Book Review: Finding Order In Disorder

Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

A vulnerable, valuable call to question the stigma of mental illness and live a bold life of love

 Finding Order in Disorder is an intimate memoir of the life and travels of Ishaa Vinod Chopra, living with bipolar disorder and with or without her Indian family. In it, she pursues love, encounters devastating rejections, deals with her life’s difficult moments, and perseveres to follow her bold ambitions. 

Her narrative focuses largely on bipolar’s effect on her life and mindset, and it’s a comforting, connecting piece to follow her journey in finding pride in her diagnosis. But it’s also about Chopra’s struggles with detecting and surviving domestic abuse, as well as the pressures and isolation as a result of her conservative and constraints of her Indian upbringing. 

She opens the book with a hopeful message: “Whoever I may be, I fit perfectly into this chaotic universe, with its unbalanced beauty… I am forever finding order in disorder.” She shares how her many creative passions and pursuits are a balm and an outlet for emotional expression, especially when her emotions feel overwhelming. She’s also so generous with the conversations she’s shared in this book, having recorded herself discussing her opinions, desires and concerns in conversation with doctors and loved ones while in a manic state. 

Ishaa Vinod Chopra successfully and powerfully conveys her ideas that people living with mental illness need all the support they can get, from those in their daily lives and their extended families, as well as the support of genuinely kind and helpful medical staff when additional support is sought. 

Throughout her life, she wrestles with the idea of identity and home and where they intertwine. “I don’t think I can ever answer the question if someone asked me,   ‘Where are you from?’ because I have lived in so many places, and I feel like I have been running away from each place.”

A significant part of this story recounts the author’s experiences of being in romantic relationships, whether that be her desire to find a husband and her efforts to do so via online dating, or the times in her life where she looked away from the red flags of abuse because of her strong desire to be a married woman.

As someone with bipolar II, my life looks different than hers, but the distinctions between bipolar I and bipolar II aren’t mentioned. I wished they were since part of Chopra’s aim is to dispel stigma and stereotypes that affect people who have bipolar. With a lack of context and some unclear timelines, the reader could be left with a limited understanding of what bipolar really is than they could have.

Some confessions are sometimes difficult to place in terms of the author’s age, country she’s living in, or the period of her life she’s going through. We read that she was in rehab many times but don’t know her age or what happened (or what she felt) in the lead-up to hospitalization. We learn what she learned about herself during her various stays and we read about her experiences with the medical and support staff, but it’s difficult to keep track of where and when we are in these moments.

I was so moved by how Ishaa Vinod Chopra’s wonderful, concise, and clear writing conveys the echoes and effects of a mania and depression cycle. I hadn’t read my experience so clearly before, the calm at the heart of her inner chaos when she had “now become an ‘aware’ bipolar…which is to say that I am so conscious of my symptoms and illness that when they manifest, I can tell the exact size of the waves of the predicted tsunami that will swallow me.” 

I can relate to so much of where the author approaches this book from: I was diagnosed as bipolar around the same age as she was, and I’ve also made a point of not being ashamed of it, speaking openly about it with family and interested strangers. I, too, in the right context, have felt comfortable enough to casually mention my diagnosis almost immediately after meeting someone, and I have for many years of my life found routine, catharsis, and confidence through dance over many years of my life, then stopped dancing during times more difficult than I could comprehend, feeling like I lost part of myself. 

I felt the ache of the author’s struggles with her lapses in memory and the shame of people witnessing her actions when she’s less than aware of and unable to truly compose herself. (“When my mind starts to heal, I start to remember all the things that have happened.”) I also feel for her struggles with not wanting to worry her family, who understood the impact her “volatile state of mind” had on her worried family, who understood the importance of routine and sleep schedules in maintaining her mental health: “Latin dance also meant late evenings going into the   night. Late nights meant aggravation of my bipolar disorder…For this reason, whenever I wanted to pursue anything remotely related to Latin dance, my family would get very concerned.”

The author writes of a lifetime spent raised up by the heights of mania and sent crashing down by the inevitable depression and the life she was able to build despite—and because of— everything her mental illness has put her through. I felt seen and known when reading that she, too, feels that “there are many more moments now where I am grateful to have been diagnosed with such a disorder. It has brought me experiences and enriched my life in ways I could have never imagined.” 

Ishaa Vinod Chopra’s perspective is so clear and complex, so breathtakingly vulnerable and tormenting that whether you can relate to her life as an immigrant or with her heavily influential family or not, you will find connection with her words. 

Content warnings for this book include domestic violence, rehab, suicidal thoughts, and forced medication at a rehabilitation center.

The final third of this memoir is dedicated to sharing advice for those living with bipolar—when to share your diagnosis, how to approach dating with bipolar, the tremendous positive impact of a good sleep routine—which also serves as a reminder of the many facets of life that having a mental illness (and particularly one so volatile as bipolar) can impact. 

Ishaa Vinod Chopra uses brilliant examples of the moments that are out of her control, because of and also despite, the mood swings. For example, even when their moods have become regulated and stable, people with bipolar are subject to the stigma within each person they meet—be they a manager at work who has a personal history with a destructive person with bipolar or how it can be just as heartbreaking and isolating to date someone who never bothers to understand your illness than it is to not date anyone at all.

There’s a lot that author, dancer, and teacher Ishaa Vinod Chopra must both grapple with and celebrate in her life with bipolar: The way she sees her mental illness as her “ugly” side; the fierce way she longs to be loved and accepted; her invigorating passion for dance; and the negative experiences she’s had with dating (which hasn’t always been because of her bipolar diagnosis, but of course is both influenced by and has an influence on her mental health.) 

For these reasons, Finding Order In Disorder is a valuable tool and a vulnerable emotional gift to us all, offering up a story about the difficult, determined life Ishaa Vinod Chopra has lived. Anyone interested in widening their understanding of people living with mental illness, the influence of Indian culture on their women’s romantic hopes, and the emotional labor it takes to be an ambitious woman anywhere should read this memoir.

“If my illness was a person,” the author writes, “I would want to hug it and love it.” So do I, and so will you when you read Finding Order in Disorder, hopefully finding your own peace, love, and order in the disorder of modern life.

I was so struck by Ishaa’s vulnerability and her open-hearted honesty that I almost felt winded when I read this next quote, and I hope that by the time you reach it, you’ll feel the same way. This is why she wrote the book, a great example of how powerful her words are and what I love most about reading memoirs like Chopra’s. She asks us, after we have been through (what I assume to be) decades of her life, she asks the reader: “can you find it in yourself to accept someone like me in your life, in your school, in your neighbourhood? As a friend? As your daughter? As your wife?” 

After reading her life story, it would be difficult to say no, but more importantly, it would be difficult to see any of these people as defined by their illness or your first impressions of them. I believe that is exactly what the author wanted to achieve with this book, and she’s gone above and beyond doing so. 

Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of Finding Order In Disorder by Ishaa Vinod Chopra! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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