Poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths says she won’t let pain be ‘the engine that drives the ship’

Transcript:

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. The day that writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths married writer Salman Rushdie was expected to be one of the best, perhaps the best day of her life. But her dearest friend, Aisha, who was set to speak at the wedding, never arrived because she suddenly, shockingly died. That triggered Griffiths’ dissociative identity disorder. She’ll explain what that means a little later.

It was only 11 months after the wedding that Rushdie was stabbed multiple times while being interviewed onstage at the Chautauqua festival near Buffalo, New York. Griffiths was home in New York City at the time and had to figure out how to get to her husband, not knowing whether she’d find him still alive, what their future would be, what her future would be. When she got to the ICU, he was hanging on to his life. His face was so disfigured from the wounds, the stab that blinded him and the swelling that she refused to allow him to look in a mirror.

Griffiths’ new memoir, “The Flower Bearers,” covers this period, as well as her childhood, which pretty much ended when she was 11 or 12 and her mother was diagnosed with kidney disease. She also writes about her relationship with Aisha and how they initially connected over being Black female poets trying to find their voices as writers and a place in the literary world. Rachel Eliza Griffiths is also the author of the novel “Promise” and several poetry collections, including “Seeing The Body.”

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, welcome to FRESH AIR. I really like your book a lot.

RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS: Thank you so much, Terry.

GROSS: And I’m going to call you Eliza from here on in because that’s how you prefer to be called. So let’s start with your wedding day, which you describe as both the best and worst day of your life. Best because you were getting married to a man you really loved and who loved you, too. And worst because of your dearest friend’s disappearance and death. How far were you into the wedding when you found out that she was dead?

GRIFFITHS: I did not find out, and I remember it quite clearly, until just after the formal wedding portraits had been done. And so I was in this wonderful state of having just gotten married and this kind of golden light at the end of a September day. And I started to notice that there just seemed to be a shadow on things. And the people, my loved ones who were there, their voices and manners had changed. And I’m there in my wedding dress. I’ve just gotten married. And something, this kind of storm or coldness, kind of swept over things. And I wanted to go back to my hotel suite.

My phone was missing. I wanted to check on my friend to see if she was OK. I’d been told she’d had COVID and that was why she wasn’t coming. Later on, of course, Terry, I realized that my friends and family were just all working really hard to protect myself and my husband and that joy on that day. But the minute I got back to the hotel, in an effort to locate my phone, I suddenly was able to see messages that then – that’s how I learned about what had happened.

GROSS: You have dissociative identity disorder. And that kind of kicked in on your wedding day. Could you describe what that is, what the disorder is?

GRIFFITHS: So dissociative identity disorder, some people call it DID. It’s a kind of new term to describe a diagnosis of, you know, severe dissociation. Some people have more severe forms of it. I would put myself on a more kind of highly functional scale. DID usually comes into play after experiences of severe childhood trauma. And I have learned and researched and tried to educate myself to help myself live with this diagnosis.

What happened on my wedding day, I think, with my DID is that the level of dissociation that I experienced that day matches the kind of intense trauma and shock that my body went into, which means even now that many parts of my wedding day are blacked out in my memory and are not available to me. Every now and then, I might get a glimpse. Or if I’m triggered, I will see some aspect of myself or that day. But it’s very hard for me even to look at photographs or anything from my wedding day and feel connected to it in the way that I’m sitting here having this conversation with you. And that is also a kind of grief.

GROSS: What does dissociation mean?

GRIFFITHS: This is a kind of word, as a writer, I can ask 10 people what it means, and they’ll all say something different. For me, I feel that it’s a part of my mind and my body that attempts to protect and cope in moments where I feel, you know, flight or fight and I’m trying to get away from something – often externally, or it can be in memory – that might cause me a pain or a kind of mental assault that I will not be able to withstand. And so I’ve learned to see my dissociative identity disorder as a protector. I’ve befriended it. I’ve learned so much about it, so that I don’t feel like I’m out of control or I don’t know what’s happening.

GROSS: But just to be more specific, you actually have alter egos that kick in, like, versions of yourself at different ages. Could you just describe that a little bit so we understand a little bit better what you go through?

GRIFFITHS: Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things I write about is how if you picture maybe, you know, the same version of yourself, you know, in a car. And there are different people driving it at different times, but you’re all in the same car and you’re all the same. So it’s connected to me, ultimately. It’s just that it kind of is a container or a space that is very explicitly attached to often a memory or kind of just a state of being, is what I would describe it.

So there are moments when I’m in my day. For example, I’ll think of myself. You know, my alter as an artist is connected to my alter who is a young child. And my alter who, in my 20s, as a young woman struggling to be an artist and becoming, you know, the person I’m still becoming, that’s a different set of memories and a different kind of character. But they all kind of visit me. I have a future alter who is a really lovely, kind of bold, dazzling older woman. And her name is June, and so she helps me not sweat the small stuff. And she has a lot of humor and style and a chic. And she takes care of me.

GROSS: Let’s get back to your wedding day. Did your alters show up that day?

GRIFFITHS: I don’t really remember, I have to say. I know there was a moment literally where I felt I was looking down at this woman who was this gorgeous bride. And the agony and anguish in her body, she was screaming. She was – people were holding her down so she wouldn’t hurt herself. And then I just left. And I think that was all that was available to try to prevent myself from witnessing such pain and to see myself surrounded by such love, but also the pain of it. I will never have closure over that. And that’s OK. I can accept that now because I’ve done so much work to comprehend all the different things that were happening on that day.

GROSS: I interviewed your husband, Salman Rushdie, after his memoir “Knife” was published. And “Knife” is about the knife attack on him when he was being interviewed at the Chautauqua festival in western upstate New York. And in that book, he describes the wedding day briefly. And he describes it as a day of, like, beautiful weather, a day of joy. He doesn’t mention the death of your friend, Aisha, and the crisis mode that you were in. And I’m wondering if you read the book before publication and what you thought of that omission.

GRIFFITHS: I read different parts of the memoir as Salman was writing it. Salman and I had a discussion about the writing in “Knife” about the wedding day. And he was very clear that, you know, this was my story to tell, as far as what happened on the wedding day. And I think in the arc of “Knife,” having suddenly a detour to describe a very traumatizing wedding day would’ve changed the lens for the arc of “Knife” and what “Knife” was focusing on. You know, unfortunately, to have these two events for me happen within months of each other was something that drove me to write my memoir.

But he and I agreed that I would spend my energy and my attention and my focus on the wedding day because Salman didn’t have access to a 17-year friendship and sisterhood with my dear friend. There was so much more dimension and nuance in the day that wouldn’t have fit inside the space of “knife.” And so that was a decision, Terry, that we made together as writers, but also as husband and wife, that that would be a space for me to go back to when I felt strong enough and kind of fluent enough to write about it or to think about it and think about what mattered most that day to me.

GROSS: So, you know, he helped you through that crisis after Aisha died. And it sounds like you were and are really deeply in love. But as you said, 11 months after your wedding, he was stabbed multiple times by a man fulfilling the fatwa, a religious decree issued by Iran’s ayatollah calling for Salman’s death because of his novel “Satanic Verses,” which the ayatollah considered blasphemous. It’s a miracle your husband survived. And he believed that the threat of the fatwa was over, and I don’t think he had constant protection anymore. Did you think that, too, that this was no longer anything that the two of you needed to worry about?

GRIFFITHS: I truly thought it was a past chapter of his life. I truly did. We were together for four years. I think we married in four years after meeting. And nothing in our day-to-day life or in our travels, in our journeys or anything seemed to suggest any kind of imminent threat or distant threat or anything. And so there was no anticipation. There was no weariness. There was no, this is this kind of specter or shadow hanging over our lives. We were really enjoying each other, and we still are. But this was not something that was on our radar at all.

GROSS: My guest is Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.” We’ll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE INTERNET SONG, “STAY THE NIGHT”)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.” It’s in part about the day she married Salman Rushdie, which is also the day her dearest friend suddenly died. Eleven months later, Rushdie was stabbed multiple times and nearly killed while he was being interviewed onstage. She also writes about her mental health issues, her late best friend and her childhood.

Can you describe how you found out about the knifing?

GRIFFITHS: It was August 12. It was a Friday. Again, it was this kind of beautiful summer morning. I was at home with my dog and some books and some coffee and just kind of having a quiet morning by myself. And a dear friend phoned me and said, you know, where are you? And I said, oh, I’m home. And she and I had been trying to make plans to see each other, so when she called that early, I thought, oh, she’s calling me to make plans. But her voice immediately was very, very different. And so she said, you know, I’m coming over right now. Salman’s been hurt. I’ll be right there.

And I just didn’t know what that meant. I thought he was up at Chautauqua doing an event. He’s done a lot of events since I’ve known him, and so I just really didn’t understand. But the way her voice sounded, I knew it was really terrible. And so I kind of sprang up and was running around the house trying to grab clothes, and I fell down the steps and hurt myself really badly. And she showed up, and, you know, the rest of the day became a nightmare. And that was how it – it was just an ordinary morning. And that is kind of sometimes the thing that can shock you. And that day remains a mark of a different life that opened up immediately for me.

GROSS: When you fell down the stairs, did you feel, like, less competent and less able to hold things together? I mean, falling down the stairs is pretty horrible. But to do that as you really have to rise to the occasion and know what to do – you had to, like, charter a private plane so you could get there as soon as possible. It’s like an eight-hour drive. And you had to show up strong. You had to be capable. Did it shake your confidence when you fell?

GRIFFITHS: I think falling down the stairs was one of the best things that could’ve happened to me, and here’s why. When I got up and realized I hadn’t broken my neck or broken a bone, I just really was like, that’s the last time you fall down. You cannot risk your safety. You cannot be running around with your head off your shoulders. You need to focus now. It was very clarifying because, literally in seconds, I really had no control of my body, my emotions. I was just kind of in free fall.

And when I got to the bottom of this flight of stairs, I just thought, Rachel Eliza, stand up. Get up. Get focused here. You don’t have time to fall down the stairs and be a wreck and be crying in a mess. Like, you’ve got to bear down now. And so when I look back at that moment, you know, in that moment, I actually really did feel like, hey, that’s it. You’re done with falling down. You have to go forward and get through this day, and you don’t know what’s coming, but you’ve got to be present in every single moment. You’ve got to pay attention now, where you put each foot down and walk. And that’s what happened, you know, for me, after taking a really, really violent tumble down the stairs.

GROSS: He describes you during this period when he was really badly injured, and it’s a miracle he survived. And then as he slowly started to heal, he describes you as his rock, overseeing his care. Everything was filtered through you. You were the one in contact with his medical team, the police, the FBI, security. It all went through you. You write about your feelings of helplessness, paranoia, hypervigilance. What were you experiencing during that period when he saw you as his rock?

GRIFFITHS: I think there was a great deal of dissonance for me. When I was caring for someone and doing all of these things, I didn’t cry in the hospital room because I just didn’t think that would be helpful. And really, I didn’t have the energy. I had to conserve energy for all of these different balls that were all in the air. And when you’ve just married someone and now you’re responsible for their survival, you’re part of being involved in life-or-death situation, you don’t really have time to tally up how strong you are or how brave you are or how courageous you are. You have to keep going. And I was in survivor mode. So I would have very vulnerable moments. I cried in a lot of corners and stairwells, and yeah, I threw up a lot. I was really sick. My whole body was in shock. And at the same time, I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know if it’s innate or learned. But when there is a lot of pressure and things are kind of going to hell, I will focus and bear down.

GROSS: To go in such a short amount of time from bride to caregiver, what were some of your fears as he slowly started to heal? – because I think in situations like this, both people can be really profoundly changed by the experience of trauma. And I mean, did you ever question whether you’d still both be in love with each other when the healing was done? – you know, to the extent that you can heal when one eye is blinded by the knife and, you know, I think three fingers are numb forever. And I mean, there was a lot of permanent damage that was done that you don’t heal from.

GRIFFITHS: I never questioned the love. I think what has been more dehabilitating (ph) are the physical consequences of the violence that was done to him and, in a way, to me as well. I think it’s hard to watch the love of your life struggle with blindness, with impaired mobility and to feel exhausted. But I’m also trying to really look at what is there, you know? The knife didn’t take away the mind inside of my husband. It has not taken away his curiosity. It has not taken away how romantic he is and how he loves to plan date nights for us and, you know, watching movies and traveling and trying to spend as much quality time together as we can. I think this experience makes you think about time. And I think because I am married to someone who is much older than me, there is a sense of time, time passing, being present and really filling the time up with love. And there are moments when we are very human with each other, like any other marriage, but we really laugh a lot, and we really try to support each other.

I think there’s something that happens – and you were talking about caretaker and caregiving. You know, caregivers and caretakers can have as much trauma as the person, as the loved one that they are caring for. It’s just a different iteration. But there’s a kind of indescribable bridge and bond we have having survived such an experience that has reinforced the most wondrous and beautiful and, you know, incandescent spaces of this marriage and this friendship. This friendship is beautiful, and I’m grateful for it, and that gives me a lot of strength and courage to just keep going. I just have to keep going.

GROSS: My guest is Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.” We’ll talk more after a break. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my interview with poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir, “The Flower Bearers,” is in part about the day she married Salman Rushdie in September 2021. It had a joyous start and a horrible ending when she found out her best friend, Aisha, had suddenly died. Only 11 months later, Rushdie was stabbed multiple times and nearly killed while he was onstage being interviewed at the Chautauqua festival.

Griffiths also writes about her own mental health issues – she has dissociative identity disorder – her relationship with Aisha and her childhood, which ended when her mother was diagnosed with kidney disease, turning Griffiths into a part-time caregiver who was constantly worried about her mother. In this part of the interview, we talk about a mental health crisis. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, you can call or text for help at 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline. That’s 988.

I want you to describe a dissociative episode that says something about when the police intervene in mental health crises, how they don’t always know how to deal with it. So let’s start at the beginning with the dissociative episode that caused you to call the suicide prevention and crisis hotline.

GRIFFITHS: There was a moment where I was in my 20s. I was just having a really difficult time. And I really, at that point in my life, didn’t have a grasp yet on my dissociative identity disorder. And a day came, a morning. I was working on poems. I was kind of, again, having this morning where before I had to go teach and be elsewhere, I was just alone. I realized there is an aspect of me that is so distressed, that is so under duress, that is so hopeless and so despairing that I was really concerned for myself, that the other parts of me that wanted to keep working on my poem or to have some breakfast or to sit with the dog for a minute would not be able to counter or withstand this particular aspect of my personality.

And I felt that it was those parts of me that forced me to pick up the phone and call, you know, the suicide prevention number that I kept on my desk. I called that number. There was someone I could speak to and describe, you know, how distraught I was. But I also realized that there were different kind of voices coming from me, saying I’m worried about myself, and at the same time, a voice saying this is the only option for me. No one can help me. I’m tired of bothering my family, burdening my friends. The shame, the stigma, the despair.

I think, on the other end of the line, as it is their job to listen carefully and decide whether you just need to talk to someone or if there needs to be a next action. And the next action involved law enforcement showing up to the door of my apartment in Brooklyn. And unfortunately, what then took place was a kind of criminalizing of this attempt of me to help myself, to go toward professionals rather than, you know, call a family member or a friend.

And, sadly, when I attempted to get the professional help, it immediately torpedoed into a very kind of violent and traumatizing moment. And then that moment ended up with a short ride to Long Island College Hospital. And I’m handcuffed. And, you know, I’m a criminal even though the number that’s supposed to help people, you know, was not helping me. What happened to me, I’m hoping it’s rare. But sadly, I think it happens more than it should happen. And I’m sorry for those who have had those kinds of experiences.

And I have to tell you, after that experience, that experience, again, the silver lining is I found the therapist who I’ve now been working with for over 15 years, who has worked with me about DID. That moment in my life pushed me to find the help that has now transformed me. I want to live more than anything. I want to show up. I do not want to die. And in these past years, myself, versions of myself have died on my wedding day, on the attack on my husband. But I wake up and I’m so grateful to wake up. And so I’m looking now back at that episode as a real pivotal moment in my own narrative arc of who I’m becoming as a person.

GROSS: The police mishandling you, that’s a problem of who we send to help, you know, to get you to a hospital. I mean, like, if you’re having a heart attack, they don’t send the police. They send EMTs. They send people who, you know, have equipment to help save you, who have some medical expertise, and they take you in an ambulance. So it’s a problem with the system.

GRIFFITHS: And I just want to say that that number exists and helps thousands of people – and that I want to be certain and intentional to say that I saw that number as a lifeline, as a flag, as a place where I could bring my experience in that moment to a space where I felt I could be helped. And so I want to be clear that I don’t want to discourage anyone from calling any resource that they need in such a moment for help. The woman that I talked to when I phoned the number was magical, was wonderful. And I felt as though, you know, just talking to someone, someone listening, was excellent. And that I must praise because that is a hard job for someone to have. And I’m very grateful to that woman, whoever she is, that helped me now be who I am now and to be alive.

GROSS: So what I’m about to say isn’t to demonize all police. But three officers came to your home to take you to the hospital. And one of them, he not only handcuffed you, but he really hurt your wrists. I mean, the handcuffs were too tight. He struggled to put them on you while you were, you know, like, put on the ground or pushed onto the floor to cuff you. And you were complaining about how much it hurt and how bruised your hands were becoming, and it didn’t seem to matter. I mean, that is not the right way to treat someone who voluntarily called a hotline for mental health help. So – and that’s why you used the word criminalized because you were treated like a criminal, not like somebody who was, you know, asking for help to save their life. Now, your parents, when they were younger, they were both police officers.

GRIFFITHS: Yes, and that’s the irony for me is that I’ve grown up with wonderful, you know, law enforcement and having a very positive memories of law enforcement and police. My parents met in Washington, D.C. They were both police officers, and that’s how they met. My dad was a rookie. My mother was his training officer. He asked her out for a date. And that’s part of my, you know, birth story. And so again, for me, it’s that kind of real contradictory space of, you know, my parents were officers. I have family members in law enforcement, and yet it can be a same moment where I’m kind of getting body slammed to the ground. And so, you know, that’s just really complicated. There’s not an easy way to explain that.

And I’m unwilling to make some flat, general statement about law enforcement because I see the faces of my parents in their uniforms. I see the faces of law enforcement who helped my husband and I when we went through just this worst time. So it’s very complicated for me. And I’m sad now in that moment for those officers, whatever morning they had or what they were going through, that they felt that that was the appropriate action in that circumstance. You know, I was not armed. I was not violent. I was very weak and troubled, but I was not, you know, threatening.

GROSS: My guest is Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.” If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, you can call or text for help at 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. That’s 988. We’ll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.” It’s in part about the day she married Salman Rushdie, which is also the day her dearest friend suddenly died. Eleven months later, Rushdie was stabbed multiple times and nearly killed while he was being interviewed on stage. She also writes about her mental health issues, her late best friend and her childhood.

Let’s talk about another turning point in your life. You’ve had some pretty difficult turning points. And the one I’m referring to now is your mother’s death. She was diagnosed with kidney disease when you were 11 or 12. You found her in bed one morning with blood dripping from her eyes, which was very traumatic for you, in addition to being traumatic for her. She had a kidney transplant. How did it affect her ability to take care of you and your siblings once she got sick?

GRIFFITHS: I think it changed the course of my childhood. When you have a loved one who is diagnosed with something like kidney disease, the trajectory of the family changes. And what I do know is that my mother tried with all of her strength to maintain a normal household for myself and my siblings. I’m the eldest child of four children, and so I think my friendship with my mother, when this happened, it was hard for the friendship in my mother because I knew I was going to be there for her but help care for her. I mean, she had almost like a bucket of medication that she had to take. She did peritoneal dialysis at our home where, you know, we would have to wear surgical masks to sit with her while she was doing this. Every 5 hours of every day for over a decade, she would have to do this at-home dialysis exchange. And it was really hard to witness.

She was young. She was vibrant. She was very ferocious, and she would have to take medication that sometimes would keep her in bed for half the day. She would get tired. I remember many an evening to sit with her and rub her feet or comb her hair or just take care of her. And, you know, no one would tell an 11- or 12-year-old, like, you’re a caretaker now, because this was my mother, this is my best friend. And so it changed me. And she died at age 59. She was a baby. Fifty-nine, you’re just getting started, you know? But she was very present and vivid and vibrant and unforgettable in those 59 years that she was here. And I hold on to every single year with all my heart.

GROSS: I will add here, you loved her. She loved you. But you say in your memoir, you know, that as with many mother-daughter relationships, you were also very angry with her a lot of the time and that in expressing her love, she also felt free to harshly criticize you in ways that made you doubt your own capabilities and that she also had a way of damaging the people that she loved. Can you explain a little bit more about what you mean about that?

GRIFFITHS: I think my mother was worried about my security and my safety. And when she made decisions or comments that were critical, I now can look back, and I can put a context around why my mother might have behaved a certain way. I can also, you know, think back to her own childhood. She had to raise herself. Her mother, my grandmother, died at age 36 from cervical cancer. She had eight children who were split up as children. They couldn’t stay together. They were kind of orphaned and siphoned out to relatives. And then my mother also worked in law enforcement and saw some really ugly sides of humanity. And so I think she was worried. And also I was this kind of creative, weird awkward – she used to – I found out later after she died, she would tell people that I was her flower child. You know, she would say, oh, my flower child is doing this or that. And so I – you know, I wasn’t going to fit the maybe, I don’t know, standard manual for parents. I was just really out there.

I think my mother also – if I look at her now as a young woman with four children, and her body is in failure, you know, in this way, the anger she must have had, the frustration, the sorrow, you know, the depression. I can hold all of these things now, and all of these things can be true at the same time. So I think some of the ways that my mother and I, when we clashed, are ultimately, you know, reflected in how much she loved me and wanted to see me be whoever I could be, but I had to do it on my own terms.

GROSS: Yes, and that is a big but because who you wanted to be was a writer. I mean, when you were very young, you were…

GRIFFITHS: Yes.

GROSS: …Already deep into books. You knew you wanted to write. And your mother’s attitude was, that’s not a career, stringing sentences together. You’re not going to make any money. It’s not going to be a thing. So, you know, be a doctor, be a lawyer. A lot of people have heard that from…

GRIFFITHS: Yes.

GROSS: …From their parents, but it was particularly wounding for you because your identity was so totally wrapped up in books and in words, language, writing. And to be told – it’s like being told, you’re not who you are. You’re a fraud. You’re not who – you know, she called you a fraud.

GRIFFITHS: Yes.

GROSS: And, you know, you can’t strip an identity from a child who is wired to be that way. I mean, it sounds like it wasn’t even your choice. It was your essential being.

GRIFFITHS: Yes. I mean, I just knew when I was a young child, that was fully formed in me. I’m an artist. I’m a storyteller. You know, the minute I could hold a pen or a pencil, you know, I just wanted to make art and listen to stories and tell stories. And growing up, you know, some people in the Black community – if you tell stories, you’re a liar. To lie is to tell a story. So immediately, it’s like, well, I want to tell stories, you know? Oh, I’m a liar.

But my mother, I would find out, wanted to be a journalist, and she never got to see that through. And so then she has this daughter who arrives after she had actually had a stillborn child, and I’m saying, I’m going to write. I’m going to be – this is a writer. I think that must have been really complicated for her. And I have to share, too, you know, after she died and I was going through her office, I opened up this bookshelf, and on the bottom two shelves were Rachel Eliza shelves. There were newspaper clippings. There were stacks of little literary journals I’d given her. There were…

GROSS: This is all your writing.

GRIFFITHS: Yeah. So the thing that I found out was that she was there holding space with me the entire time. She was showing up for me, but she just couldn’t tell me. I couldn’t believe the amount of things she had kept in this little kind of archive in her office. She was proud of me, and I know that now. She was so proud of me.

GROSS: My guest is Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.” We’ll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Her new memoir, “The Flower Bearers,” is in part about the day she married Salman Rushdie in 2021, which is also the day her dearest friend suddenly died. Eleven months later, Rushdie was stabbed multiple times while being interviewed on stage. She also writes about her mental health issues. She has dissociative identity disorder. In this chapter of the interview, we refer to a mental health crisis. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. That’s 988.

So before writing your new memoir, which is called “The Flower Bearers,” you wrote books of poetry and a novel. And to bring together your writing and your depression, suicidal ideation, dissociative identity disorder, with your work as a poet, you write in your new book that when you tried to write about your depression, suicidal, dissociative episodes that placed you in the emergency room, you coiled in shame and self-loathing.

And you write, my poems did not immediately connect to Black joy. They were not always focused on white people and white supremacy. When I tried to write about these experiences, I was told in workshops that it came off as inauthentic. The Black woman, me, sitting at a round table, composed and articulate, could not also be the wounded, damaged creature who could only use plastic utensils during meals in a psych ward.

Can you talk about how it made you feel being accused of being inauthentic because you were revealing all these problems that you were having, but you looked so self-confident and sounded so confident?

GRIFFITHS: It’s soul-crushing. It’s soul-crushing. It’s maddening. It’s frustrating. There’s a feeling of hopelessness, of how am I so much? I’m definitely too much, and I can’t share it. I think you feel like an impostor because you are actually all of these things. I can feel wounded, broken, overwhelmed and then be, front-facing, polished, poised, you know, articulate. And writing would be kind of my lifeline where I could kind of put some of these disparate and dissonant parts of myself together.

It’s soul-crushing to come into a space with other writers and not know how they’re seeing you, that there’s maybe not anyone else who looks like you also listening in the room and what that feels like for a number of reasons. And that’s a complicated thing. And yet, that was the room I wanted to be in. I knew what mattered to me, which was storytelling and visual art and listening to other people and being in community. And yet I was feeling estranged and isolated, but I also was self-isolating because I was afraid that I would be seen as an impostor or not authentic or that I perhaps wasn’t fitting all the boxes, checking all the boxes as to what authenticity meant.

But now, at this age, I’m like, I get to decide how authentic I am. I get to define my authenticity because who was defining that and making that definition in the first place? Who can tell me I’m authentic or not? I didn’t know that back then, but I know it now.

GROSS: And, you know, in writing about the darkest parts of yourself, you know, the depression and dissociative identity disorder, you say that, but you knew the dangers of romanticizing tortured poets. What are the dangers? And I’m not referring to you as, you know, a tortured poet in that sense, where you’re being, like, glamorized for your mental health state. But what are the dangers of romanticizing tortured poets? ‘Cause I don’t want to have listeners place you in a category that you don’t feel part of and that you don’t want to be part of.

GRIFFITHS: When you glamorize tortured poets or tortured artists, there’s an injustice – is that they become silhouettes and cutouts. Their humanity is removed from them. They’re not seen as three dimensional. And I think as a writer, as a poet, as a visual artist, there’s such a carousel of, you know, talent gone too soon, voices gone too soon and that people focus on the horror and trauma and devastation of those people. It kind of is an erasure. And, you know, when I think about Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath or, you know, even Amy Winehouse – there’s just so many names – Whitney Houston. There’s just so many names of people who we need them here. And then, you know, their pain becomes the engine that drives the ship rather than how they flew, you know?

And I just think for me, I knew that it would be a bad idea for me to glamorize these aspects of myself because I was more in a category of shame and panic and anxiety if anyone would find out these things for me. When I was younger, having no money, you know, being broke, being defeated, being depressed, that didn’t lead me to write my best work. I was in survivor mode. Once I was able to get stabilized and start to do the inner work and start to heal – I’ll always be healing, you know? I’ll always be healing. But this feels like one of the first steps for me in a new life. And I’m really grateful for that.

GROSS: Eliza, it’s just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much for sharing so much. Your book is great. So really happy to be able to talk about it with you.

GRIFFITHS: Terry, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for this conversation.

GROSS: Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ new memoir is called “The Flower Bearers.”

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GROSS: To keep up with what’s on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR’s executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Anna Bauman, Susan Nyakundi and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I’m Terry Gross.