In 2013, I was attending a conference by the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance in Miami to receive their Life Unlimited Award for my work in mental health as an advocate and author. I had been in the advocacy world for about six years, and the book I’d co-written with my mother about my struggle with bipolar and her struggle to help me had been out for a year at that point. In other words, I was feeling pretty confident in my abilities as an advocate at that point, but of course, I knew I still had much to learn. But after years of speaking, I was struggling to find female advocates that were my age and on the circuit in the same way I was. Though I was constantly speaking to large audiences, a part of me felt alone in my advocacy. And then I met Melody Moezzi.

Melody Moezzi was born in Chicago but considers herself equally Iranian as American. Her parents emigrated to the United States after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And while Moezzi was raised here and has made a life here, earning a law degree and building a career as an author and social commentator, her heart and thoughts are never far from Persia. This is evident when you read her beautiful memoir Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life. What makes her book so original and valuable is how she examines cultural thinking about mental illness in both parts of the world. As she writes about her Iranian heritage, “My people don’t do psychotherapy. It just isn’t our style.” But it’s her style now. The story of how she got there is remarkable. We spoke with Moezzi recently about her book, her life now, and how the past keeps revisiting us, in big ways and small, whether we want it to or not.

Melody Moezzi is a 34 year old Iranian-American lawyer, writer, and human rights advocate in Raleigh, NC. She lives with bipolar disorder and attempted suicide when she was 25. She maintains a weekly blog for Bipolar Magazine and has written for the New York Times and CNN, among others. Her memoir, Haldol and Hyacinths, was published in August. It’s an amazing story of bipolarity in culture and mind. Melody was one of the first people to believe in Live Through This and agreed to share her story back when I had nothing but an idea. She ended up being the 50th person I interviewed.

Human rights activist, attorney, writer, Iranian American, and Muslim American feminist: Melody Moezzi is all of these. She is the award-winning author of War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims and published her memoir Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life last September. She also blogs for the Huffington Post, Ms., and BP Magazine and has provided commentary for CNN, NPR, and BBC, among others. Her memoir is a frank account of her journey with bipolar disorder, her times in and out of mental health care facilities, as well as her life as an Iranian-American woman in Middle America and the South. Written with grace and often hilarious, Moezzi’s book fills a gap in mental illness memoirs, in that is told from her perspective as a Muslim American feminist activist and attorney.

The Dairy Queen in Canada, just over the border from Glacier National Park in Montana, has special significance for Melody Moezzi 06L/06MPH. She visited there several times a week while working at the park during summer break from college in 1999. Each time, she ordered a large chocolate M&M Blizzard but ate just a few bites.

As a psychology major who knows how serious mental illness can be, I never thought stories about bipolar disorder would make me laugh. While bipolar disorder itself isn’t actually funny at all, in Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life, Melody Moezzi brings humor to even the harshest realities of her disorder.

Why did you write Haldol and Hyacinths?

Shocked to find there wasn’t another Iranian-American Muslim bipolar feminist memoir on the market, I just had to fill the void in the literature. Seriously though, I’m a human rights activist. I’ve fought for the rights of Iranians, Muslims, women, the LGBT community and other marginalized groups for years. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I suddenly became part of this new wildly persecuted and painfully silent minority, and for the first time in my life, I was ashamed of a piece of my identity. I was brought up to be proud of who I am and never hide my background, no matter how unpopular it might make me. But now everyone was telling me to be quiet, and while I may have been ashamed and afraid at the time, I’ve never been the quiet type—particularly where injustice is concerned. Soon enough, the activist in me came out, and I spoke up. After writing commentaries for NPR, CNN and other media outlets about my mental illness, I received hundreds of messages of support encouraging me to continue writing and speaking about the issue. I promised my readers and myself that I would, and Haldol and Hyacinths is my fulfillment of that promise. I pray this book will help chip away at the shame, fear and stigma that so many people living with mental illness face on a daily basis.