"A label is a mask life wears," writes Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., one of the first pioneers in the mind, body, health field. "Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. . . . In my experience, a diagnosis is an opinion and not a prediction. What would it be like if more people allowed for the presence of the unknown, and accepted the words of their medical experts in the same way? The diagnosis is cancer. What that will mean remains to be seen."

I used to think that meant that I shouldn't call myself bipolar, that I should stay away from hospital psychiatric programs, therapists, and head doctors; that I shouldn't take antidepressants, mood stabilizers, or any kind of sedative; and that I should rely on nothing but my inner strength to carry me forward through the hard days...

I've seen a lot of parachutes.

Big jumps, little jumps, Golden Knights – there are parachutes aplenty here at Fort Bragg and I've seen a bunch of them. I've even written about the chutes themselves. Jumping out of airplanes begins to seem commonplace when soldiers wearing maroon and green berets, which are awarded only to soldiers who have attended the Army’s Airborne school, are everywhere you look here. With all of this exposure, I thought I understood what it meant to jump out of an airplane – but then Saturday I did it for myself.

I knew immediately afterward that I wanted to write about the experience and thinking about what I would write kept me up most of the night. I kept going over everything in my head. The adrenaline had worn off and I was trying to make sense of it all. Finally, I woke up my husband to tell him what I had realized...