Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I am Lisa gar My guest is Mariel Hemingway, and
Speaker 2: we're talking about what it means to grow up in
Speaker 2: a family with a lot of imbalance and how to
Speaker 2: create balance. And Marie, from talking with you, it seems
Speaker 2: like you are like everyone else. You had a very
Speaker 2: chaotic care. I mean that's an extraordinary childhood, but that
Speaker 2: you are not some person that has seen angels at
Speaker 2: an early age and discovered their psychic powers. You really
Speaker 2: just coped until you found that these exercise and breath
Speaker 2: work and things that everyone can do. It led you
Speaker 2: to a way, a pathway out of something that could
Speaker 2: have been devastating for you. So how did you find
Speaker 2: your balance or what does balance even mean to you?
Speaker 3: I love that you said how. My first book was
Speaker 3: called Finding My Balance, which is interesting because I think
Speaker 3: that finding your balance being present is is it daily?
Speaker 3: A daily thing to do? I mean, it's something that
Speaker 3: you know, you don't wake up one day and oh
Speaker 3: I'm I'm done. You know, life is just this journey
Speaker 3: of like, oh today I'm better than I was yesterday.
Speaker 3: But it's always you're always looking for ways to find
Speaker 3: more presence, more balance, more connectivity. So for me, it
Speaker 3: really is has been a combination of all the different
Speaker 3: things that I've done in my life, some of them
Speaker 3: completely woo oooh crazy stuff maybe, but I also learned
Speaker 3: a great deal from some of some of the things
Speaker 3: that I did, and many of the things that were
Speaker 3: seemingly bizarre taught me a great deal. You know. I've
Speaker 3: traveled to India, I followed guru or all kinds of things.
Speaker 3: I dieted different ways, thinking that maybe how I ate
Speaker 3: was going to get me to a certain place in
Speaker 3: my life, and it was going to make my brain healthier,
Speaker 3: you know, because a lot of that was desperation to
Speaker 3: not be crazy. I actually did a documentary called Running
Speaker 3: from Crazy because I was so frightened that I was
Speaker 3: going to end up like taking my life or something
Speaker 3: and not or be crazy. And I shouldn't use the
Speaker 3: term crazy. Some people get offended by that, but I
Speaker 3: literally thought, oh my gosh, maybe one day I'm going
Speaker 3: to wake up and I'm not going to be balanced,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to want to take my life and
Speaker 3: I'm not even going to know that that's happening to me, right,
Speaker 3: that was a tremendous fear for a very very long time.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of us feel that we could
Speaker 2: snap at a time. I mean, I think that's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you do until you really realize that
Speaker 3: how you live your life, and once you really do
Speaker 3: learn to do those simple things. My you know, again,
Speaker 3: my connection to nature, even as a child, it was
Speaker 3: probably the one thing that really got me closer to
Speaker 3: my sense of spirituality, my center, my feeling of it
Speaker 3: got me to a place of self love. And I
Speaker 3: did struggle with self worth and insecurity for many many years.
Speaker 3: And then I chose to be an actress. God only
Speaker 3: knows why I would use a job where they judge
Speaker 3: you all the time. Right, Yes, you know, I think
Speaker 3: that we do those things. Our life path takes us
Speaker 3: down a road where you have to challenge the most
Speaker 3: challenging things. And then when you face them and you
Speaker 3: realize why you've been doing the things you've been doing,
Speaker 3: you deal with the traumas of what you observed as
Speaker 3: a child, or what you had to go through, whatever
Speaker 3: it is, and they're all stories at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, because once you deal with them, once you
Speaker 3: look at them in their their scary, ugly faces. They're
Speaker 3: really just memories and they're put there to me. They're
Speaker 3: film on the floor. And once you've once you realize
Speaker 3: that things are in the past and you've dealt with them,
Speaker 3: You've talked about them, you've talked them out, whatever, with
Speaker 3: a person that you love, or a therapist or whomever,
Speaker 3: or a lifeboats whatever it is that you choose, or
Speaker 3: a priest or you know, whatever is your path to
Speaker 3: to your being able to share that story. Once that
Speaker 3: story becomes a story, it becomes part of your his story.
Speaker 3: Then you can move on doing whatever you want your life.
Speaker 3: And that's when you become free. And I think that
Speaker 3: my life has been about finding freedoms through the simplicity
Speaker 3: of life's.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is beautiful. I mean, I understand I can
Speaker 2: relate to you. I grew up in a family also
Speaker 2: that is big in entertainment. My aunt is Terry garr
Speaker 2: and I think you might have even worked together at
Speaker 2: some point. Yeah, it's okay, hell and yeah, And I
Speaker 2: mean I watched same Zach generation though you guys grew
Speaker 2: up in the same Hollywood. It was crazy, it was.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Then the things I watched her do. I I loved
Speaker 2: her life, watching her, you know, move throughout the creativity
Speaker 2: and working with people like Jeene Wilder and and I
Speaker 2: mean just lots of incredible Copola and lots of incredible
Speaker 2: not even only entertainment, but the brilliance and the creativity
Speaker 2: and ingenuity was going on in your generation with Hollywood
Speaker 2: was absolutely fascinating and old Hollywood. I mean, I loved it.
Speaker 2: I loved it. And then my aunt had the experience
Speaker 2: of having a MS and she is currently dealing with that.
Speaker 2: And I looked at that and it's it's yes, you
Speaker 2: look at the genetics and you think, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: is that coming my way? And you know, and I
Speaker 2: live with that, and I live with constantly thinking okay,
Speaker 2: is my brain okay? And I don't, you know, It's
Speaker 2: just at any time the genetics can get switched on
Speaker 2: or switched off. And I chose this life through actually
Speaker 2: through a brain injury that I had of choosing a
Speaker 2: life of meditation and not necessarily yoga, but spirituality and
Speaker 2: a quest for the truth, and became a broadcaster out
Speaker 2: of that experience. So I think what I've deducted from
Speaker 2: both your story and mine is that if you don't
Speaker 2: search for it, it can turn on the genetic markers
Speaker 2: and get the worst of you. You have to seek
Speaker 2: something that gives you balance. You have to actively seek it.
Speaker 2: It's not going to just find you.
Speaker 3: Absolutely you have to. You have to you have to
Speaker 3: dig deep. And here's the thing. If people go, oh God,
Speaker 3: that's so scary. I don't want to look at those past,
Speaker 3: you know, those task memories, those paths. I don't want
Speaker 3: to drum them up. I don't want to feel that again.
Speaker 3: And here's what I have to say about that, because
Speaker 3: I've been through a tremendous amount of trauma as a child,
Speaker 3: as a young adult, whatever. But when you dig into
Speaker 3: the past, remember that memories don't have guns. They can't
Speaker 3: hurt you. They're just memories. Yes they can. They can
Speaker 3: look at something, but it's never the same as going
Speaker 3: through it again. In fact, when you can look at
Speaker 3: when you're when you're strong enough and you want to
Speaker 3: be in a safe place and you want to be
Speaker 3: with a safe person, you want to usually be with
Speaker 3: you know, somebody who's skilled at guiding you through that.
Speaker 3: But once you get there, it is it. Memories can't
Speaker 3: hurt you. Only there to remind you that that's what happened,
Speaker 3: that's not what's happening. So we always have to remember
Speaker 3: that because there is there is freedom on the other
Speaker 3: side of looking at what has happened and realizing that
Speaker 3: it's not here anymore. And I think that's the biggest
Speaker 3: problem with PTSD and all these different things, is that
Speaker 3: we fear and or these memories like kind of come
Speaker 3: up and like in a nightmare kind of way, and
Speaker 3: if we can slow our breath down and really just
Speaker 3: take a to go, I'm not a part of this anymore.
Speaker 3: This is not who I am. This is just a
Speaker 3: memory and it's a part of my brain, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't I am not it. I'm bigger than this. I
Speaker 3: can actually be me safely in this present moment. And
Speaker 3: you know, it took a lot of years.
Speaker 2: I'm not going yeah, but no that it's beautiful that
Speaker 2: you've said that and you really believe and you've come
Speaker 2: up with this incredible way of living in this and
Speaker 2: I really love the fact that you have a foundation.
Speaker 2: If you I check this out, anyone listening here, go
Speaker 2: to Mariel Hemingway Foundation dot org. And I would love
Speaker 2: to know a little bit on there. You talk about
Speaker 2: some of the resources just you suggest for mental health,
Speaker 2: but really the breakdowns, what are some of the breakdowns
Speaker 2: in our current healthcare system? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well here's the thing. So Hemingway Foundation dot org
Speaker 3: is nothing more than a resource navigator. Are we there yet? No?
Speaker 3: This is my dream, my dream. I started it with
Speaker 3: my best my best friend about a year ago and
Speaker 3: we've been like it. It's not as easy as I
Speaker 3: thought it would.
Speaker 1: No, it's not.
Speaker 3: But that's okay. But what I want it to be
Speaker 3: is like I don't need it. And the only reason
Speaker 3: I named it maryal Hemingway Foundation is because I thought
Speaker 3: nobody's going to argue with me because that is my name, right,
Speaker 3: so like, and it was so hard to find names
Speaker 3: that were taken, you know about mental health. So I
Speaker 3: just thought, oh, I'll just make it easy. And I
Speaker 3: just want to be a resource navigator. And what that
Speaker 3: means is I want to be able to once I
Speaker 3: raise enough money for somebody to plug in where they live,
Speaker 3: what their mental health crisis issue is, if it's a child,
Speaker 3: if it's whatever it is. If you want holistic help,
Speaker 3: we can guide you towards that if you want, you know,
Speaker 3: if you want a psychiatrist, if you need a mental
Speaker 3: health place, if you need a rehab center. I just
Speaker 3: want to be able to tell people where to go
Speaker 3: and what to do, because what is really so traumatizing
Speaker 3: for people that come. You know, mental health comes up
Speaker 3: sometimes out of the blue in somebody's life. You know,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you're teenager is having episodes and
Speaker 3: he has a psychotic break. And you know, I had
Speaker 3: a very very close friend whose son, all of a
Speaker 3: sudden was just like he would end up in the
Speaker 3: hospital and he was ranted. You know, he's bipoller, and
Speaker 3: they didn't know what to do. They simply didn't know
Speaker 3: what to do, and he kept ending up, you know,
Speaker 3: in the emergency room, and the emergencies rooms are not
Speaker 3: they're not equipped to deal with mental health issues. So
Speaker 3: it's just, you know, we are not designed to help
Speaker 3: people with mental health crisises as as much as we
Speaker 3: should be. Now. There are many places in this country
Speaker 3: that are doing extraordinary work, and I've spoken at many,
Speaker 3: many different places around the country and they're great, but
Speaker 3: they're small, and they're you know, they need a lot
Speaker 3: of funding, and I just want to be able to
Speaker 3: guide people to the different places in their area for
Speaker 3: whatever they want, you know, and everybody has a different path.
Speaker 3: So I'm never going to tell anybody that they have
Speaker 3: to do this, you know. I'm not even going to
Speaker 3: say that the Seven Doctors are something that you have
Speaker 3: to do, although I highly recommend them.
Speaker 2: Okaya, tell them the seven doctors again. You said the doctors.
Speaker 3: So it's doctor's son, doctor, air, doctor, water doctor, nutrition, doctor, exercise,
Speaker 3: doctor earth and doctor rest no doctor. Sun is obviously
Speaker 3: getting light in your eyes, like people don't realize how
Speaker 3: incredibly important the sun early light and late light. Late
Speaker 3: light of the day is the best you can actually
Speaker 3: look at the sun during those times. You know, an
Speaker 3: hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset is safe
Speaker 3: to look into the sun. We were told as kids
Speaker 3: that our eyes would get burned and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: but that's actually not true. You don't want to do
Speaker 3: it in the middle of the day. But sunlight is great,
Speaker 3: is incredibly good for you know, vitamin D and vitamin
Speaker 3: D being a link to helping balance the brain. Air breathing.
Speaker 3: You know, most people don't even know how to breathe.
Speaker 3: They don't, you know, And it's not as crazy as
Speaker 3: it sounds. It's not. You know, you don't need to
Speaker 3: go to a yoga clous You can just do a
Speaker 3: box read in hell four counts, whole, four counts, excel
Speaker 3: for counts, hold forecounts. I mean it's very It's called
Speaker 3: a box rest for a reason. There's breath is extremely important.
Speaker 3: Water people don't drink enough water. And we're made up
Speaker 3: of seventy percent water as adults and hopefully seventy five percent,
Speaker 3: and babies were ninety percent water. And we don't drink
Speaker 3: enough water. People think, oh, but I drink you know,
Speaker 3: I drink ice tea, and I drink I drink coffee,
Speaker 3: I drink whatever. And the thing is water is water
Speaker 3: is light. We come from the sea. Apparently, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know that specifically. Water is so healing and
Speaker 3: it's just so important that we drink enough water and
Speaker 3: that you drink good water. And then there's uh extra size.
Speaker 3: People need to move. As I get older, I move more.
Speaker 3: I don't move less. Now, am I as fast as
Speaker 3: I was? I? Right, Yeah, it doesn't matter, but I
Speaker 3: move more. It's important to keep moving because we're designed.
Speaker 3: That's how that's how we beat longevity is by moving,
Speaker 3: drinking water, breathing. And then there's food. Of course we
Speaker 3: all have to eat, and you know, just eating food
Speaker 3: that's not you know, processed, that's you know, not access
Speaker 3: of anything.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: You don't want to have too much sugar, and you
Speaker 3: don't want to have any kind of fake food. Bobby
Speaker 3: and I say, we call it Jill, just eat real
Speaker 3: food or you're sorry.
Speaker 2: I noticed that your your cookbook. I didn't even know
Speaker 2: you had a cookbook, Mario's Kitchen, but it was one
Speaker 2: of the first one to offer creative, gluten and sugar
Speaker 2: free recipes back in yeah, two thousand and nine. Great.
Speaker 3: I always did everything, so soon it's like now it's
Speaker 3: all cool. I was like, oh no, we should do
Speaker 3: this now. My ex husband got cancer, so it's it's
Speaker 3: very funny how we choose, you know, we have this
Speaker 3: life path and then all of a sudden, you're you've
Speaker 3: got patterns that you have as a child. And I
Speaker 3: took care of him and all that stuff. So I
Speaker 3: you know that that book and that the the nutrition.
Speaker 3: I did a book called Healthy Living for the Inside
Speaker 3: Out that was really kind of inspired by trying to
Speaker 3: help my ex husband get through cancer through food. And
Speaker 3: exercise and meditation, all that, All that I'm talking about,
Speaker 3: the Seven Doctors was just a part of trying to
Speaker 3: heal him because I was wishing that when my mother
Speaker 3: was going through it as a child, if I if
Speaker 3: I'd known, you know, like I would have helped her.
Speaker 3: I'm well, who knows, you know, Like, should I have
Speaker 3: gotten my kid my parents to not drink?
Speaker 2: Probably not.
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