Mariel Hemingway uses family history as a means for mental health advocacy

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For years, Mariel Hemingway looked to outside sources to clear the fog of doubt and fear that she felt from growing up in a family that suffered from mental health issues and communication dysfunction.

But it wasn’t until she began to tell her own story and analyze the ways in which that history influenced her behaviors that she was able to understand the reasons behind her actions, the habits she formed as a child.

“We make choices based on our training,” she says.

The Emmy-nominated actress will share her story with New Albany in a series of events centered on mental health, including a student lecture Oct. 12 and an Oct. 13 lecture for the 2015-16 season of the New Albany Community Foundation’s Jefferson Series.

The subject of mental health has surrounded Hemingway’s family. Her grandfather, famed writer Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide in 1961. His father and two siblings committed suicide, too. Hemingway’s eldest sister, Joan, nicknamed Muffet, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Both of her parents heavily depended on alcohol. And in 1996, Hemingway’s sister, Margot (eventually known as Margaux), died from a phenobarbital drug overdose that was ruled a suicide.

Society makes you believe that you can’t make decisions without somebody else’s approval.

While Hemingway has written a handful of books, ranging from autobiographical stories to self-help and healthy living, her most recent, published in April, include memoir Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the Legacy of Mental Illness, Addiction and Suicide in My Family and Invisible Girl, a memoir for young adults written from the perspective of a young Hemingway.

In Out Came the Sun, Hemingway writes that becoming like her other family members was a constant fear for her.

“They were the people I loved the most and the people whom I was the most like, but they were also terrifying examples of how balance could be thrown off and an otherwise regulated existence could be overwhelmed by emotional blockage or mental disarrangement,” she writes.

As the youngest of three girls, Hemingway says she played the role of “good girl” growing up. Much of the beginning of Out Came the Sun describes the type of turbulent relationships – especially that of her parents – that she found herself learning how to negotiate.

As a child, she coped with the chaotic relationships by becoming compulsive about neatness, keeping her room perfectly arranged. While Hemingway still likes how order in her life can reflect order in her mind, she has become able to approach this with moderation.

“It doesn’t freak me out the way it used to,” she says.

Other habits have also become less addictive for Hemingway with time and reflection. These include her compulsive approach to health and food.

And while Hemingway used the outdoors as a way to escape when she became overwhelmed – Out Came the Sun describes her going on long walks after the deaths of her mother, father and sister – she now approaches hiking with a healthier attitude.

“It didn’t feel like a drug anymore,” she says.

Once you can examine your actions and the reasons for them, Hemingway says, you become empowered to make different choices.

“That frees you from it being a habit that controls you,” she says.

Part of Hemingway’s growth came from identifying the ways in which she relied on outside approval instead of her own.

“Society makes you believe that you can’t make decisions without somebody else’s approval,” she says.

Communication was also something she struggled with because of the lack of healthy examples from her family.

“That was the thing that I didn’t know how to do as a kid,” Hemingway says.

In Out Came the Sun, Hemingway writes of the fights between her parents that inevitably followed the house parties they often hosted.

“Alcohol, which was as much a part of the family as any of us, inflamed all aspects of the problem,” she writes of her parents’ dysfunctional relationship.

Communication was also difficult between Hemingway and Margaux, who, before she fleetingly achieved fame as a model and actress, was an outspoken middle child who craved attention.

When Hemingway herself found acting through a role with Margaux in the 1976 film Lipstick, she says, she was unconsciously looking to the film cast for the balance that she couldn’t find within her own family.

“It was such a replacement,” she says.

When Hemingway participated in the 2013 documentary Running from Crazy, which examines her pursuit to find clarity regarding her family’s history of mental illness and suicide, the experience was different from a typical role for a television show or film.

Hemingway worked on the documentary for two years on and off with director Barbara Kopple. In addition to archival footage of her father, Jack, and Margaux, the production also included Hemingway’s partner, Bobby Williams, and Langley, one of her two daughters.

The days of her interviews were intense, Hemingway says, and the experience felt raw. She got to a point where she was no longer monitoring how she responded to questions.

While the documentary focused on her family, Hemingway’s experience motivated her to write Out Came the Sun to share a part of the story that she says wasn’t covered in the documentary. While the film touched on possible sexual abuse by her father of Muffet and Margaux, it was important for Hemingway to clarify her narrative with her book and focus more on the inability of her family to feel connected with one another.

“Families are complicated,” she says.

While she is focusing on health and mental advocacy, her acting career is not something Hemingway wants to forfeit. In fact, she says that her self-awareness could improve her craft.

Sarah Sole is an editor. Feedback welcome at ssole@cityscenemediagroup.com.