Social Impact Authors: How & Why Susanne Paola Antonetta of ‘The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here’ Is Helping To Change Our World
An Interview With Edward Sylvan
In many ways I write the way a bipolar person thinks — in quick pieces, leaping, brutally honest. For me, that’s part of being bipolar. I don’t have it in me to dissemble a whole lot. I mean, even if I try. My family tells me that I’m the most wretchedly bad liar they’ve ever encountered. If we’re talking Christmas gifts, I have to leave the room.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Susanne Paola Antonetta.
Susanne Paola Antonetta’s newest book is The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here. Forthcoming is The Devil’s Castle. She is also the author of Make Me a Mother, Curious Atoms: A History with Physics, Body Toxic, A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World, and four books of poetry. Awards for her writing include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, a Library Journal Best Science book of the year, an Oprah Bookshelf listing, and others. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The UK Independent, Orion, The New Republic and many anthologies and will soon be featured on CNN. She lives in Bellingham, Washington and edits the Bellingham Review.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up in a city called Elizabeth, New Jersey. My family — me, my father and mother, and my brother — lived in an apartment that faced a cemetery. It’s actually a really cool cemetery. As an adult, I learned that people like the poet Hart Crane are buried there. As a kid I used to sneak there to play; it was dangerous so I wasn’t allowed to. But I loved graves and being able to read what was written on them and the fact that they were my height.
My neighborhood had Holocaust refugee families — our landlord had a concentration camp tattoo. Of course, I didn’t know what that meant but as a child, you pick things up. I loved Elizabeth and I was very happy there. I had a lot of friends. But I think this other reality was always there too. There is tragedy and bad things happen to people. I was and am a bipolar person, neurodiverse. I’m emotional in a way that makes it hard to shut the tough stuff out. I developed a real hunger for peoples’ stories, for wanting to change minds. Maybe it’s part of having an unusually active fantasy life. It never occurred to me that anything bad couldn’t be changed.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
Even when I was young I knew my mind was very different. I had higher highs and lower lows than anyone I knew. I sometimes experienced things or saw phenomena other people didn’t. Not every day, and it could be but wasn’t necessarily scary. It was just me.
I read and loved Jane Eyre as a girl but the madwoman in the attic, Bertha Mason, always broke my heart. I mean, you lock people up and then judge their behavior? I’ve read studies that by the time kids become teenagers they’re seen thousand of negative images of “madness.” I wanted to show the world that a “mad” woman can be a whole person, one with a positive relationship with her own mind.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
I almost don’t know where to begin! I once got evaluations from a graduate course I taught that said much of the time I came in with at least one item of clothing inside out. I’ve done public presentations that way. Hard to remember during covid, but whenever I was about to do a live reading or a talk, some kind person would run up to me to tuck in a label or point out my top was inside out. I don’t know why I can’t see things like that but I really can’t. I think it’s part of a brain that never seems to sync up with what I’m actually doing in the moment.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here takes on many questions — I tell the story of my grandmother May and her seancing and Christian Science. I visit psychics and interview scientists. I wanted to get answers to some of the questions all these pieces of my life raise: why and how do we think? Do the dead really simply cease to exist? I talk about a life spent wrestling with bipolar disorder, drug dependency, and the trauma of electroshock treatment.
All through that, I am pleading for the valuation of difference. I am bipolar and live sometimes outside of other peoples’ reality. So I am interested in the mind, how it works and how we can fall in love with this wonderful process going on in our heads.
I also share stories of things, like sexual predation, that happen to those who get hospitalized. We have a lot of myths that things are different and better. But google any city and the words “psychiatric expose.” You’ll be shocked by what you see. Like the Seattle Times’ exposes of Western State Hospital here — patients with fungus on their feet, kept from going to the toilet, mocked.
In many ways I write the way a bipolar person thinks — in quick pieces, leaping, brutally honest. For me, that’s part of being bipolar. I don’t have it in me to dissemble a whole lot. I mean, even if I try. My family tells me that I’m the most wretchedly bad liar they’ve ever encountered. If we’re talking Christmas gifts, I have to leave the room.
My books are like that. I tell the story of all these things I mention, including experiencing psychosis. It’s not soft-peddled. I want readers to understand that people like me are whole and real.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
I visited a psychic in Sedona who was remarkably accurate. She told me something happening in my immediate family at the time. It was a crisis that had started two days before — no one knew. Then my husband went in to see the same psychic without identifying himself with me and she told him that truth also. She named a house we had toured together years ago in Macon, the Hay House. It was weird, she was so accurate.
And there was a scientist I interviewed named Donald Hoffman who told me the world we see is drastically simplified from what it really is. That was pretty wild. Once you start looking for that more complex real world, you can’t stop.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
My aha moments over the last decade have been about my experiences of psychosis. I hallucinate. My doctors don’t want to hear about it — they hear the word “voices” and grab a prescription pad before shooing me out. I have told people around me and they get so scared or put off or whatever that they disappear. I hear things like, “Well, I thought you wouldn’t want anyone around when you’re not yourself.”
My aha moment was in that phrase — “you’re not yourself.” I was myself. I am myself. As hard as it may be to understand if you haven’t been there, hallucinations are intimate and personal and part of who you are. I will try to cut down their intensity. But this is me and I want people to know that.
Another aha has been listening to the words of Dorothea Buck, a Nazi sterilization victim with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She said, “In psychosis, I have to be asked what the psychosis means.” Visions matter, she thought and can have much to teach us. I think there would be less of the terrible stigma we have if others could grasp that I am not some sort of alien monster in psychosis.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
Once at a conference a man found me — I had a nametag on — and said he had read my book Body Toxic and then read it again and again over one summer to help him get off heroin. He was also neurodiverse. It was so moving. I felt then that I really didn’t ever have to achieve anything else as a writer. I earned my place on this earth.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Yes. I think — and I write this in the midst of Mental Health Awareness Month — that we have this notion that we’ve gotten past most psychiatric stigma. We have Public Service Announcements and notices on buses (at least in my town), saying this problem is just an illness, there is no longer any shame in having a psychiatric diagnosis. I think in some ways we’ve gotten better about talking about depression and anxiety, though we are not good at communicating the rate at which medications like antidepressants don’t work. It’s not like taking an antibiotic for a case of strep.
I also hear every day, and multiple times a day, people describing anyone they don’t like, from presidents to folks in the family, to annoying coworkers, in terms of mental illness. This person is obviously disturbed, needs a psych eval, is probably undiagnosed autism or bipolar or borderline or whatever. I saw this on social media today — one person posted a critical comment and another wrote, You’re clearly on the [autism] spectrum. This is the essence of stigma. My condition is not your insult. So first, let’s stop using the psychiatric as a metaphor for the awful. Politicians, celebrities, those who have platform need to stop doing this and explain why they are not using mental illness as a way of putting someone down.
Second, let’s recognize that people like me look and sound different. I got a review of a previous book of mine that said I write like a bipolar person and this reader didn’t like that. So let’s understand that difference really does actually mean different. And that it’s the job of the person made uncomfortable to get used to their feelings about this.
Third, let’s get some damn decent health coverage. Within the world of psychiatric diagnoses, a lot of people who are only medicated are dealing with real trauma. It can mask as a disorder, or the disorder can be part of the trauma, or — as in my case — both. Psychiatrists often say, well, that’s for therapists to uncover. But how much of our population can afford or has access to a therapist? No field of medicine should medicate for something without making sure that something really is the problem.
Everyone with a public voice needs to get on and stay on the job of making sure health care is fair, unbiased, and equitable.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
To me leadership is doing the right thing even when it is hard. It’s coming out to say, hey, this is the truth about me, whether it’s about your identity, your body, your history. And it is amplifying the truths of others, carrying forward their realities.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Here’s what I wanted to hear when I first started writing:
One, you will always feel like you’ve failed miserably. Do it anyway. My first negative amazon review was very personal and upset me terribly. I wish I’d been prepared for that.
Two, lots of people will happily tell you you’ve failed miserably or are bad or wrong as a creative person, like my amazon person. Still do it anyway. I have had so many conversations where people warned me not to write about what I was writing about, especially my bipolar history. But hearing from people who got validation from my books has happened much more often than the opposite.
Three, excluding what can unfairly hurt others, be brave! I don’t think anyone wished on their deathbed they had been less honest about themselves and covered up more. I regret already much of what I didn’t say in my books. At the same time, be a voice for anyone around you who needs you to be. Really listen.
Four, always remember that being yourself and living your truth is a message. Trust it. I used to feel as if I had to wait to speak until I knew the “meaning” of everything I wrote about. Similarly, I once had a writing teacher tell me you could never write about God or death. Well, maybe you don’t want to write about these subjects, but if you do, do it! Don’t let anyone stop you from following your creative impulses.
Five, Love the process. Don’t look ahead. I have a bad habit of writing my own bad reviews in my head — doesn’t make sense, she doesn’t have the right to say this . . . I still do it but I can kind of laugh at that voice too.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
By far, the quote by a Buddhist teacher that you have to be kind, because everyone in the world is suffering.
I try to talk directly to anyone I think might be upset with me, have misunderstood me, somehow not benefited from my being around in a particular situation. Of course, sometimes you tell people what they don’t want to hear. There is still good discussion to be had about that. So be kind. Lead from your heart.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Oh, there are so many!! But first I have to settle on Barack and Michelle Obama. Because I don’t agree with everything Obama did as president, but because I think he genuinely cares about getting it right. And Michelle is just the bomb. Who wouldn’t want to have a meal with her? I sense she’d change my life but also make me laugh. A lot. And Oprah Winfrey! I’m always so curious about what goes on in the minds of those who ask the questions.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
My website is susantonetta.com and I have a somewhat irregular blog. I’m on Facebook and Twitter @susantonet1.
I have to say though that while I love the idea of you all out there following me, I would probably also love to follow you. Friend me, write me. I answer all of my mail unless it’s from trolls of course. My feeling about life is that there are millions of beautiful minds out there I want to know, and I hope they find me!
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Susanne Paola Antonetta of ‘The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.