Finding My Balance: A Memoir [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Her grandfather and sister both committed suicide; at times, her parents "seemed not to care enough to parent" her; she was struck with movie star fame at an early age; and she's wrestled with eating disorders and control issues throughout her life. Now 40, Mariel Hemingway says these struggles have shaped who she is today, and presents this memoir as a testament to her own triumph over what some people see as "the curse of the Hemingway family." Hemingway now owns a yoga studio in Sun Valley, Idaho; each chapter of her memoir opens with a description of a yoga pose, segueing into a metaphor for how that pose represents some aspect of her life. So, for example, in the chapter entitled "Mountain Pose," Hemingway writes, "As I reflect on Mountain pose and understand the implications of its name, I can begin to understand my great need for stability and groundness." The youngest of three girls, Hemingway was a tomboy, spending much time alone outdoors. She got her acting start in Lipstick (1976), at age 13, and went on to star in Woody Allen's Manhattan (which featured the "traumatic" scene in which she and Woody made out) and a handful of other films. What makes her book so endearing is her ability to evaluate the actions she's taken over the course of her life-including her decision to have breast implants, her bizarre eating habits and her obsessive need to be in complete control of her life-and still find stability and peacefulness. Her simple writing lets the funny, honest woman shine through. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Actor Hemingway recounts her turbulent life and reflects on her experiences with yoga, beginning each chapter with a yoga pose and a discussion of how it relates to, and enriches, her life. Growing up under the shadow of her grandfather's suicide, Hemingway had anything but balance as a young woman. She achieved early success as an actress but along with that came alienation from her body. Attempting to meet Hollywood's standards, she had breast implants inserted while still in her teens and developed severe eating disorders. Yoga and motherhood helped Hemingway reconnect with herself and become centered. Hemingway's writing about yoga is surprisingly good as she describes the essence of each pose. Her reflections on her childhood and family relationships, however, are less interesting. Now in her forties, Hemingway still doesn't seem to realize that most people have imperfect parents and siblings, and that death and illness are inevitable parts of the journey. But perhaps yoga will help her, as it does so many others, attain a wider perspective. Jane Tuma
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Kirkus Reviews Should leave most readers standing on their heads with admiration. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Actress Mariel Hemingway uses the lessons and practices of yoga as a starting point for her own personal reflections and a larger-than-life family story. The result is a searingly honest memoir that is firmly practical, as well as a moving narrative of the author's struggle to deal with a complex and often stressful life.

Mariel was the third daughter born to Jack Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway's son, and Byra Whittlesey. Her older sister, Muffet, suffered for years from instability, while middle sister Margaux, a celebrated actress and model who was caught up in the fast lane, eventually died of the effects of her driven lifestyle. Their mother, Byra, was darkly moody and emotionally quixotic, and made no secret of her disdain for her husband, while Jack, himself insecure in no small part because of his celebrated father, a man he never really felt he knew, was an indifferent parent at best. Even before she was a teenager, Mariel was forced to assume the role of stable center of her family. In just about every way, she never really had a childhood of her own, a situation that was exacerbated by her sudden thrust into celebrity when she was first cast in sister Margaux's film "Lipstick," then in Woody Allen's "Manhattan." Suddenly, Mariel was a movie star.

Always an athletic person, Mariel turned to yoga and its meditative practice in an effort to maintain her center while much of her life threatened to spin out of control. As the title of this remarkable memoir suggests, much of her adult life has been directed toward finding and maintaining her balance in situations that have been heartbreakingly unsettling and emotionally disorienting. Throughout the book, Mariel uses heryoga training as a starting point for each chapter, carefully describing a particular position, then letting her mind wander into thoughts of the past and her rocky life. As each chapter begins with instruction, so does the book end in the same way, the exercises this time organized in a sequence that can be followed by anyone who wants to practice them. Included are photos of Mariel as she performs the various moves.

Living the life now of wife and mother to two teenaged daughters while still pursuing a career in film, Mariel Hemingway has weathered some of the worst storms that life can bring. Certainly she has found her balance. And in this deeply inspiring, thoroughly fascinating memoir, she shares for the first time the story of that journey.

Mariel Hemingway lives in Southern California and Idaho, where she owns and runs a yoga studio, occasionally instructing classes herself. She appears frequently in films and on television, and works as well as a film director. She is currently in the process of putting together a film based on her grandfather's book A Moveable Feast. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Chapter One: Mountain Pose, or Tadasana

I want to begin this story about my life by simply standing still. Standing on our own two feet with stability and awareness is hugely important in all our lives, and it seems easy enough. I stand here, supposedly straight and stable, balanced and awake. But am I really? I rock my weight back and forth on my feet, trying to find my true center. The funny thing is that I am sure that what's center for me today was imbalance yesterday, or will be tomorrow. But forget that. I make a commitment to nothing except my willingness to be present on my own feet, inside my body, today -- right now.

The premise of Mountain pose, like all standing yoga postures, is to stimulate the body and the mind. I tense my thigh muscles and release them, and after that release I seek a comfortable holding position that feels invigorating without tension. Concentrating on the sensation, I try to bring all the muscles in my body into this pleasant state, while standing in this apparently simple posture. I find that it is not at all a simple thing to do. There are complexities to my body even while I am standing still. Am I making a line of my crown, ears, and ankles? Are my sides extended evenly, with the same length, depth, and intensity? I pull my spine up out of my waist, feeling lightness in the intention of a straight body. My neck is long and an extension of my long spine. I spread my toes to find my solid ground. Ah yes! That reminds me of the importance of my feet. Solid contact with the earth is the root of this posture.

As I reflect on Mountain pose and understand the implications of its name, I can begin to understand my great need for stability and groundedness. Something about stability is so appealing to me in a world where I find it very difficult to feel solid on my feet, or even to feel that I'm inside my body! I think this goes way back for me. Probably, like a lot of people, my sense of instability came from a childhood where too many things were turned upside down. Caring for a sick mother in a ravaged family, I became the parent at a time when I needed reassurance and mothering.

My childhood home in Ketchum was across Idaho's Big Wood River and a few miles upstream from the cabin where my grandfather Ernest had lived. He killed himself with a shotgun just four months before I was born -- the fourth suicide in his immediate family. Was it a genetic predisposition to depression and alcoholism, or an unhealthy family environment that produced disastrous emotional habits? Whatever the cause, it's the kind of family album that gets you thinking. Continued tragedies in succeeding generations of our family have left me coping with a full slate of problems and fears every day in my life. Finding my own answers has come to seem like a matter of survival. That struggle has shaped me. It is the story I want to tell.

My heartbreakingly lovely mother, Byra Louise Whittlesey, or Puck, as she was called, had been married once before she met my father, to a handsome aviator who flew off into World War II right after the wedding and never returned. She was left with an unfading fantasy of perfect romance. In contrast, her relationship with my dad quickly became all too real, and dreams of romance faded. That made our house a loveless and unhappy one. My parents met in Sun Valley soon after the end of the war. Mom was working as an administrator for United Airlines, a mourning widow who was too tall to be a stewardess. At the Sun Valley Lodge she ran into a handsome young bellhop named Jack Hemingway. He quickly fell head over heels for the striking, dark-haired guest with the chiseled bone structure and gorgeous legs. She wasn't an easy catch, though. Her heart was broken, and even had she been willing to share it, there were lots of other suitors. Dad pursued her for four years before she broke down, deciding that a life of travel and adventure with him was better than a life in mourning. It might not have been the best basis for a marriage; I think my mother was never in love with Dad, and he never felt loved by her.

Mom never really consented to her marriage -- that reality came out in scores of little ways in our family. Though she was good at domestic affairs, she resented everything she had to do around the house. I can recall her in her old clothes, powering through the chores with a bucket of cleaning products and rags. The vacuum hummed. But if I walked into the house after she mopped the floor, she would scream, "Take off your damn shoes," or simply whack my arm and growl. This was not cleaning with a smile.

Mother was a great cook, but she seemed to cook only to prove how unappreciated she was. Every day, she would plan an exotic meal for dinner, like Cuban-style picadillo or Italian food with handmade pasta. She was an artist, but all during the beautiful process she would be cursing about how her goddamn husband would pour salt all over the food without even tasting, or go off to eat cheese and crackers after dinner was over. She always cooked, and she was always pissed off at my dad about food. Meals at our house were a time for feeling uncomfortable, and we went off separately afterward to nurse our poor digestion. Today, with my own family, I always try to add more love than talent to my cooking, believing that the loving atmosphere at the table is the most important ingredient.

In 1970, when I was eight, our family suffered its first big shock. Dad, the tennis player and outdoorsman, had a severe heart attack in his forties. No doubt, his abuse of cigarettes and alcohol exacted a toll on him, but I've always thought that his heart gave out because it was broken. He couldn't handle constant rejection by the woman he loved. In any case, he landed in the Sun Valley Hospital for a month, heavily dosed with drugs. The drugs seemed to work on him like some kind of evil truth serum, and he became hostile toward Mom, telling her how neglected he felt. He recklessly plunged into a blatant affair with one of the nurses. Mom was suddenly vulnerable and emotional at home. She tried to hide her embarrassment, but that is nearly impossible in a small town, especially when you have a bevy of interested daughters. Everybody seemed to know everything about our little domestic scandal.

Dad came home from the hospital with doctor's marching orders for the lot of us. He was to avoid stress at all costs, so we were warned to be on our best behavior, or we would threaten his health. No more smoking, which meant Mom had to quit, too. And his diet was to be low-fat from now on, a change that replaced butter on our table with the despised margarine. Yuck! Mom rebelled quietly, but resolutely. When Dad was napping in the afternoon and my sisters were off at school, she would disappear into the closet-sized laundry room to "secretly" smoke. Once, I remember rounding the corner looking for her, baby doll in my arms, only to meet her emerging from the bathroom followed by billowing clouds of smoke. She had a matter-of-fact look on being caught, and responded to my wide-eyed disapproval with a simple "What?!" It was clear she wanted no answer when she slapped my bottom and pushed me into the kitchen. There was to be no talk about the foggy bathroom, ever. "The hell with him," she would say under her breath.

Dad quickly got over his affair, but the damage to their marriage mounted daily. We were always tense. Dinners got so bad that we gave up the kitchen altogether and took to eating my mother's gourmet cooking in front of To Tell the Truth or Jeopardy! Life spiraled into a dull hell. The center of my family life at home was the older of my two sisters, Muffet. She was eleven years older than I, and made me feel more loved and cared for than anyone else did. When she was home, she would pick me up from school and drive twisting down the road like a snake. While I shrieked with laughter, she would explain that I should never get sun on my face or squint if I wanted to avoid wrinkles. She would hold her beautiful face exquisitely still to demonstrate. But Muffet disengaged from the awful family dynamic. Off on her own, she developed a dark secret, one that is painfully obvious in hindsight. She escaped to spend a lot of time during the sixties in northern California, hanging out at Grateful Dead concerts. I recall my mother berating her for her velvet capes, dark lipstick, striped bell-bottoms, and bare feet. She was screamed at for her detached attitude and disrespectful behavior. My confusion mounted as this beloved free spirit got into chilling rages aimed at my parents. None of us had any clue that she was often tripping on LSD.

I particularly recall one day when I was eleven. I had come home from school, eaten masses of celery with peanut butter, and gone out to the backyard to jump on my trampoline. I was jumping and back flipping, trying to touch the clouds with my fingertips, when I heard yelling from inside the house. Unlike the usual yelling of a volatile family, this was incredibly urgent -- so urgent that I bounced to the ground and ran for the house. Inside, my mother and Muffet were fighting near the stairway. I could distinguish two different sounds in the ruckus. Mom was trying to calm Muffet down, talking gently and quietly, while my sister was screaming obscenities about a fictitious life as an artist in Paris. She said she needed to get back to her roots there. I didn't know about her roots, but she had just returned from studying at the Sorbonne, where she had perfected her French. She was wildly claiming to be a painter and the lover of Picasso, alternating between English and French, all in a scream. I was surprised that my mother, whose back was toward me, was being so submissive; it was not her style at all to back down when being confronted. But she sounded terrified.

I moved closer to see if I could help break up the fight, and from my new position I could see that Muffet was threatening Mom with a pair of scissors held inches from her face. I didn't know what to do -- scream, grab Muffet, run away, or call the police -- so I ... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.