DEV Community: Julie Gale

"I Didn't Want Them to Think I Was Getting Sick Again." The Cost of Hiding a Diagnosis

Julie Gale — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:09:26 +0000

For years, Julie Gale went to work, made small talk with coworkers, and said nothing about the illness she was quietly managing every single day.

Not because she was ashamed of who she was. Because she was terrified of how people would treat her once they knew.

"I didn't want them to worry about me," she says. "I didn't want them to think I was getting sick again."

The Weight of Being "The First"

Julie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her thirties, in the aftermath of her divorce. She was also the first person in her family to receive that diagnosis, which meant there was no roadmap, no relative who'd been through it first, no one to say here's what helped me.

"It shocked them," she recalls. "They didn't know what to do with that."

So Julie did what a lot of people do when a diagnosis lands somewhere unfamiliar: she carried it alone. She showed up to work steady and capable, because she believed that's what "normal" looked like, and she needed people to see her as normal.

For a long time, it worked. It also cost her something she wouldn't fully recognize until years later.

What Silence Actually Does

Bipolar disorder already asks a lot of a person. The vigilance of managing sleep, stress, and routine with almost military precision, the constant, quiet awareness of one's own mood as a kind of early warning system. Hiding a diagnosis on top of that adds a second, invisible job: managing how you appear.

Julie eventually understood something that reshaped how she thought about her illness entirely.

"I think secrecy only deepened the loneliness," she says.
It wasn't a dramatic realization. It came slowly, the way most real change does, through small moments of choosing to tell one more person, and then another.

The Turn She Didn't Expect

When Julie finally began opening up (first to a few close friends, eventually to more) she braced for judgment.

What she got instead was recognition.

"You wouldn't believe how many people say, 'Oh, I have an aunt who has that,'" she says. Nearly everyone she told had some version of the same story: a relative, a friend, someone close to them who'd lived with a mental illness too, often just as quietly.

"Sharing helps," she says simply. "That's why I'm doing this book."

That shift, from hiding to speaking plainly, didn't just change how others saw her. It changed how she saw herself. Her illness stopped being something she needed to manage in secret and started being something she'd survived, out loud.

"I had to believe it wasn't permanent," she says of the belief that carried her through the hardest years. "That this was just a period of my life when the illness had taken control."

Why She's Still Talking About It

Today, Julie is candid about her diagnosis in a way her younger self couldn't have imagined — in online support groups, in conversations with friends, and now, in a full memoir carrying her name.

She doesn't tell her story because the stigma is gone. She tells it because she remembers exactly what it felt like when it wasn't, and she knows how many people are still living inside that silence right now.

"People look at me differently now," she says. "They see a survivor. And if sharing my story helps even one person, then it's all been worth it."

If You've Ever Hidden Something to Seem "Fine"

This part of Julie's story isn't only about bipolar disorder. It's about the particular exhaustion of managing an illness and managing everyone else's perception of it, something anyone living with an invisible condition will recognize immediately.

Living With Bipolar: My Journey to Balance is Julie Gale's full account of that journey: from hiding her diagnosis out of fear, to a life where she can finally talk about it, in her words, without flinching.

"One Day I Thought Everything Was Fine. The Next, It Was Gone."

Julie Gale — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:07:41 +0000

Julie Gale wasn't looking for a turning point.

She was thirty-four, a few days removed from her brother's thirtieth birthday party in a house full of laughter and family. That was when her husband of twelve years sat her down and told her he wanted a divorce.

He'd fallen in love with someone else. Someone thirteen years younger. It was already decided. He was already leaving.

"It happened so fast," Julie says now. "One day, I thought everything was fine. The next, it was gone."

The Life That Came Before

For twelve years, Julie had built her identity around that marriage. She and her husband had moved six times across Alberta as his banking career required it — Calgary to Edmonton, then Peace River, Innisfail, Brooks, Lethbridge. Each time, Julie packed up a household, left behind jobs and friendships, and started over somewhere new. She raised their two children through all of it.

"We made friends all over Alberta," she used to say, and she meant it with real gratitude.

What she didn't know was that the constant upheaval, the distance from her own family, and her husband's quiet restlessness were creating a fracture no one could see from the outside. By the time he asked for a divorce, the marriage had already been unraveling for a while. Julie simply hadn't been let in on it.

The Double Loss No One Talks About

The betrayal was one blow. What came next was another, harder to name.
Julie's twelve-year-old son chose to live with his father. She never fully learned why. Her nine-year-old daughter stayed with her, and together the two of them tried to build something steady out of what was left.

It's in the months that followed; underwater, as she describes it, functioning but grief-heavy, that Julie first encountered something she had no name for yet: soaring energy that gave way, without warning, to exhaustion, agitation, confusion.

It would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. At the time, she just knew the world had tilted in a way she couldn't control.

Rebuilding With No Safety Net

Julie had been a stay-at-home mother for years. She had no recent work experience, a nine-year-old depending on her, and a mental health diagnosis she was only beginning to understand.

She applied for a job anyway, at an organization that helped people with mental illness find work. In the interview, she made a choice that would shape the rest of her life: she told the truth about her diagnosis.

"You're hired," the interviewer told her. "Who better to help others than someone who understands?"

That job became more than income. It became proof that her diagnosis didn't have to be something she hid to be employable, trusted, or valued.

What Julie Wants People to Understand

Divorce doesn't cause bipolar disorder. But for Julie, it was the moment the illness first made itself known, during one of the most destabilizing periods a person can go through. That timing matters, because it's a pattern many people living with bipolar disorder recognize: the first episode arriving not out of nowhere, but during a period of real, ordinary human devastation.

Her Catholic faith made the divorce even harder to reconcile at first. It was a support group at her church that helped her stop carrying it as shame.

"We became very close," she says of raising her daughter through those years. "She saw me struggle, but she also saw me fight through it."

This Is Where Her Story Begins — Not Where It Ends

The breakdown of Julie's marriage and the diagnosis that followed could easily have been the whole story. Instead, it was chapter one of a much longer one — including a frightening episode in Mexico, a breakthrough treatment after decades of searching, devastating family losses, and a courageous restart at 71.

Living With Bipolar: My Journey to Balance is Julie Gale's account of everything that came after that ordinary evening in Calgary — told with unflinching honesty, for anyone who has ever had their life tilt in a direction they never chose.

She Went for an Afternoon Walk in Mexico. Hours Later, She Didn't Know Where She Was.

Julie Gale — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:03:37 +0000

The trip was supposed to be simple.

Julie Gale had recently gone through a divorce. A few women from her local support group invited her along to Mexico — sun, friendship, a break from the grief she'd been carrying. She almost said no. She said yes anyway.

For the first few days, it was everything she needed.

Then the heat started doing something to her mind that no one on that trip understood yet.

When "Off" Becomes an Emergency

One afternoon, while her friends rested, Julie went out for a walk.
She didn't come back.

Her mood had been quietly climbing for days, the kind of shift she'd later learn to recognize as the early edge of a manic episode, but at the time had no name for. The heat, the unfamiliar streets, the disruption to her routine: all of it collided at once.

"In a blink, several hours had passed," she recalls. The streets disoriented her until she found herself seeking refuge in a nearby church. A priest noticed her distress. With help from the church staff, they reached the one number that mattered: her father's.

He and a coworker got on a plane from Calgary that same day.
"You're okay now, sweetheart," he told her when they found her. "We've got you."

The Guilt That Wasn't Hers to Carry

When Julie returned home, her friends were shaken, flooded with guilt, unsure what they could have done differently.

Julie's response is one of the most quietly powerful lines in her story:
"It wasn't your fault. It was my illness."

That single sentence carries the weight of everything bipolar disorder had taught her by that point: that an episode isn't a failure of willpower, in herself or in the people around her. It's a medical reality, and it can escalate faster than anyone, including the person living it, can see coming.

What Mexico Actually Changed

The trip could have become a source of shame. Instead, it became a turning point.

"It was no longer possible to deny the impact and reality of her bipolar disorder," Julie reflects. For years, she'd tried to manage her illness quietly, hoping routine and willpower alone would hold it together. Mexico made clear that healing would require both medical care and self-compassion, not one or the other.

It also revealed something else: how deeply she was loved. Her father hadn't hesitated. He'd simply gotten on a plane.

That kind of unconditional response, such as showing up without question or judgment, became a thread running through the rest of Julie's story. Years later, it was her brother who drove her to ECT sessions at 7:15 every morning. Her daughter who furnished an entire new home before Julie arrived at 71. Family, again and again, showing up exactly when it mattered most.

Why This Story Still Matters

Bipolar disorder doesn't always look like what people expect. It doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it looks like a woman on vacation with friends, going for an ordinary afternoon walk.

Julie shares this chapter of her life not for sympathy, but because she knows how many people, and how many families, have lived through some version of this same fear and confusion, without language for what was happening or where to turn next.

"When everything fell apart," she says, "I had no choice but to rebuild. Somehow, that's where I found my real strength."

Read the Full Story

The Mexico episode is just one chapter in Julie Gale's memoir, a story that also includes a difficult diagnosis, a breakthrough treatment after decades of searching, devastating losses, and a courageous move across provinces at 71.

Living With Bipolar: My Journey to Balance is written for anyone who has ever felt like their mind was a place they couldn't fully trust — and for the families learning, in real time, how to help.

She Was Terrified of "Shock Therapy." Then It Gave Her Back Her Life.

Julie Gale — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:01:43 +0000

Julie Gale had seen the movies.

The cold rooms. The bright lights. The word people whispered instead of saying out loud: shock treatment.

So when her psychiatrist first suggested electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) after decades of medication, hospitalizations, and mood swings that no drug could fully control, her first reaction wasn't hope.
It was fear.

Decades of "Almost Working"

By the time ECT entered the conversation, Julie had already spent most of her adult life managing bipolar disorder the only way she knew how: through medication, routine, and sheer will.

Lithium had helped for years. Then it didn't. Testing eventually revealed the medication had damaged her pituitary gland, and surgery followed. The drug that had kept her stable for over a decade could no longer help her, and no one had an easy answer for what came next.

"It felt like a death sentence," she says of the hospitalizations that followed. "I couldn't believe I was back in the hospital again."

That's the reality most people never hear about living with bipolar disorder: it's rarely one diagnosis and one solution. It's years of trial, failure, and starting over, long after everyone assumes you've "figured it out."

The Decision She Almost Didn't Make

When a psychiatrist and social worker gently raised ECT as an option, Julie didn't research it. She didn't have the strength left to.
"I had to bite the dust and believe they knew what they were doing," she says.

What changed her mind wasn't a medical explanation. It was exhaustion, paired with something quieter — a flicker of desperate hope that this might finally be different. She leaned on her Catholic faith. She listened to nurses describe patients who'd walked the same path and come out steadier. And she leaned, every single morning, on her brother.

For over a year, he arrived at her condo at exactly 7:15 a.m., drove her to the hospital, waited through every session, and brought her home.

Later, her son took over the same routine, and the drives became something unexpected: a way for the two of them to grow closer than they'd been in years.

What Actually Happened

Here's the part that surprises most people: it wasn't frightening at all.
"They'd ask me to close my eyes," Julie recalls, "and I would be in a deep sleep in no time."

No confusion afterward. No lingering fog. Just a slow, steady return to clarity — session after session, week after week, for a year and a half.
For the first time in her adult life, Julie woke up each day without bracing for a mood she couldn't control.

"That was the best part," she says. "Knowing for sure that my mood wasn't going to go high or low. It remained stable, and I felt safe."

Why She's Telling This Story Now

Julie doesn't call ECT a cure. She calls it a rebirth.
"It was a rescue. A turning point," she says. Today, she shares her experience in online bipolar support groups with people who are exactly where she once was: exhausted, afraid, and out of options.

Her message to them is always the same.

"Talk to your doctor. Ask questions. Lean on your family. And if nothing else has worked… just try it. Bite the bullet. In the end, you'll be glad you did."

The Full Story

Julie's ECT journey is one chapter in a much larger story of divorce, misdiagnosis, devastating loss, and an unlikely move across provinces at 71 — all told in her own words, without polish or pretense.

Living With Bipolar: My Journey to Balance isn't a medical guide. It's proof that even after decades of searching, stability is still possible.

`She Gave Away Everything She Owned and Moved Provinces at 71. Here's What Happened Next.

Julie Gale — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:57:33 +0000

Most people spend their seventies settling in.

Julie Gale spent hers packing up.

After losing her mother, her father, and her brother within the span of a few years, Julie sat in her Calgary condo and looked around at a life she'd built for decades. She realized almost no one who'd shaped it was left in that city anymore.

Her daughter had a simple, gentle question: "Mom, what's left for you here?"

It wasn't an easy question to answer. It was an even harder one to act on.

The Math Didn't Add Up — Until It Did

On paper, the move made no sense. Julie was 71. She'd lived in Alberta her entire life. She had decades-old friendships, a familiar doctor, a routine she trusted, and a diagnosis that had taught her, the hard way, that change itself could be dangerous.

Julie has lived with bipolar disorder since her thirties. She knows better than most people how a single disruption, such as a missed night of sleep, a stressful week, an unfamiliar city, can tip a carefully balanced mind into crisis.

So when her family suggested British Columbia, her first reaction wasn't excitement. It was fear.

"I really had a lot of anxiety about the move," she admits. "To begin in such a different place at my age was indeed a very scary idea."

What She Did With the Fear

Julie didn't wait for the fear to disappear. She made the decision anyway, and then she did something most of us struggle to do at any age: she let go, on purpose.

She gave away nearly everything she owned, including furniture, dishes, decades of accumulated belongings, to Calgary's Immigrant Society. A close friend helped her sort through a lifetime's worth of things in a matter of weeks.

"It felt right," she says. "Letting go made it easier to move forward."
Her son drove her car across the mountains. Her daughter furnished the new place before Julie even arrived, so she'd walk into a home instead of an empty apartment. And two weeks between selling one house and moving into the next became something Julie never expected: a gift. She spent them with her sister-in-law, talking, healing, growing closer than they'd ever been.

The Surprise Waiting on the Other Side

Julie thought the hardest part would be surviving the move. What actually surprised her was what came after.
Within weeks, she was near her grandchildren for the first time in fifteen years, not as a holiday visitor, but as a real, everyday presence in their lives. Her mood, far from spiraling, actually lifted. Her doctor reassured her it was simply joy, not mania. Her new neighborhood became familiar faster than she expected.

And something in her shifted, too.

"I felt proud of myself," she says. "I really did."
Friends back in Calgary reached out just to tell her so. Look what you did at your age. Good for you.

Why This Story Matters Right Now

Julie's move at 71 is one chapter in a much bigger story, one that includes divorce, decades of misdiagnosis and hospitalization, the loss of nearly her entire immediate family, and the treatment that finally gave her stability after a lifetime of searching for it.

Her memoir, Living With Bipolar: My Journey to Balance, isn't a clinical account or a self-help guide. It's the honest, sometimes hard-to-read story of a woman who kept starting over — at 22, at 34, at 71, and kept finding a way through.

If you've ever wondered whether it's "too late" to rebuild, Julie has an answer for you.

"If you set your mind to it, you can do anything," she says. "If you have a positive attitude and confidence in yourself, nothing is impossible."