Private Screening Portal

'I Am Dust' began when I was 18 years old, standing on the front porch and helping the police carry my mother out of our home and off to the hospital. She’d locked herself in her room and could be heard chanting while banging her head against the wall.

I’d been exiled from the house the day before for watching Law and Order—something she’d become morally opposed to that night. My mother, Kelly, had bipolar, yet even though the diagnosis was clear, there was absolutely no clarity on what actions should be taken.

Doctors, police, friends, and family—nobody knew how to manage the situation. Unless she was a threat to herself or others, the authorities were determined to not get involved. She could walk into a travel agency and buy a one-way ticket to the Middle East, the travel agent knowing full well that she was manic and not in a good place to travel alone (because I was sitting next to my mother pleading that they not sell her that ticket), yet nobody could or would do anything.

That was my experience growing up with a mother who had bipolar. There would be many good years between every cycle of up and down, but when those highs and lows came, nobody knew what to do or what to say.

'I Am Dust' is an intimate look at the bipolar experience through Kelly’s eyes. It’s pieced together through the journals that were left behind after she died from the depressive side of bipolar.

She’d always wanted to tell her story as a way of helping others navigate the impossible, but unfortunately, she wasn’t able to find the strength in time. The last time I saw her, we discussed making this film and even had plans to start. Then she called back and said she wasn’t up to it.

While this film is incredibly personal and important to me, it’s also about so much more than my mother. This film is intended to create awareness of the bipolar experience, to increase empathy for those struggling with the same or similar afflictions, and to spark conversations that can hopefully make navigating the bipolar experience far less solitary.