregivers and loved ones need to reach recovery together, and the mental health of both matters.
We hope you’ll join us on this journey as we share more of our story to help others just like you. Like our family, your family can reach recovery.
- Izzy
To celebrate our new book, Katherine and I will offer a free webinar to all those who preorder it by Sunday, February 2, 2025. All you have to do is email the receipt for your preorder by that date to: hello@katherineponte.com.
We’ll schedule a time for the webinar to discuss the most popular topics in the book and answer questions.