Writer’s Story Evolves Beyond Her Dad’s Death By Suicide

Rachel and her dad Jeff Zients

You can learn more about Rachel Zients Schinderman and her writing here. TRIGGER WARNING: A head’s up we mention suicide in this episode. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or thoughts of suicide, please dial 988 or visit the 988 Lifeline website or our resources page.

TRANSCRIPT

When Rachel Zients Schinderman was little she enjoyed the perks of having parents who were kind of a big deal in Louisville, Kentucky. 

My dad was a little bit famous. So we would go to the Ice Capades and I would meet Colonel Sanders and like, have pictures of me sitting with him. I liked being the daughter of someone important. 

Her mom and dad were broadcast journalists. Rachel’s dad Jeff Zients – known on air as Jeff Douglas – reviewed the latest movies. They called him the movie man.

He was like the wacky weatherman before such a thing existed. He was like the funny, goofy, in the field guy. 

When Rachel was only four Jeff died, so all of her memories of her father come from stories she’s been told and from video clips. Her mom used the office VCR to record all of his TV appearances.

And so that became the thing that I watched over and over and over again. So whether he was just sort of like the local movie reviewer in like some small city, to me, he was like a movie star because I see him on my TV like all the time whenever I wanted.

This is a story about how Rachel learned to cope with her dad’s death through storytelling, and how she learned to make way for new stories. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

November 3, 1975

One of the videos Rachel loved to watch was her dad’s review of Jaws, because in it Jeff talks about her.

He went to the zoo to review Jaws and, he even talks about me in that review. And that was like the greatest thing in the world because it meant that I existed. We existed in the same timeframe. It's funny. He tells a story when he sets up his review of Jaws and he's like, a few weeks ago, my daughter, Rachel, we took her to see a movie. I don't even remember what the movie was. And she, and putting her to bed, she kept saying, the bears are going to get me, the bears are going to get me.

CLIP FROM VIDEO 

Throughout the video you can see Jeff gaining the attention of zoo goers. By the end he amassed a crowd of fans.

He has all of these like kids at the zoo following him as he does the rest of the review and then they all yell out and he goes ‘remember I am’ and they all scream ‘the movie man!’ And I remember being like kind of jealous of them like I was like wow they got to have that like really fun moment with him.

But at the time Jeff was struggling with depression.

He definitely had been in and out of some kind of treatment. He had therapists, psychiatrist. I from what my mom has said, it's, you know, was like, a nervous, it was probably just intense anxiety. I think he was probably neurodiverse with like it's severe ADHD and like no one recognized that's what it was …but he had definitely struggled and it didn't really show up until like his early twenties.

On November 3, 1975, Rachel’s mom picked her up from nursery school and drove them home.

And she pulled into the driveway and she's now told me that she knew, she knew at that moment because his car was in the driveway and he was supposed to be at work. And he had this big white car with a black top and these are all like the very specific things that are in my brain. And she says that she, she went inside and she kind of forgot that I was in the car. So I let myself out of the car and I followed right behind her. And I guess that's when I said she'd gone up the stairs. And she said that when she heard my voice saying, ‘mommy, mommy, why are you screaming?’ That it like, broke something in her to like that and she knew immediately that I said, I'm going to get emotional. She knew immediately that I could not come up those stairs behind her and see what was going on. He was on our their bedroom floor…She ran down the stairs and she picked me up and she ran out of the house…She was convinced that we had neighbors – they were like these two old women who were sisters who used to be nurses – and she was like, if they're home, everything will be okay. And she ran to their house and of course they were not home. Not that everything would have been okay if they had been.

Jeff died by suicide. 

Upside Down Hearts

For a couple of months while Rachel’s mom Eileen pieced their life back together, Rachel stayed with her grandmother. During that time Eileen found a job and an apartment in New York City, where she’d always dreamed of living and moved the two of them to the upper west side. 

I've got to give my mom mad props if that's the right way to say it for her. But like, you know, she was just widowed …They were madly in love. And she got it together… then she created this really amazing career for herself. 

Eileen noticed that four-year-old Rachel had found a creative way to deal with her grief.

I guess I was drawing upside down hearts and I would give them to her or I would cut out hearts but hand them to her upside down. And she asked me why and I said, ‘that's how my heart feels.’ And she was inspired by that. 

So Eileen wrote a children’s book called “Rachel and the Upside Down Heart.” It was one of the first children's books about parental loss. And that image of her mom writing in the midst of such a hard time became something Rachel would return to again and again throughout her life.

I witnessed her writing it, like, so she her desk was in the middle of the living room. And I think that was like a big lesson in terms of, I can reflect back on like, how did I become a writer? I'm like, well, I watched my mom take the worst thing that ever happened to us and help herself by writing about it. 1:17:30 I think that's where I latched onto the idea that writing can help and sharing our story and not having shame about anything in our lives can help.

For a long time the book sat in a drawer without illustrations. Then Eileen found an illustrator and got it published.

I was like so proud of it…And then the book was published and it was like, you know, if I said, I felt very important because I had like a famous, a famous mother, like I felt so important that I was, my name and my image was on this book. What a gift she gave me in she elevated our story.

LAUREL: So you were drawing these upside down hearts. I'm wondering how else the loss of your dad had an impact on you at that time.

RACHEL: I definitely felt set apart. I have memories of not very generous or kind thoughts that I had when I would have my friends who would talk or complain or be upset about like their parents divorces. And I would think like, well, at least you have a dad in my brain. I never would say that. So I definitely I mean, I think I struggled with trying to find other people who maybe understood because it was a suicide.

NYC

In those days Rachel recalls spending a lot of time alone.

I grew up in a building with an elevator man and so like for entertainment, I'd be like, hey, can I hang out with you and like will you let me? It was like an actual manually operated elevator and I have this T shirt that said kid for rent cheap 25 cents and I'd like go ring the elevator guy and I'd be like, ‘can I hang like, do you want to rent me?’ I used to bike ride around my apartment. I was a latchkey kid, I watched a lot of TV. So I would come home and I mean, when I was a little older, I'd race home to watch my soap operas. I had a big interior life. I was alone a lot.… I wasn't lonely, but I learned how to be by myself… I watched a lot of TV, like a lot of TV. It was like kind of my best friend. 

On her days off Eileen would take them to see Broadway shows and Rachel fell in love with the theater. She could imagine herself up on stage. So in the summers Rachel went to theater camp. Her mom also encouraged Rachel’s writing.

All through school every time I would write something like, an essay for a class, she'd be like, she'd point out a sentence or so, and she'd be like, ‘wow, you're a writer’. And I'd be like, whatever. But it definitely impacted me and built my confidence because she was a professional writer, journalist, and she might've just being, was my mom and encouraging me, but I took it to heart.

When Rachel was nine, her mom met Stanley.

His daughters went to the same school and they were set up by a mutual another parent. He was funny and very smart and a little, scary is not the right word, but I found him a little scary because he was a little standoffish, like banned me from telling camp stories at the dining room table. 

After dating for five years, Eileen and Stanley got married.

He was very, very much my mother's husband or my stepfather. I slept in my mom's bed up until she started seriously dating him. 

When Rachel was 19 and her step sisters had left for college, Stanley asked her if he could officially adopt her.

I didn't need a guardian or he didn't have that say. It was really just in addition to future inheritance rules perhaps, but it was, it was more of a symbol, an actionable thing that he could do to show me. 

When they went to court they found out that because Rachel was born in Kentucky, that state’s policy was to reissue her birth certificate with Stanley’s name on it.

And I was really upset. I was like, because you know. It's one thing to say, it's not really replacing someone, but like it literally was replacing someone. And then he offered to pull the adoption. He's like, ‘well, then let's just not do it.’ And it was really fatherly. It was such like a caring father action that I was like, ‘no, no, no, it's fine. It's okay. Let's do it. I'll just have two birth certificates.’

But it had a lot of meaning for me. It was complicated, because I kind of thought, everything's gonna be like, we're just gonna be like this like perfect family now. We were the same family we were, and not that we were terrible, but like, you know, we were complicated with stepfathers and stepmothers... And I guess I sort of thought like, suddenly it would be all like the Brady Bunch. And, and it wasn't.

She found that her loyalties expanded to include Stanley.

It used to just be like, well, I belong to my mother. And now it was, if they were having a complication between them, I was like, I don't really wanna know about that cause like I'm on his side now too. So it was an adjustment for me and my mom, because me and my mom were like, we were just this unit.

Discovering Her Calling

When Rachel went to college, she still dreamed of becoming an actress but wasn’t sure it was a viable career for her – the auditions, the rejections, the unpredictability of it – so decided to study TV and film production. 

I want to make people feel the way that those actors on that stage are making me feel.

In one acting class the teacher told them to write a monologue. 

And the first thing that popped into my head was my voice as a kid saying, ‘mommy, mommy, why are you screaming?’

She wound up writing about that day in 1975 when her mom found her father dead at home. It was in that moment of writing down her story and sharing it that she thought there may be something to this.

At 27 Rachel was waitressing and pursuing acting jobs when her best friend landed a movie that was being filmed in Louisville, Kentucky, Rachel’s hometown. She invited Rachel to come along.

She got me like two days on the movie, like a little line. So it could justify me being there. And, while in Louisville while she was working, I was like, I'm going to look into learning about my father. And I went to his radio station and TV station. I met a lot of his friends who were still working there. And I went to the library and I looked up like a little microfiche, like his obituary.

Rachel gathered as much information on her dad as she could find and wrote an essay about her experience. 

I sent it to the Los Angeles Times Magazine and they passed but the editor had called me and left me a message telling me you know thank you it's not topic wise it's not right for us but I just wanted to tell you to like keep going and I told that to my mom and she was like, ‘Rachel they don't call to say no.’ She was like, ‘you should be aware of the fact that you're probably you've probably written something really good.’ … So then I just looked up and I sent it to Louisville magazine. And they took it and it was so thrilling. 

Then she realized she could combine her two passions – theater and writing – and reached out to Backstage West and wound up publishing several articles there. She went back to school to get her Master’s at USC in creative writing.

Survivors After Suicide Group

Throughout her life Rachel worried that she had inherited her dad’s mental illness.

I'm very much my father's daughter and I, you know, have dealt with depression and anxiety and the whole thing but I definitely think I struggled with an intense fear that I would go crazy too. So I didn't have any full understanding of what dying from suicide or mental health struggles meant as, you know, a kid. I just knew my dad was went crazy and he died. And so I definitely worried like, am I going to like, do I have the crazy gene? Am I going to wake up one day and I'm like totally a mess, you know? And in all honesty, I definitely have woken up at times in my life and I'm a mess, but sort of had more options.

In Culver City she found resources like a Survivors After Suicide group for people who’d lost a loved one long ago.

So for people like me who grew up in a time when you were not just sent off to therapy if something was bothering you, who now as adults were having troubles with things that they hadn't dealt with. And it was so helpful. 

It was also a comfort to finally be in the same room with other people like her.

Suicide is the bastard child of ways to die. And when you're the child of that, you, I, you feel off a little bit in your worth. Like I wasn't enough for that person to stay here, which I now know is not, it's not based in that at all, but that is something you feel. 

Wedding Day

When Rachel was 28 she bumped into a friend who told her about an actors website that was looking for writers. She wound up interviewing with someone at the website.

And he was like, I have to set her up with Jay. And it was, it's like completely inappropriate … He couldn't call me up and be like, by the way, you got the job, but I think I'd like you also go out with my friend. That would be weird. So he, he had my resume, so he knew where I went to school. So he started, like, he knew we had some people in common. So he called a couple of friends and he was like, who knows Rachel Zients the best? It was, like we met on a Saturday, and I think by Friday, like the next week I was like, done. I was like, that's it. 

In December of 2003 Rachel and Jay got married near Central Park.

I asked Stanley and my mother to walk me down the aisle. That was important to me. And I had, we had it set up where I came down this big staircase and halfway down the staircase, my mom was holding onto me. I was afraid I was going to fall. But Stanley was on my other side and he was just holding the banister and he was not holding me. And I remember having all these thoughts like, my God, does this not mean anything to him? Why isn't he holding me up? Whatever. And I whispered him, I need you to hold me. And it was just so simple of you just kind of got to ask for what you need. And he was like, of course. It wasn't anything nefarious. It was just like, sure. Let me hold you. 

The day marked a turning point of sorts for Rachel.

In my vows, I said to Jay, I said, ‘and when I need to cry, you never say, just get over it.’ And I remember seeing the rabbi sort of like take it in and sort of like lean back at the thought. And I don't know why that visual stayed with me because I was like, but that's what it is. It's okay to carry this story with me. It is not okay to make it the only story. And that was what sort of this marriage was about. 

When it came time for speeches, Stanley stood up. Rachel recalled he’d spoken eloquently at his daughters’ weddings.

And I was like, I just don't know what this is going to look like. I mean, we were, we were close, but I think as close as like he could be, like he was a little standoffish. And I just, I was like, okay, is this going to be, thanks for coming. Enjoy the chicken. Like I didn't know what it was going to be. And he got up and he made a speech for my father. And even now, sorry, even now 20 plus years later, it is so meaningful to me because it was honoring this part of me that has been so sort of hurt and damaged, I guess, without having to say that I'm hurt and damaged. It was such a, it was an honoring of who I really am. We're all here and there's someone else who isn't here. And he is still as impactful in your life as we all are… was like, on this day, I became one man's wife, I became another man's daughter. It was like the first time I really felt like I was Stanley's daughter and that it wasn't just on paper. And so it was sort of everything.

Toward the end of the evening, Rachel got up to thank everyone.

And I was like, my God, I have more fathers than I know what to do with now. Cause I had his father, his stepfather, memory of my father, my stepfather slash father, my grandfather. It was just so nice, because I was never daddy's girl, because I didn't have a daddy. And suddenly I had all of these men who loved me. 

It made me feel like you know, that our stories keep evolving. There's not, you think sometimes to heal you have to be like, okay, and then like that's that and the story's over and I can put that away. And it was like, it's okay to continue to carry this with me because it weighs differently. It doesn't weigh me down as much, but I'm still, this thing happened to me and I'm. It's not something I have to hide.

Mommie Brain

At 35 Rachel and her husband had a baby boy. When he was born, he had birth trauma so they whisked him off to the neonatal intensive care unit. Jay had taken a picture of their newborn with a digital camera and had shown it to Rachel.

And I was like, he looks like my dad, which was just silly because he did not. It was just me really trying to like, I was trying to heal myself like, now I have a baby and everything is better. Well, actually now I have a baby and everything is far more complicated because I have a son who's in the NICU and have all this stuff going on. And it was a real lesson when I looked back on it that like, everything is its own thing. 

She started to relinquish this commitment she had to the story – things like knowing that Culver City was the right place to live because that’s where they filmed The Wizard Of Oz and she was so enchanted by the movie.

I'm not necessarily making choices because of those things anymore. There might be a story there, but the story comes to an end and then like a new story can be told. And just because like I'm the girl whose dad died and like I'm Rachel from Rachel in the Upside Town Heart does not mean that I am protected from future tragedies. And I think there was a while there where I thought it did. I think I had to realize the story does not always have a clean ending.

After she’d had such a healing experience with her Survivors After Suicide group she thought maybe she could lead similar groups. But during her grief counselor training she found out she was pregnant and decided she wanted to focus her energy in a different direction.

I didn't want to continue to be Rachel from Rachel and the Upside Down Heart. Like I used to think of myself as the poster child for grief. And it was like this, like sort of like a badge of honor…I needed to shed that identity so that I could have space in my life for a new identity and new things that were coming in. And that was my son.

After her son was born she discovered writing was helping her process some of the challenges of motherhood. She thought other moms might appreciate a group dedicated to writing about their experience so she started Mommie Brain and for a while she had a column of the same name. She went back to school to get her teaching certificate in creative writing pedagogy from Antioch.

I will always know that when things are really hard for me, that I can find a way to write through it.  It has been a lifeline, it has been a thing to grab onto, to be able to create something out of something that would normally maybe destroy you.

Today Rachel, her husband Jay and their two sons live in Culver City, where Rachel continues to publish articles and essays in Shondaland and the LA Times.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

You can learn more about Rachel Zients Schinderman at her website.