I’m April Norris… Thank you for joining me on the podcast Of Course, They Make Me Crazy!

Last week author and comedian Dave Mowry joined me. He lives with bipolar disorder.

He wrote the book entitled OMG That’s Me! It blossomed from blog posts he wrote about him living with bipolar. He quickly gained a huge following. 

His mission in life is to use humor to tell his story and shatter the stigma by making it comfortable to talk about the uncomfortable.

If you listened to last week’s episode, you heard us mention that he trained other people struggling with mental illness to do stand-up comedy and that we were going to play some of their acts for you.

Well, that is what’s about to happen! Dave is from Portland and that is where they did their show.

I’m going to set the comedians up for you because many of you are listening instead of watching on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

So, we’ll start with Dave himself. He has a line in his portion that says something like,  “Those of us with a mental illness even share a special handshake.”  What you won’t see … is him putting his hand out and making it tremble. You’ll have to envision that. It makes the joke!

Three very talented and brave women then follow Dave’s comedy act.

Margaret will kick off by talking about growing up with a mother who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She steps out on stage wearing a tiara on her head that she made. She teased that she suffers from PDQSD – Post Drama Queen Stress Disorder.

Second up is Maeve who works in the mental health field and lives with anxiety. She talks about being a lesbian too. She feels buying a girl a beer is cheaper than her therapy co-pay.

To round out all these talented folks is Lorayne. She’s an older lady who says she takes so many meds that she needs to take a med to help her to remember to take all of her other meds.

I’m so grateful to have found Dave and his quick-witted friends. When you think of the trials they have been through and then see them get up on stage to make light of them … to me it shows how strong they truly are.

Yes, they might struggle and probably have caused some scary scenarios for their loved ones! But how many of us could get up on stage and poke fun at our deepest pain?

Not many.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

FYI - OMG That's Me! was named one of the best bipolar disorder books of all time by Book Authority. OMG 2 was released in September. OMG 3 will be out in December. You can get them on Amazon!