Making Amends

Grant “Skip” Treaster remembers his hand trembling the day he sat down to write a long-overdue letter to his son. It was his son’s 39th birthday. And Treaster, diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1995, hadn’t seen his son since he was a 9-year-old boy.

“I wish I could just say sorry, that this card is a couple days late,” Treaster wrote his son. “But it’s been more like a couple decades. I don’t know where to even begin to say I’m sorry, but I truly am.

“I’m sorry I just up and disappeared from your life,” his card message continued. “I never really intended to do that. But I turned out to be one of those men who leave. Leave jobs when they get too hard. Leave relationships when they get too complicated. Leave town when things get hot. I’m sorry I left you and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that.”

Treaster, a former advertising executive who lives in Arizona with his fourth wife, has spent the past several years rebuilding his world after battling bipolar disorder for decades without a diagnosis. As part of the process, he’s beginning to try to make amends to those he hurt, including his three adult sons from his first marriage—whom he all but abandoned—as well as two adult daughters from his second marriage.

“I’ve left quite a wake of ruined relationships and destruction in my path because it took so long to get diagnosed,” says Treaster, now 59. “And even the diagnosis doesn’t change things, necessarily. It takes time. And a diagnosis doesn’t undo all the past mistakes.”

Indeed, we have all been hurt, or have hurt others in relationships. Whether unintentional or purposeful, it happens. But when bipolar disorder is at the source of the wound inflicted on another, things such as out-of-control spending, infidelity, anger outbursts, or long periods of isolation brought on by depression can amplify and confuse those hurts. The pain is real, but how can we hold a grudge against someone who has a mental illness? On the other hand, if we have a mental illness, how do we begin to make amends for things we did when we were ill?

While medication and therapy are the building blocks to recovery from mental illness, making amends and seeking forgiveness play a role as well. As Treaster has discovered, asking for forgiveness—and forgiving himself—have been the hardest part of his climb to wellness.

Read the rest of the article, including tips for healing here.