Behind the Scenes

Rippy Berry Delight Recipe

May 27, 2018 Eric Riddle Comments Off

Mother’s Day Recipe from Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook. Described in episode 7…

Serves 6

Ingredients

3 Cups Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice

3 Cups Plain Yogurt

2 Tbs Fresh Lemon and/or Lime Juice

2 Tbs Honey

4 Cups Fresh Berries (leave small berries whole, slice larger berries)

Dash of Cinnamon

Sprigs of Mint

Instructions

Whisk together orange juice and yogurt
Add lemon/lime juice and honey and whisk
Cover and chill until serving time
When ready to serve, place about ¾ cup berries in bowl
Ladle the chilled mixture on top (will not be very thick)
If desired, dust with cinnamon and add a few small sprigs of mint
Enjoy!

Does Awareness Really Shatter Stigma?

May 19, 2018 Tony Roberts Comments Off

Some weeks back, Eric asked me to write a piece for Mental Health Awareness Month (May). I thought I would wait for inspiration. It’s now May 18 and inspiration has not arrived. In the words of Jack London, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” So I sit here banging on the letters of my keyboard, intent on making you aware of mental health.

Recently, many celebrities are touting mental health as they share their personal history with mental illness and/or mental health issues. Action movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Singer Mariah Carey. Even Prince Harry. Mental health struggles are shared by the homeless immigrant and the Hollywood idol.

I’ve wondered for some time what happens when mental illness assumes the spotlight. When famous persons talk about their anxiety, their depression, their mania, does it serve to reduce stigma or does it increase the demanding expectations on those with severe mental illness?

If Prince Harry can get through his grief and still smile at royal functions, why can’t you get out of bed and take a shower?

If Kay Redfield Jamison can channel her manic depression to become one of the world’s leading experts on bipolar disorder, why can’t you finish a simple assignment?

The benefit of high achievers opening up about their emotional struggles is that we can be reassured that we are not alone, that we are not any less a human being for having a mental health diagnosis. The danger is that we berate ourselves for not being more like them.

As a writer, I have a plethora of role models who exhibited inordinate disordered behaviors. But I can’t expect I will compose epic tales like Tolstoy, plot like Poe, or poetic verse like Plath. Still, I do find comfort we are following the voice of a related muse.

Mental Health awareness month is not about competing for who has the most debilitating condition or who is conquering it the best. It’s about recognizing that no matter who we are, no matter what we do, we are of one common stock. The more we stand up, the less others have to fall.

Bipolar Too

May 1, 2018 Eric Riddle Comments Off

At age 17, I was given a clinical depression diagnosis. At age 22, it changed to hypomania. At age 27, it changed to Bipolar II. Over the course of the last 20 years, I have been hospitalized 4 times. The first time for mania and the last three for depression. For 13 years, I was in talk therapy 1x/month. My most recent hospitalization was Spring 2013. I currently take one medicine for sleeping and one for mood stabilization. Those are the facts of my psychiatric care.

Tony did flippantly call me “bipolar lite” on a recent show. The facts above indicate that the level of treatment I have received is substantial. His statement was meant as a comparison to the reality of his tumultuous cycles to my relatively less turbulent experience since meeting him in 2014. He has never seen me in a period leading to an inpatient stay.

I am thankful that a listener sent us a comment about Tony’s use of the word “lite”. The listener pointed out that “its not accurate or helpful to think of Bipolar II as begin a less severe bipolar sub-type.” This is correct.

Tony and I need to be held accountable to our language. Receiving feedback is precisely what we encourage from our listeners as we reveal our voices and our guests on the podcast.

I am currently in the best period of health since being diagnosed with Bipolar II in 2007. I thank God, my family, my church, my friends, and my community for the support, encouragement, and love they provide on a daily basis. My relationship with Tony is a part of that stabilization. He knows that my diagnosis can lead to serious symptoms, but he also knows that sharing the burden together can lighten the load.

We will be releasing an episode on May 24 with Tony interviewing me about my mental health history and ministry. Knowing my darkness has helped me know the light. I hope to share this with you through Revealing Voices.

#The100DayProject

April 1, 2018 Eric Riddle Comments Off

On the Creative Pep Talk podcast, I was introduced to The 100 Day Project. The founders, Elle Luna and Lindsay Jean Thomson, shared inspiring stories from people who participated in the past. I have decided to join in this 5th annual event.

All are welcome to join. From what I have seen on the website, your daily creation is posted through Instagram. All posts include #the100dayproject and a second hashtag that is unique to your project. Mine is going to be #hundredhaiku!

How does this relate to mental health and faith?

I believe that God has given humankind a unique capacity to create. We are all producers. Unfortunately, many people label people with mental illness as “consumers”.

During my darkest depressions, I reminded myself that even my worst experiences may be opportunities for me to “produce”. It may not happen in the midst of my worst symptoms, but I maintain my faith in being part of God’s creation and in my capacity to create.

Please consider joining me on Tuesday, April 3. Spring has arrived. Easter is a reminder of resurrection and the triumph of eternal life over death.

You are a creator.

Tony Roberts is Delighting in Disorder

March 28, 2018 Tony Roberts Comments Off

My Story

In 1995, I was a young, ambitious pastor serving a small village church. One Sunday, I delivered a sermon on human illness and divine healing in which I shared these words:

When we become ill, it is important to listen to our bodies and pray that God help us make necessary changes. Our ailments may be blessings in disguise. We may be expecting too much from ourselves, or avoiding things we need to face. As we listen to our bodies, talk and reflect with others, and pray together, we can gain spiritual insight which will help us live healthier, more productive, more abundant lives.

The next day, I was in the seclusion room of a psychiatric hospital. I was told I had bipolar disorder, that I would never work as a pastor again, that my marriage would likely end, and that I would spend the rest of my life in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

By the grace of God and with much help from many others, I served another dozen years of fruitful ministry, was married “for better and for worse” for twenty three years and have mostly progressed in treatment to enjoy what my psychiatrist calls “maintenance remission.”

My Message

Having served over twenty years in ministry while wrestling with a serious mental illness, I have a message of Good News to share. This is not just positive affirmation meant to cover up feelings and shame and fear. It is not something I’ve picked up from one of the countless self-help books on the ABCs of analysis and treatment. It is certainly not that I have attained victory over bipolar through divine intervention alone and I no longer need medication or therapy.

The Good News we have to share is instead the hope that, with Christ’s saving grace, the hellish impact of mental illness will be bearable. God is with me even in the darkest valleys of despair. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Our hope, the Good News is that God has a purpose for our lives. And when we carry this hope, we find fellowship with others who struggle; we are emboldened to fight the stigma that often leads to dangerous silence; we find a measure of peace even during the worst moment that things will get better. We don’t know when, or how. Maybe not even in this life. But things will get better.

My Mission

Many people with mental illness are angry at God, at believers and at faith communities. People within churches struggle to understand mental illness to connect what medical advances about brain chemistry with Truth revealed in Scripture. I have lived in both worlds and wrestle daily with my dual identity as a Christian who has a serious mental illness.

My mission is to bridge the distance between faith and mental illness — fostering faith among those with disorders and diagnoses and promoting compassion within the faith community. Sharing my spiritual memoir is the first step towards this mission.

Won’t you join me on this mission? Pray for those impacted by mental illness. Recruit them to share their stories within your sanctuaries. If you have a mental illness, set aside your assumptions and walk into a church one Sunday or ask to go with a Christian you know.

When we do these things, we reclaim our godly mission through the madness of the world.

A Long, Strange Trip and We’ve Only Just Begun

March 3, 2018 Tony Roberts Comments Off

Thursday, March 1, 2018; 6:00 p.m. ; The Riddle household. ; Columbus, Indiana.

We posted episode 1 while recording on Facebook Live. Half an hour later, we were celebrating with 15 of our closest friends in our mental health ministry!

It’s been a long, strange trip since we first stepped out onto that country road that crosses the Columbus Reformed Presbyterian church. How did we move from the germ of an idea to the uploading on iTunes? Much of the journey is shared and will continued to be shared here in this “Behind the Scenes” Revealog. Today, I want to go behind the “Behind the Scenes,” and dig into some of the hustle and tussle, the push and pull, the punch and counterpunch, that makes every creative collaboration produce a work that is greater than the sum of its parts.

1, It’s all about the length, man!

From the beginning, Eric and I held strong and vastly different ideas of how long our podcast would be. Eric referred Inglorious Pasterds: Three guys from the Midwest talking about spirituality, the news, and all the things. It clocks in at 2+ hours. I preferred Mike Rowe’s The Way I Heard It : short mysteries for curious minds with short attention spans. It runs a consistent 10 minutes. We knew we would have some compromising to do in the editing process and, quite frankly, that was none too fun. It required much prayer to come to a common mind even on the opening episode. But we did it. And early feedback tells me we did it well.

2. Lynda, Lynda, wherefore art thou?

Along the way, there have been many technical challenges that required many calls and emails. Then, Eric found Lynda, shimmering in the glow of a midnight moon. Lynda is a training website for everything from computer programming to website hosting to podcast development. Eric fell madly in love and tried desperately to share her affections with me, even setting us up on a date Valentines Day. But there was one big problem. Lynda shows you her ways through video tutorials. I am not a visual learner. More than this, I still belong to the old school that says videos are for entertainment, not education. So Lynda and I were doomed from the outset. I will now need to learn the podcast dance from Eric.

3. Podcasts that have inspired us.

We knew from the outset that it would be foolish to reinvent the wheel. We spent much time researching podcasts that dealt with the topics of faith and/or mental illness. We contacted some hosts who have responded very graciously. We hope to develop mutually beneficial relationships with persons sowing some of the same seed in God’s kingdom garden.

Two shows of particular note — CXMH a podcast at the intersection of Christianity & mental health, with Robert Vore. And, Fresh Hope for Mental Health, with Pastor Brad Hoefs. These shows are more than podcasts; they are ministries blessing folks like us and many others.

4. One down, how many to go?

When deciding on how we would list our episodes, we noted that some podcasts name theirs with three digits, like 001, 002, 003, etc… This numbering system is both ambitious and limiting. What if you end the show at 003? You’ve left people hanging. Then again, what if you come to 999 and there is nowhere else to go, like Y2K? We opted to modestly and accurately number ours conventionally 1, 2, 3, etc… We hope this doesn’t disrupt some Podcast Dewey Decimal System, but it seemed the spiritually humble thing to do.

5. Where do we go from here?

God only knows. By God’s grace, we have met or exceeded our original goals. Fundraising figure. Equipment purchases. Four interviews on the computer before opening episode. World premiere March 1. Now what?

We have some idea of what lies ahead, but we are also open to where the Spirit leads. And one way the Spirit leads is through the work of the body of Christ, believers with passion for God’s kingdom ministry.

We’ve had a lot of help along the way and we trust God will continue to provide. What can you do?

a. Pray, pray, pray. Prayer won’t get us all we want, but it will give us just what we need.

b. Listen, share. Mental health ministry is not to exist in a vacuum. Care enough to share.

c. Subscribe, so you will get the latest episodes the moment that appear.

d. Review and rate with 5 stars. This will help us reach more with Good News for mental health.

Yes, what a long, strange trip it’s been. And we’ve only just begin.

Editing Breathing

February 22, 2018 Eric Riddle Comments Off

Saturday was a busy day- easily my second most anxious day in the studio since we started. We were juggling recording the intro/outro on episode 1, as well as completing a few more loops. Earlier that morning, I woke up at 7 AM to begin editing our Marie Henning interview. Editing can be an obsessive activity. I knew it was getting bad when I was analyzing keeping or editing my breathing.

Its a good problem to have…. an engaging interview with many questions asked and intimate responses. The lesson in agonizing over editing to get to the 45 minute goal is…. just breathe. It’s a lesson I’ll remember as I continue on podcast production strategy. Read More

Revealing Progress

February 14, 2018 Eric Riddle 4 Comments

Another Monday night. I take my son to soccer practice and have 90 minutes to drive to Tony’s, get some collaborative work done, and then head back. Tony has had prolonged sickness, like many of our fellow Hoosiers this winter. I played bits from the episode I’m nearly done editing. I have probably put at least 6 hours into the editing process.

After watching the Garageband Podcasting Essentials Lynda.com video, I have become proficient in the editing. I do plan to watch the video again before I dive back into episode 2 editing. My biggest editing frustration is not being able to listen to it at 1.5x speed. Read More

3 weeks away….

February 9, 2018 Eric Riddle Comments Off

Precisely three weeks from today we launch our debut. Eric is currently working on the final edits of our pilot episode. He shared with me it is hard to cut anything out of such a quality interview. I agree, but think especially for our first show, we need to establish a reasonably firm time parameter at 45 minutes.

As Eric edits, I am busy with a number of tasks. Composing a “For Further Help” page, drafting an outline of “The Making of Revealing Voices,” proposing some ideal WordPress themes for podcasting, and investigating some Facebook ad campaigns. Finally, I’ve been crafting questions to ask our first three guests: Marie Henning, Katie Dale, and Amy Simpson.

Some of the questions I have come up with so far include:
Read More

Less Than 1 Month Before Launch!

February 5, 2018 Eric Riddle Comments Off

Every other Saturday is my primary work day on the podcast. I probably total around 10 hours per week now. It is enough to keep us on schedule. Lynda.com has been very helpful. With my 1 month free subscription, I am also learning about WordPress, which will expand on the podcast content.

I do have my excited moments when I fantasize about my personal journal, Tony’s writing, and our blog posts being crafted into a book. As with my previous book, it would be partly personal journey, partly a how to manual (about starting a podcast), and partly a journey into mental health advocacy. Read More

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We Committed to Starting the Revealing Voices Podcast in October 2017. Neither of Us had Experience in Podcasting. These Posts Tell the Story of our Learning Curve.