Jennifer Dunstan by Barbara Hulme

Jennifer’s story in her own words:

“Bipolar, Bisexual and Biodegradable.

"My name is Jen and I’m 44. I have a 22 year old daughter called Niamh, a 13 year old son called Rio and a Grandson who was born December 2023. He’s called Lorenzo! They’re such a sassy bunch and I love them all endlessly.

I suppose, looking back, I’ve always been Disabled. I just didn’t know that I was. Not initially…I have been HoH (Hard of hearing) since I was tiny. I only recently started to use hearing aids.

I was labelled a precocious child by some, but was a genuinely a very smart little lass who had a happy childhood in the main. I could read at an adult level by age 7-8 and was always at the top of every set for Academic subjects. I always enjoyed reading, movies, musicals and singing – as well as playing adventure games with my best friend Maxine.

Things changed for me when I hit my early teens when, after feeling in with the wrong crowd and self harming quite seriously, I was taken to Drs by my parents and diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder. I was about 14-15. I was permanently excluded from Catholic school. They didn’t attempt to support me, they just didn’t want me to be their problem.

My teens and early twenties are all a bit of a blur. Drugs, solvents and alcohol abuse were the norm. It was the 90s after all and the era of the Ladette! Partying away, beating boys at arm wrestling etc and not caring one bit if I lived or died from one day to the next. 

When I had my daughter at age 22, I stopped doing all drugs and even stopped both smoking and drinking caffeine when I was pregnant. If anyone could’ve told teenage me that I would one day give birth to my best friend I’m sure I would have taken a lot of comfort from that.

I have often felt so lonely in crowded rooms and so devastatingly empty in the arms of strangers. Having this type of Bipolar is exhausting and very hard work. I fight to keep a monster caged. Every second, of every day. I’m protecting myself and the people around me from the dark that lurks within me, the dark that I can always hear even when you can’t see any sign of it.

In later life, I was diagnosed as Autistic- the type that was once called Asperger’s, but we don’t use that term any more. I love to learn general knowledge and quirky facts; I have a special interest in Frida Kahlo as an Artist but also as a woman. I’m learning Spanish with an app called Duolingo, I have a dream to go to Mexico to visit the house that Frida lived in. I will go one day, even if I’m 88! She once was told not to attend her own art exhibition and to stay in bed on Drs orders, so, she got dressed up to the nines and had helpers carry her bed to the gallery “I have not left my bed Doctor!” She exclaimed upon arriving! I love that about her. I love how fiery her passion was, how honest she was about her feelings and views, even when they broke her heart to share them. Most of all I love that she didn’t take no for an answer in so many ways.

No door should ever be closed to us because we are Disabled, or, because we are women.

As for me, living with PTSD and associated trauma due to Domestic Abuse has seen me lumped with M.E. and Fibromyalgia.

So I’m all wonky, inside and out. I don’t hate it. I don’t love it. I have no choice but to accept it.

My life has had lots of happy and joyful instances, not least of all the births of my two fabulous children and to cap it all off, becoming ‘Nanny Jen’ when Enzo was born in ‘23. When I first looked into his little face I knew for certain that nothing could ever hurt me again and just kissing his soft little baby cheeks mended the holes in my heart that had been created in the past by such cruelty of others.

For one day, I get to be as colourful and as beautiful as Frida, even just in my own head. I yearn to love as deeply as Frida did ….and do you know what? I think I do. I know I do.