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