Everybody has to find it whatever helps. Religion is very helpful for people. A good friend is very helpful. A priest is very helpful. A rabbi is very helpful. You just have to find it. But when you get depressed or when you face a crisis, don't feel you have to do it alone.
There are members - very, very close and dear members - of my family - I'm talking immediate family - who simply don't speak to me anymore and haven't done so for years. My marriage fell apart.
I have family members that are bipolar.
Where would the memoir be without bipolar writers? I mean, that's what - that whole oversharing thing is really a very clear symptom of bipolar disorder. And I'm not saying that every, you know, I'm not accusing every memoirist of being bipolar. But I think in a way it's kind of a gift.
I'm in a very close-knit, very, very tight family. My grandmother had 13 kids, so we had a lot of family like 50, 60 grandchildren and we all lived in Jersey, relatively in the same area. So every time there was something, my entire family was there. And I just believed everybody's family was like that.
Our family suffers from a hereditary condition called, generally, mental illness. Specifically, multiple family members in successive generations have suffered from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There's very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I'm lucky enough that it's reasonably mild in my case.
I did not grow up watching much TV and film. I had a very, very, very, very, very, very church family, and a lot of, like, secular stuff was not around my house.
It's interesting, I'm from a really conservative, suburban town, and a majority of my family are very patriarchal. I mean, I love my family members, but they're slightly misogynistic, very closed-minded. But I'm sure a lot of us have families like that.
I think family is very important in West Virginia and has long been so because the mountains made travel difficult in the past, and family members had to depend on each other.
A willingness to vocalize feelings. How important it is to be willing to voice one's thoughts and feelings. Yes, how important it is to be able to converse on the level of each family member. Too often we are inclined to let family members assume how we feel toward them. Often wrong conclusions are reached. Very often we could have performed better had we known how family members felt about us and what they expected.
I mean, The New York Times actually had an interesting case recently where they described a detainee who was afraid of the dark, and so he was purposely kept very much in the dark.
My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember.
Seeing movies about mental illness, a lot of falseness has leapt out at me over the years... So I just focused on what I remembered, the real experience of seeing somebody like that. And as an adult, I’ve had family members who are bipolar, so I’ve seen it again.
GO FOR HIS EYES! OR BITE HIM ON THE NOSE! DRAGON NOSES ARE VERY SENSITIVE!" Oh, very helpful, Camicazi, very helpful...thought Hiccup. What if he doesn't obligingly hold me up to his nose? What if the only part I get close to is the TEETH?
My mother came from a very affluent background, very Westernized, while my father was more Eastern. So I've had a very good blend of the East and the West. I guess this has been extremely helpful in making my career and the way I function.