Author: Matthew Jackman
I was born in 1990 into a lineage marked by intergenerational hardship, stretching from convict resettlement in England to the Irish potato famine. These histories of suffering and endurance shaped the soil into which I was born in Australia. From the beginning, my life was touched by both deep pain and profound searching—for meaning, for belonging, and for a spiritual language that could hold the extremes of my varied experiences.
In 1996, when I was six, I was removed from my mother’s care after her mental health worsened following my parents’ divorce. From that rupture began a childhood of foster care, poverty, and emotional neglect. Three years later, when I was nine, my mother died by suicide. I still remember the final time I saw her—in a psychiatric hospital—her farewell carrying both love and a sense of sacred parting. That moment remains etched in me like a prayer; the reminder that love can survive even the heaviest of burdens.
Looking back through child protection records, I learned I had been described as “over-parentified,” forced into vigilance and responsibility far beyond my years. Yet this early burden also sharpened my awareness of human fragility and resilience. I grew into a protector of my siblings, cultivating strength out of necessity. Those same qualities would later become the foundation of my calling as an advocate, healer, and creative spirit.
The Spiritual Gift of Bipolar
My father, in his own journey, transformed from struggling single parent to family carer and peer worker in a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, my own diagnoses accumulated over time: depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, complex PTSD. Psychiatric hospitals, heavy medications, and the crushing weight of stigma defined my twenties. Yet amid the pain, a different truth kept emerging: my bipolarity was not only an illness but also a spiritual current running through me—a sacred fire that, though dangerous at times, illuminated hidden worlds.
As a non-binary person, these experiences of madness were inseparable from my experiences of gender. Mania often dissolved the rigid boundaries of identity, allowing me to feel both infinite and fluid—beyond the binary. Depression, in turn, confronted me with the weight of society’s expectations, the pain of mis-recognition, and the loneliness of living outside prescribed norms. My Madness, interwoven with my gender, became a site of both revelation and resistance.
When I entered states of mania, I experienced visions and ideas that felt revelatory. Creativity poured through me like a river, leading me to art, writing, and new forms of expression. In the depths of depression, I was forced to wrestle with meaning, mortality, and spirituality. These cycles became, in their own way, spiritual initiations—teaching me about light, darkness, and the creative tension between them.
I came to understand my bipolar condition not as a curse, but as a doorway into the divine. Where psychiatry saw disorder, I found a source of creativity, prophecy, and art-making. Where cisnormativity demanded conformity, I discovered fluidity and vision. Madness revealed truths the world often hides; the intensity of love, the fragility of time, the hunger for justice, and the possibility of living authentically beyond binaries.
Advocacy as Spiritual Practice
In 2014, after completing a degree in social work, I began working in forensic mental health. There, I collaborated with lived experience consultants, challenging the silos of psychiatry and advocating for systemic change. My activism soon brought me into contact with Mad Studies, a movement that honours madness as cultural, spiritual, and political knowledge. Mad Studies offered me language for what I already knew in my bones; that “illness” can be wisdom, and that creativity born from madness is sacred testimony.
My advocacy deepened through international engagements. I represented the Western Pacific Region on the Global Mental Health Peer Network, and spoke at the WHO Mental Health Gap Forum before global health ministers. My message was clear; lived experience is sacred knowledge, and the voices of those who suffer and survive must guide policy and practice.
In 2020, when I was named National Mental Health Advocate of the Year by the Mental Health Foundation of Australia, I described bipolar disorder as a “spiritual gift.” This statement was later published by the World Health Organization—an affirmation that madness could be named as wisdom, not simply pathology. For me, as a non-binary person, this recognition was doubly significant, as it validated both the spiritual and gendered dimensions of my lived experience.
Art, Creativity, and Divine Madness
Art has always been one of the ways I make sense of bipolarity and of my non-binary identity. In my most heightened states, colours, sounds, and symbols shimmer with intensity, refusing to fit within neat boundaries—just as I refuse the gender binary. Creativity feels less like a choice than a calling. I paint, write, and imagine not only for myself but for my community—for all who have been silenced by stigma, misgendered by rigid systems, and stripped of dignity by psychiatric power.
Through my start-up, The Australian Centre for Lived Experience (TACFLE), I work to celebrate creativity as a healing force. Our Mad Pride fashion line, “Mad Collective,” is not just clothing—it is liturgy stitched into fabric, a love letter to the global community of survivors, resisters, and creators. For me, it is also a declaration that gender, like madness, is creative, fluid, and sacred. Art becomes both activism and prayer, embodying resilience and declaring that our madness is not brokenness but brilliance.
Where Madness, Gender, and Spirituality Intersect
Today, as a Master of Advanced Social Work graduate, a holder of a Postgraduate Certificate in Mad Studies, and now a PhD candidate in the field, I see my journey as a form of spiritual pilgrimage. My research and advocacy are not only academic—they are spiritual. They wrestle with questions of meaning, justice, and identity.
What if bipolar disorder is not only a psychiatric label, but a form of mystical temperament? What if the visions, intensities, and creative surges that arise in madness are sacred messages about the human condition? And what if, for those of us who live beyond the gender binary, these states also reveal truths about fluidity, transformation, and authenticity? What if the role of community is not to suppress these states, but to hold them in compassion, ceremony, and care?
I believe Madness is one of the ways Spirit speaks in the world. It calls us into art, into prophecy, into truth-telling. It is dangerous, yes, but also divine. Like fire, it must be tended wisely—but without it, the world would be darker, less vibrant, less alive.
Conclusion
My story is one of loss, survival, and transformation, but also one of faith; faith in creativity, in community, in the sacred fire of madness, and in the resilience of living as non-binary. Through my lived experience, I have come to believe that “bipolar disorder” is not just a medical condition—it is a spiritual path, a gendered journey, and a source of art.
Mad Pride is not only a political movement; it is also a spiritual revolution. It invites us to see madness as holy, to embrace creativity as prayer, to honour gender diversity as being sacred, and to see every survivor as the personification of resilience.
Lived experience is my superpower. Madness is my wisdom. Gender is my truth. And creativity is my offering to the world.
Mad Pride!
