At 43, Cathy Germain, an Angevin author, chose to transform her fight against bipolarity into an awareness-raising mission. Diagnosed only three years ago after a medical wandering of more than a decade, she published “The little girl with the frozen smile”. A poignant testimony where she shares her experience, her trials, and her victories in the face of this often misunderstood psychological disorder.
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Cathy Germain didn't always know she was bipolar. For more than ten years, she suffered from recurring depressive episodes, attributed to simple depression. It was only in 2021, after an initial manic phase, that the diagnosis was made. “The psychiatrist told me: you are not depressed, you are bipolar. At that moment everything changed.”
The diagnosis process for bipolarity remains long and fraught with pitfalls. Cathy recalls that patients often spend around ten years before receiving a precise diagnosis. It all started for her during her second pregnancy. “I had a big depression, a burnout.”
Normally, it's a nice event to have a child, I held on, but that's when I had the first symptoms.
Bipolarity means navigating between two poles: euphoric “up” phases where thoughts flow, projects accumulate, and “down” phases where the slightest gesture becomes insurmountable. “My children didn't understand why their mother, who was physically capable, remained lying down. It wasn't a lack of motivation, but a crushing mental weight“, confie Cathy.
Bipolarity means navigating between dark phases and euphoric phases
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© image d’illustration : canva/atlasstudio
These dark times led her to suicidal thoughts, with one attempt she describes as a “call for help, I wanted to stop making my loved ones suffer“. Since then, she has learned to live with this disorder, in particular thanks to a stabilizing treatment based on lithium and rigorous psychiatric monitoring.
The 43-year-old Angevine found her therapy in writing. “The little girl with the frozen smile” is more than a book: it is a cry from the heart and a glimmer of hope for others. “It's not the words we remember, it's the words that came from the bottom of the hole.”
Far from being limited to his personal story, the work aims to break the taboo surrounding mental health.
I don't want my children to experience the same silence as I did in the face of my father's illness.
Cathy grew up with a father who was manic-depressive, an old term for bipolarity. At a very young age, she was confronted with the realities of mental illness. “I shared his daily life in the psychiatric wards, helped him with his treatment, but I always said to myself: It's not my dad, it's the illness.“The manifestations of his father's bipolar disorder were mainly marked by intense manic episodes.”Delusional thoughts, desires to spend excessively, logorrhea where words flow endlessly… “, she remembers.
“The little girl with the frozen smile” – Librinova
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© Librinova
Drawing on her experience, Cathy wants to extend her message. She would like to organize conferences to raise awareness of bipolar disorder and mental health. “For a long time, I couldn't predict anything. Canceling an outing, an appointment, or even a vacation because I didn't know if I could leave the house the next day“, explains Cathy.
Today, she describes a transformed daily life: “Now I can make short, medium and even long term projects.”
More info: “The little girl with the frozen smile” – Librinova
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