Lets try to come to a place of compassion about mental illness, in all its forms, and help each other find healing.

I think that things like curses or whatever - those labels - come from belief systems, universal belief systems. So when you get a global consciousness of something, then that becomes a quote-unquote "truth" for everybody. You know, "This is what happens in the Kennedy family." "This is what happens with the Hemingways." And the more people believe in it, the more it kind of resuscitates the problem; it keeps bringing life to this idea that a curse exists that you can never get out from under.

I really believe that we all have the ability to come out of our story. But you have to tell your story first in order to come out of it.

My problems aren't so different from anybody else.

The 'Hemingway curse' was such a huge, awful thing for me to have to deal with. . . . The reality is, because there are genetic tendencies toward mental illness, you need to be aware of them.

Since I come from a family of mental instability, and I have suffered depression myself, I knew that living in shame is senseless and painful, and that by talking about it, I have come to peace with it. The stigma behind people's suffering needs to end. We as a community need to embrace these disorders, try to understand them (if only just to talk about them) so that we can cease being defined by them.

You can turn just about any simple act into a practice of mindfulness, and it will nurture and nourish you; it will start your day off in a positive way.