FEATURES
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LifeLines: Melissa Bernstein builds support for mental illness Lilly Weisz ’23 Assistant Creative Director
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elissa Bernstein, co-founder and chief creative officer of Melissa and Doug toy company, lives in Westport with her family and husband Doug. In March 2021, she published her book “LifeLines,” chronicling her journey against depression, as well as co-founding the LifeLines ecosystem, where she actively provides free services and support for those battling mental illness.
Q: What is “LifeLines” the book? A: “My book ‘LifeLines’ was really my own bid to finally say
who I truly was to the world. After sort of hiding everything I was and everything I felt for my whole life, I really longed to show people who I was. I’m a creative and I really create as my salvation. I think many of us who are creative have really stigmatizing qualities that make us feel unaccepted by mainstream society. I needed to not only accept those in myself to feel whole, because I never did accept myself for all the qualities that enabled me to create, but once I did accept them, I wanted to show others who also have stigmatizing qualities that they can be proud to acknowledge and accept those as well.”
Q: How do your LifeLines help you? A: “Once I realized that I’m a vacillating
bunch of emotions and chemicals each and every day, I knew I needed this LifeLines practice to keep me safe and sane in a crazy body, in a crazy world. That practice comes down to three buckets. It comes down to self-care, which is super important. It comes into tools and skills, which are things like saying mantras to myself, mindfulness, exercise and talking myself off the ledge, giving myself compassion. I’ve traveled to the darkest caverns of my soul and touched despair and looked it in the eye. I have no fear in walking anyone through that path or down into that darkness because I know how to find light again.”
MORNING TEA Bernstein drinks tea each morning, which brings a sense of comfort and balance to her day.
Q: How is your personal struggle embedded into “Life Lines”? A: “I felt like I give this persona to many that I’m perfect and have this perfect
life.In some ways I’ve achieved the American dream in having a $500 million company that’s growing, having an amazing friendship and marriage to my partner Doug, six children and all the material rewards that come with having that commercial success. Even though I had all that and have all that, that doesn’t make it so you don’t suffer from mental illness. I was born with a really deep, dark form of depression called existential nihilism, which basically makes you think that life is meaningless and you have no ability to make meaning in a meaningless world. You have to find your meaning. I think in some ways, chasing the superficial societal definition of meaning just takes you away from actually finding that meaning because you’re anchoring to stuff outside yourself that really can’t bring you meaning in your soul.”
Photo by Logan Gornbein ’21
