- What does mental health mean to you?
- I think it's about feeling balanced.
It's an aspiration.
I think a lot of people
think it's something
you can kind of just check
off and be like "I did it,"
and I'm like actually it's something
that is constant and in flux.
- Our mental health is as
broad as our physical health.
- We constantly pretend that
there's this distinction
between the mind and the body,
between mental and physical,
but that's just like
not how reality works.
- Or the idea that mental
health in and of itself
is only true if someone
has a mental illness,
when it's like no,
everyone has mental health.
- I think about how
expansive the vocabulary is
for like acts of physical violence,
but how flat a word like sad is.
There are like millions
of forms of sadness,
and it's actually about
not making assumptions,
because people who are
struggling with mental health
can look like anything or anyone.
- I'm interested in what
said to you, you know,
you wanted to explore mental
health, mental healthcare.
- I don't think it was a
specific symptom for me,
it was just the reality.
I'd lost my mom when I was 10 years old,
and my grandmother had
become my legal guardian.
She started getting sick,
she started having seizures,
going in and out of
ICU, and I ended up 21,
literally first like
experience as an adult
having to make end-of-life
decisions for someone.
So I was losing a mom all over again,
but I was kind of expected
to jump right back into life
to get through graduation,
to do all the things I was suppose to.
I couldn't, I couldn't cope.
I was having anxiety attacks
and I was having all these things
that were triggered by my grief,
and that's when I went into therapy,
and thankfully I started
therapy right in the middle
of my grandmother getting sick,
and so that helped carry me throughout.
But it was honestly
just my lived experience
of having no other out that
led me to the fact that
I had to sit somewhere
where someone validated
the fact that this was really hard,
because no one else around me was.
- That speaks to me so much,
like I grew up in a very small,
conservative town in Texas
this fabulous, so imagine.
(they giggle)
People could not deal, so
some of my earliest memories
were just constant and severe harassment,
and there was absolutely
no space that I could speak
about it because when you
are a young LGBTQ person
and you speak about the
harassment you're experiencing,
it outs you, and so what
that resulted in for me
was a suicide attempt
when I was a teenager.
I didn't understand why there was no space
within my family or within my community
to speak about these issues.
Prior to being able to even
access any formal services,
I, like so many LGBTQ
youth in this country,
made magic happen.
My writing practice became my care,
and I don't want to romanticize that
because I wish that
there was infrastructure.
I wish that there had
been school counselors
that were LGBTQ comprehensive,
I wish that there had been
protocol to actually hold people
accountable for harassing
me, but there wasn't.
For me what I love about art is that
it's been such an incredible
modality for healing for me.
When I'm able to write about it
or make an image about
it or perform about it,
and also when I'm able
to be witnessed in it.
- When I was working on
All The Bright Places,
I was writing about
someone I knew and loved
that I was never able to talk about
because of the way he died,
but then getting to put that out there
and hear from readers and talk to readers
and hear from all these
people who feel alone,
like we all do.
- Right, people always want to say,
like the mental health community,
and I'm like "you mean the entire world?"
- Exactly.
So when and why did you decide
to start sharing your story?
- I always understood
that what I went through
didn't have the be the case,
and I wanted to create
world where people like me
wouldn't have had to
endure what I experienced,
because it's so unfair and unjust.
I didn't anticipate how hard that was.
People want to
exceptionalize people like me
as like on the fringe or as an artist,
and I'm actually like no, this
is about everyone, you know?
And also I feel like
there's a way in which
people expect you to constantly
retraumatize yourself
to make a point, and I
think that's something
I really wanted to touch upon.
In order to be taken seriously,
I have to prove to people that
what I went through is real,
and that's not the case
for a lot of other people.
- I think my journey
came when I was writing
All The Bright Places.
I loved and lost a boy
years ago to suicide,
and I carry that around with me,
and the thing I've quickly learned
is that no one wanted to talk about it,
and then finally about 10 years later,
I thought you know what?
I have to talk about it,
and it has to be okay to talk about this.
It never escapes me that it started
with this boy I loved and me, just us.
I didn't think about impact or outreach
or anything like that, and
then to hear from readers
who just say "thank you for
letting me know I'm not alone,"
it's something that I didn't
anticipate, but as you said,
we have to keep putting
that message out there.
At some point, I kind of had
that moment of what am I doing?
Like I didn't actually mean to become
a mental health advocate.
It's not that I don't want to be,
it's just a lot, and I was at a panel
and this reader got up
in the audience for Q&A
and said "I just want to
know if you're going to
"keep writing books like
this for people like me
"who feel like they don't have a voice,"
and I thought if I only
write for that one person,
that's enough.
- I don't think any of us go into it
being like "that's what I want to be."
It's by nature of existing that you end up
becoming this point person for that,
and then you end up having
to retraumatize yourself
for the sake of keeping it up
because at least someone is looking at you
and that makes it okay for someone else.
But it is a lot of hard work,
and it comes with like the ups and down
of having to acknowledge how that ends up
impacting your mental health,
and it's like all circular.
But also, the more you get comfortable
with the work that you're doing,
the more you realize I
really wouldn't have it
any other way because this is
where I feel like I'm actually
making the impact that I
want to make in the world.
- I want to know from both of you
what does the word diagnosis mean to you?
- This is where we start projecting
the physical nuances of
health onto mental health.
It took me months in therapy to figure out
where I was even started,
and it was like in peeling back the onion
that I actually got to a
place where I could say like
I am comfortable with
the labels that I'm using
that identify my mental health,
but understanding that it doesn't mean
that I am limited to that either.
I never want anyone to feel like
just because they don't
have a formal diagnosis
for something yet or
now, that it means that
their reality isn't something
that they're actually
going through because it can be.
- Speaking specifically
about this boy I loved,
he was diagnosed with
many different things,
and they did feel like labels to him,
and I think he did feel
kind of contained in a box,
and like he was the label after a while.
It wasn't him, and he kept saying
"I'm so much more than that,"
and I think society can see people as
once you're diagnosed as
this, that's what you are.
You're this, you're that.
- That's when it gets tricky and wrong,
because the person can change.
- Within each of us is
an ever-evolving story,
and sometimes a diagnosis,
a word, a category
might be helpful, but
sometimes you have to sit down
for a three-hour performance to figure out
even one second of what I am.
- What do you think
about adding more voices
to this conversation?
- I think it's so important.
- Let's do it.
- [Woman] We're meeting on camera.
(laughing)
- Hi, how are you?
- Vivian, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- I was listening in the
other room with the volume up.
- Any thoughts on the conversation so far?
- I love what you were saying about
in order to feel validated,
you have to retraumatize yourself.
I think that's a really
interesting concept.
- About the word sad,
that sad seems so meaningless to people.
- Yeah, and how when you
go through something,
it's like you can't ever get better,
especially if you're a public figure,
because you have to keep
proving yourself as credible
to speak on that by reliving
those horrible things
that you went through.
I just thought that was really well-said.
- What attracted you to the
roles of Violet and Finch?
- I was 14 when I read the
book for the first time.
Now I'm 21 and you know,
they don't talk about
mental illness in school.
It was never brought up at my high school,
there was no classes about it,
so weirdly, your book was kind of,
not my introduction to mental illness,
but also like someone else
out there writing about it.
It's so odd that it's
not talked about more
and there's just this
horrible stigma around it.
To me, it's about compassion.
- So I was diagnosed as being in remission
of bipolar II when I was 16,
and I was on medication until I was 19.
The script and the book
felt so close to home.
I wanted to kind of shed
light on how difficult it is
for someone to view
themselves as needing of help
when they have internalized how abnormal
other people have made them feel.
I mean, I'm lucky that
I pushed through that
and I had people in my life
to help me through that,
but there are so many people who are still
in the thick of it, and
I just thought it was
such an important story.
I just thought it was necessary.
- Thank you.
- What did you guys think of the movie?
- The lens I was watching the move through
was like the mental health part,
but it was very much also like
the grief experience part,
then when I read the book,
that was the first thing
that drew me to it.
It was incredible to see on film
both the dynamics of every time Violet
was up against someone who was like
"why aren't you getting
through this already?"
Like why aren't you moving on,
or like you should have moved on already,
and the expectation and
the pressure of that,
and then also how good of an
ally Finch was in helping,
like no, hey, you're going through this,
you need to figure out,
yes, like how to live again
for yourself, but that
can happen in a way that
doesn't remove the grief.
Because then you're able to say like
this is a thing that is here,
but also I can still learn how to date
and I and still learn how to live my life
and I can go to college
and I can do all the stuff,
and I'll give it permission
to show up when it needs to.
It was the first time I saw representation
in that movie that looked like
little me growing up without a mom
and understanding how the dynamics of that
even played out in relationships.
- Everyone has a very
different grief journey.
You know, this is just
one person's experience.
- It was so great to see
how Violet and Violet's mom
and Violet's dad experience that same
specific loss differently.
- When I was thinking about the film,
one of the things that
I appreciated the most
was like Violet's
character loses her sister
and then has another extreme loss.
It's like life isn't just
one loss and now the other,
it's like you're routinely
just going through
so many different things,
and when you're dealing
with that kind of complex
and constant trauma, for me at least,
humor's been such a great way to like,
well, here we go again, you know?
And that's how you get the kind of ability
to rally through it.
- I just want to learn how to be happy
even if the bad things are happening.
Like that's what I'm looking for.
The same idea, right,
life is gonna happen,
so if I can keep the humor
or some version of myself
within that, that's what
I'm really looking for.
- People said well, writing
All The Bright Places,
like how could you make it funny?
Like how could you
write it without crying?
I'm like, first of all, I
cried and cried and cried
while I wrote it, but I also
laughed, because that's life.
I mean, as we're saying, life
is always going to happen,
and if I count the losses, the
number of people I've lost,
it's just devastating,
but you know, I'm here,
and I'm going to, you
know, we have to laugh.
We have to be able to.
And cry.
- What I wish people knew
about mental health was that
it's something you're gonna
deal with for your entire life.
Certainly there are
moments that it's gonna be
more concentrated or intense,
but there's no actual before and after.
I feel like so much of the crisis is that
we're shocked when something bad happens.
Like one of the only things that we know
for sure in our life is death,
and yet we're continually surprised by it.
Why don't we actually
rather than being surprised,
begin to equip ourselves?
- Having the unique experience is a given,
but it doesn't mean you have to be alone.
The paths we are walking
are alongside each other
in different ways, shapes, or form,
and they're made up of different things,
but it doesn't mean that I
have to walk through it alone,
it doesn't mean that you have
to walk through it alone.
- What I wish people knew, they matter,
they deserve love,
compassion, and empathy.
So many readers I think
don't feel that way.
There's so many young people
I've talked to around the world.
It always takes me by surprise
because that should just be inherent.
You're not alone.
- I think inner fitness
should be prioritized
the same as outer fitness.
We were talking about school,
about how we don't really
learn mental health in school,
but we have PE classes and
that's a requirement to graduate.
I think once we acknowledge that,
then we can work on
eradicating the stigma.
- Anyone who's watching
this feeling extremely alone
or like they don't have an ally,
there are people out there
feeling exactly like you are,
you're not alone in this.
- You just have to keep
doing more things like this.
- Yeah exactly, we have to keep talking,
keep the conversation alive.
What I wanted to say, just to close this,
and the reason that we're all here,
honestly because of you, Jennifer,
because you wrote this
book All The Bright Places,
and it touched all four
of us in different ways
at different times in our life,
and now I hope that the film and the book
continues to just open up the conversation
about mental health and puts
it out into the universe.
We need more of these stories,
so thank you for that.
- Thank you, oh my gosh, thank all of you.
