Positive Feedback

A woman I know from Em's school dropped me an email today. She's a mental-health professional, working with a mental health clinic part time. When she'd heard I'd written a book, she'd gone out of her way to buy it and, apparently, read it. That's why she was writing, to let me know how much she'd enjoyed the book, and how much she'd learned from it, despite having worked with many bipolar patients over the years.

She then went on to say that she'd been assessing the case of a woman who'd been working with the clinic for over a year on her major depressive disorder, and the woman I know had suddenly realized that this woman had several of the more subtle symptoms of mania and/or hypomania. And that, with any luck, this woman is now about to embark on a new treatment plan--a hopefully more successful treatment plan--because the woman I know had been put on the alert by reading my book.

OK. I can die happy now. Which is not to say that there aren't things that could make me die happier--like having the book actually sell a reasonable number of copies--but still. Making a difference. It's been my idealistic goal for the book since I first started thinking about taking it on. And now it's making some difference, no matter how small. And I think that that's pretty cool.