Sherman Alexie, thank you for this brave, open honest telling of your struggles with mental illness. You have so graciously shared your heart and mind and I thank you.
As for white privilege, you are correct, not all whites live in privilege. Many struggle in deep poverty and it is near impossible to break away from the "system" and poverty policies that trap the poor of all races from ever breaking free. I know this because I am white and I spent the majority of my adult life living in poverty.
We are blessed by your openess and willingness to share your struggles Sherman. Thank you...
Man. This was powerful. Still digesting. This paragraph seems particularly important: “At my healthiest, I can function in those grey areas. I can hold two opposing thoughts. I can be celebratory and disgusted at the same time.”
Dear Sherman, thank you for this essay. It’s profound. It speaks to me on many subjects. As I try to unravel my crazy-ass brain, your words help. Your words, here and in your books and poems, are teaching me, I hope, how to write about my own life and my family.
But I want to ask you about a memory I have. I’m not sure if it’s accurate, and please know that I do not mean to embarrass or attack you. (I think you are a treasure, a blessing, and a crown of creation!) I would just like to know if you remember this (a minor thing, and yet it stays with me).
Did you once give a reading at the Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque across Central Avenue from the University of New Mexico in which you said that when Coyote trimmed his toenails, he threw the clippings down to the world where they became the white people?
I can’t remember if it was you who said it. I can’t think of who else it could have been. Maybe Simon Ortiz? I don’t know. But I’ve never forgotten that moment. I remember that my feelings were hurt, and that I was embarrassed for myself and for all of my white friends sitting there, smiling, loving you, hearing that, and all of us nodding in agreement and shame.
I have a signed hardcover copy of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I must have bought it that evening. I thought I’d read it long ago, but I read it this week and realized that I hadn’t. I know I hadn’t read it because I would not have forgotten your hydrocephalus. I would have remembered that because I had a baby sister born with it; she died at five months old, seventy-five years ago. Every February 3rd my mother would call to say, It’s Kay Lynn’s birthday. Now, every February 3rd I think, I’m the only person left who knows this is Kay Lynn’s birthday. I don’t remember her; I was only eighteen months old when she died; but she’s always been a presence in my life. So I know that I hadn’t read that book until just this week.
It occurs to me now that maybe I didn’t read it back then because I was mad at you. That would have been like me. Just as it would have been like me to buy your book anyway, even though you’d hurt my feelings. (If it was indeed you.) If in my anger, I had not bought your book, I would have somehow showed myself as nothing more than dirty coyote toenails, and not the good white person I believed myself to be.
Not that it really matters. I’m not mad or hurt anymore. At you, or at whoever it was. Yet the memory is still with me, so I’m curious to know if you remember this moment in my life. I know that whoever said it was in Emotion Mind. I get that. I’m familiar with it; I have to guard against it all the time.
In my bipolar journey, I began with Prozac. It helped a lot with my debilitating depression. But then there was the mania, the impulsiveness, the leaping without looking. I remember once saying to my then-psychiatric that I thought that my sister was bi-polar; the doctor said, “I wouldn’t be surprised. You are.” Still, it would be a few years before I was treated for it when I was in a two-week intensive-outpatient program. It was the consensus of the treatment team that I was indeed bipolar. The psychiatrist there prescribed a mood stabilizer, which I’ve been on ever since (along with the Prozac). The meds seem to be working, but I have to be working, too. Always. Which I try to be.
On “Deadwood,” the Calamity Jane character says, “Every day takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.” Oh my god, oh yes! I jumped up and wrote that down.
Jane says it as a complaint, and for years that’s how I understood it. But now, further along in my journey, I see that is it actually a simple statement of fact: that life requires our attention. Every day. Especially, I guess, if one struggles with mental illness. Life requires that we be vigilant about our values, our priorities, our thoughts, our actions. It’s a little easier to accept if I think of it that way and not as a poor-me whine.
I wish you much happiness, peace, and productivity! I thank you with all my heart for this substack site and for your generosity and openness. And for the opportunity to talk to you in this forum.
I am 76, dealing with bipolar since mid-20's. I only found the right medication after getting old enough to get serious help. Regular (email) check-ins with a psychiatric nurse also help. I take this quiz and report to the nurse weekly. https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/mania-quiz#1
Very timely reprint, Sherman. Here we all are, launching into what
promises to be a thoroughly raucous general election cycle with all the complications from last time only loopier, joined by new wrinkles and personalities. Much to re-reflect and newly reflect on, but thanks for the reminder to re-reflect on the role my personal habits and pathologies of thought will be playing as I move forward.
There’s surely abundant peril in what lies ahead, yet cause -- as always -- for hope, witness recent developments in WI and TN combined with the reality that genies of rights do not readily re-enter the now fusty bottles from which they sprang.
I look forward to the conversation, activity, hysteria, all of it. And as always, I persist in hope!
I have read your writings for years and even saw you speak in person though I cant remember where. This article rings so many bells of resonance. A lot of super creative people seem to suffer different variations of bi-polar. Though I have never suffered the extremes you have I have a tendency for "chaotic joy" Luckily for me, I have had a great yoga teacher who knew how to.help me ground and contain my joy and a phenomenal acupuncturist who knows the points to help keep me in balance.
Because of my own experiences and the Elders who seem to show up at appropriate times, I am aware that more amd more people are coming unraveled as we separate from our souls and our humanity.
We have a lot in common. I started writing poetry on Substack last August. My major accomplishment in life was overcoming a dual diagnosis of addiction and bipolar 1. Check out my poetry if you want to douglasblom.substack.com Here is a short poem about my mental health;
Thank you for still being an important presence in the most important place in the world to me: the classroom. I'm a bit not, anymore, there. But many touches with past students who are now parents and hopefully who read to their children, read controversial, gentle, outrageous, thoughtful, non-sensical , and challenge them with honest discussion. Teach them to dialogue. As I know you have and do. How lucky those classrooms are to have you.
From Scottish poet and essayist, Edwin Muir (b1887), An Autobiography. His last sentence:
As I look back on the part of the mystery which is my own life, my own fable, what I am most aware of is that we receive more than we can ever give; we receive it from the past, on which we draw with every breath, but also--and this is a point of faith--from the Source of the mystery itself, by the means which religious people call Grace.
Thank you for your courage and for this essay. It found me recalling so many moments in my life, life with family, friends, but particularly as I read your essay this morning, life with my students. I will never forget your graciousness to me and to them when you visited our classroom. Your essay prompted my remembering and wanting to share with you an incident in that classroom. My team teacher and I role-played for the benefit of their various studies an ongoing argument in front of the students in addressing a question which seemed relative to all that we studied in Humanities: Which is more important, passion or reason? He took the side of reason. So I greeted the class one morning with a huge poster that read: Passion is the soul of reason; reason rears its head to figure it out. The poster became a source of humor but also relative thought. This memory seemed important to me this morning to share with you, here in the midst of a mass murder and news of Musk's Twitter now the source of exponentially appearing hate posts. With your permission, if your essay had existed when I was still teaching, I would have used it I as a valuable source of thought and discussion in the classroom, as I already did with so many of your poems and stories. You continue to inspire and care in so many ways.
Really courageous essay and I'm in awe of your honesty, in not just talking about your mental illness, which in itself is astounding, but in tracing the roots of political extremism in your past to something like this. Not many of us bother with such hard work - personal or political. Most of us can't admit to, perhaps even realize how much of our trauma, childhood adversity or familial insecurity is really doing the talking when we're talking politics.
On your politics as well I'm delighted by your honesty vs. some knee jerk tribal (pun not intended) take. I know something of that because people think I - immigrant, "woman of color" (their words) - must be some kind of hardcore lefty. I won't get into it too much except to say I'm perhaps closest to being a party-less classical liberal/ libertarian. Seen too much socialism and the corruption- and envy-driven "great society" it engenders to be bought into that sham and can't align with the religious right being an atheist. So here we are! :-)
Sherman Alexie, thank you for this brave, open honest telling of your struggles with mental illness. You have so graciously shared your heart and mind and I thank you.
As for white privilege, you are correct, not all whites live in privilege. Many struggle in deep poverty and it is near impossible to break away from the "system" and poverty policies that trap the poor of all races from ever breaking free. I know this because I am white and I spent the majority of my adult life living in poverty.
We are blessed by your openess and willingness to share your struggles Sherman. Thank you...
Man. This was powerful. Still digesting. This paragraph seems particularly important: “At my healthiest, I can function in those grey areas. I can hold two opposing thoughts. I can be celebratory and disgusted at the same time.”
Dear Sherman, thank you for this essay. It’s profound. It speaks to me on many subjects. As I try to unravel my crazy-ass brain, your words help. Your words, here and in your books and poems, are teaching me, I hope, how to write about my own life and my family.
But I want to ask you about a memory I have. I’m not sure if it’s accurate, and please know that I do not mean to embarrass or attack you. (I think you are a treasure, a blessing, and a crown of creation!) I would just like to know if you remember this (a minor thing, and yet it stays with me).
Did you once give a reading at the Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque across Central Avenue from the University of New Mexico in which you said that when Coyote trimmed his toenails, he threw the clippings down to the world where they became the white people?
I can’t remember if it was you who said it. I can’t think of who else it could have been. Maybe Simon Ortiz? I don’t know. But I’ve never forgotten that moment. I remember that my feelings were hurt, and that I was embarrassed for myself and for all of my white friends sitting there, smiling, loving you, hearing that, and all of us nodding in agreement and shame.
I have a signed hardcover copy of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I must have bought it that evening. I thought I’d read it long ago, but I read it this week and realized that I hadn’t. I know I hadn’t read it because I would not have forgotten your hydrocephalus. I would have remembered that because I had a baby sister born with it; she died at five months old, seventy-five years ago. Every February 3rd my mother would call to say, It’s Kay Lynn’s birthday. Now, every February 3rd I think, I’m the only person left who knows this is Kay Lynn’s birthday. I don’t remember her; I was only eighteen months old when she died; but she’s always been a presence in my life. So I know that I hadn’t read that book until just this week.
It occurs to me now that maybe I didn’t read it back then because I was mad at you. That would have been like me. Just as it would have been like me to buy your book anyway, even though you’d hurt my feelings. (If it was indeed you.) If in my anger, I had not bought your book, I would have somehow showed myself as nothing more than dirty coyote toenails, and not the good white person I believed myself to be.
Not that it really matters. I’m not mad or hurt anymore. At you, or at whoever it was. Yet the memory is still with me, so I’m curious to know if you remember this moment in my life. I know that whoever said it was in Emotion Mind. I get that. I’m familiar with it; I have to guard against it all the time.
In my bipolar journey, I began with Prozac. It helped a lot with my debilitating depression. But then there was the mania, the impulsiveness, the leaping without looking. I remember once saying to my then-psychiatric that I thought that my sister was bi-polar; the doctor said, “I wouldn’t be surprised. You are.” Still, it would be a few years before I was treated for it when I was in a two-week intensive-outpatient program. It was the consensus of the treatment team that I was indeed bipolar. The psychiatrist there prescribed a mood stabilizer, which I’ve been on ever since (along with the Prozac). The meds seem to be working, but I have to be working, too. Always. Which I try to be.
On “Deadwood,” the Calamity Jane character says, “Every day takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.” Oh my god, oh yes! I jumped up and wrote that down.
Jane says it as a complaint, and for years that’s how I understood it. But now, further along in my journey, I see that is it actually a simple statement of fact: that life requires our attention. Every day. Especially, I guess, if one struggles with mental illness. Life requires that we be vigilant about our values, our priorities, our thoughts, our actions. It’s a little easier to accept if I think of it that way and not as a poor-me whine.
I wish you much happiness, peace, and productivity! I thank you with all my heart for this substack site and for your generosity and openness. And for the opportunity to talk to you in this forum.
I am 76, dealing with bipolar since mid-20's. I only found the right medication after getting old enough to get serious help. Regular (email) check-ins with a psychiatric nurse also help. I take this quiz and report to the nurse weekly. https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/mania-quiz#1
Very timely reprint, Sherman. Here we all are, launching into what
promises to be a thoroughly raucous general election cycle with all the complications from last time only loopier, joined by new wrinkles and personalities. Much to re-reflect and newly reflect on, but thanks for the reminder to re-reflect on the role my personal habits and pathologies of thought will be playing as I move forward.
There’s surely abundant peril in what lies ahead, yet cause -- as always -- for hope, witness recent developments in WI and TN combined with the reality that genies of rights do not readily re-enter the now fusty bottles from which they sprang.
I look forward to the conversation, activity, hysteria, all of it. And as always, I persist in hope!
I have read your writings for years and even saw you speak in person though I cant remember where. This article rings so many bells of resonance. A lot of super creative people seem to suffer different variations of bi-polar. Though I have never suffered the extremes you have I have a tendency for "chaotic joy" Luckily for me, I have had a great yoga teacher who knew how to.help me ground and contain my joy and a phenomenal acupuncturist who knows the points to help keep me in balance.
Because of my own experiences and the Elders who seem to show up at appropriate times, I am aware that more amd more people are coming unraveled as we separate from our souls and our humanity.
Thank you for sharing your beautiful writings!
We have a lot in common. I started writing poetry on Substack last August. My major accomplishment in life was overcoming a dual diagnosis of addiction and bipolar 1. Check out my poetry if you want to douglasblom.substack.com Here is a short poem about my mental health;
My mind is all about me,
Such a fine mind,
I know I don't know it at all.
My mind is not about me,
Such a sublime line,
To know we don't know it at all.
Thank you for still being an important presence in the most important place in the world to me: the classroom. I'm a bit not, anymore, there. But many touches with past students who are now parents and hopefully who read to their children, read controversial, gentle, outrageous, thoughtful, non-sensical , and challenge them with honest discussion. Teach them to dialogue. As I know you have and do. How lucky those classrooms are to have you.
From Scottish poet and essayist, Edwin Muir (b1887), An Autobiography. His last sentence:
As I look back on the part of the mystery which is my own life, my own fable, what I am most aware of is that we receive more than we can ever give; we receive it from the past, on which we draw with every breath, but also--and this is a point of faith--from the Source of the mystery itself, by the means which religious people call Grace.
Thank you for this, in awe of your honesty and courage
Hello Sherman,
Thank you for your courage and for this essay. It found me recalling so many moments in my life, life with family, friends, but particularly as I read your essay this morning, life with my students. I will never forget your graciousness to me and to them when you visited our classroom. Your essay prompted my remembering and wanting to share with you an incident in that classroom. My team teacher and I role-played for the benefit of their various studies an ongoing argument in front of the students in addressing a question which seemed relative to all that we studied in Humanities: Which is more important, passion or reason? He took the side of reason. So I greeted the class one morning with a huge poster that read: Passion is the soul of reason; reason rears its head to figure it out. The poster became a source of humor but also relative thought. This memory seemed important to me this morning to share with you, here in the midst of a mass murder and news of Musk's Twitter now the source of exponentially appearing hate posts. With your permission, if your essay had existed when I was still teaching, I would have used it I as a valuable source of thought and discussion in the classroom, as I already did with so many of your poems and stories. You continue to inspire and care in so many ways.
Thank you for writing this.
I wanted to say so much more when I read it soon after you posted it. Suffice it to say that the piece struck a chord. Many chords.
Keep doing the good work!
Well, they thought Don Quixote was insane, too, but nevertheless a great book.
He has an X in his name, like you, so you might look into that.
So impressed at how vulnerable, self-aware, intelligent you manage to be all at the same time. Really amazed by this piece.
You and me both, my friend.
Really courageous essay and I'm in awe of your honesty, in not just talking about your mental illness, which in itself is astounding, but in tracing the roots of political extremism in your past to something like this. Not many of us bother with such hard work - personal or political. Most of us can't admit to, perhaps even realize how much of our trauma, childhood adversity or familial insecurity is really doing the talking when we're talking politics.
On your politics as well I'm delighted by your honesty vs. some knee jerk tribal (pun not intended) take. I know something of that because people think I - immigrant, "woman of color" (their words) - must be some kind of hardcore lefty. I won't get into it too much except to say I'm perhaps closest to being a party-less classical liberal/ libertarian. Seen too much socialism and the corruption- and envy-driven "great society" it engenders to be bought into that sham and can't align with the religious right being an atheist. So here we are! :-)