Léa Vigier could have stayed in a box. A graduate of a large business school, she had already defined. But at 23, on a whim, she leaves in Ecuador, in the footsteps of an explorer discovered in a book. It will be his first mountain expedition, without a guide. And it will be a shock. “We were in ultra-fulfilled conditions, we got lost all the time. It was very dangerous.”
This trip, supposed to be initiation, turns into a nightmare. She will stay three days, stuck in a storm, without food, with the fear of dying. “With my comrade, We said to ourselves “goodbye” And it shocked me, a trauma in my body. And traumas can trigger mental illnesses. “
Years later, Léa will put a word on her suffering: Bipolar disorder. But as often, diagnosis is slow. On average, it takes ten years.
She says it without detours: depression is more violent than visible mourning. “When I lost my father, people understood because people imagine losing their father. It was very hard to lose my father, but a depression, for me, It’s three times harder. Depression is not even difficult, it is that you fight every day so as not to kill yourself, “she confides in Stubborn, to podcast RTL.
She could have sank, but she chose to leave the offices for the summits. Today, Léa has reached 7,000 meters above sea level. Not to break records, but to stand up. She becomes an adventurer and speaker. Her illness, she no longer hides her. She makes it a mission: to speak, to appoint, to raise awareness: “I launch A tour of France of a bipolar. I’m going to invite myself to people. Tell them: I am bipolar, do you invite me? My goal is to educate 10 million French people aware of bipolarity “.
“When you manage to climb a mountain, you arrive at the top, you go from a distance, it’s incredible, you’re proud of you. And for me, to mount a mountain, it’s the same thing as I had to face a depression, she explains in Tenacious. It is to succeed in going from ‘I see almost nothing’, ‘my brain works more’, etc. To ‘I fight’, ‘I go up’, and at the end, I manage to finally see the world as a whole. “
>> Stubborn is a podcast dedicated to women who fought, who dared … It was impossible, so they did it! In each episode, Anaïs Bouton presents a personality whose journey is powerful, inspiring, original. “Stubborn” or the art of never letting go.
