Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Steinman.
Rachel Steinman was a psychology major who received her Masters in Education and multiple subject teaching credential from UCLA. She’s taught every elementary school grade, K-6, and has even been the school librarian. Rachel is a writer, essayist, and memoirist who can’t help but self-examine her own life as well as others’. She’s become a fierce and avid mental health advocate and educator working with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) as a lead presenter for the “Ending the Silence” program going into high schools to discuss warning signs, resources, and recovery.
To the outside world, Rachel has a picture-perfect Instagram family. She married her handsome and hilarious best friend, is the mother to two accomplished and beautiful teenage daughters, and rescued the cutest puppy. But like all families there are secrets; stories behind the pretty pictures because mental illness is invisible. Rachel is the daughter, granddaughter, and sister of bipolar, depression, drug addictions, ADHD, neurosis, narcissism, and suicide. She’s the half-sister and step-daughter of parents on their third marriages and a third divorce. She’s a mother doing her best to raise daughters growing up in an increasing anxiety-filled world of social media, insane college applications and tuition. And yet those who know her, say she’s one of the happiest, most grounded, and mentally healthy people they know. But it hasn’t come easy.
Twenty-four years after Rachel’s beloved grandfather jumped to his death, she found his incomplete manuscript revealing dark family secrets. She became his unlikely ghostwriter to understand her family’s sad legacy of five generations of mental illness resulting in four suicides. With a burning desire to change the legacy her daughters would inherit, Rachel began to soul search and research. Her writing ended up helping her understand and forgive her bipolar mom, who came from parents who both died by suicide.
Rachel started Dear Family, the Podcast because she realized every family has someone dealing with some form of mental illness and by sharing her story, she inspired others to come forward and share theirs. She is not a therapist but she is a true believer we are only as sick as our secrets and love is the best medicine. She believes by sharing inspirational personal stories of overcoming obstacles to find mental wellness we can heal, find community, and compassion for others and ourselves.
Please tell us about Dear Family, The Podcast.
Dear Family, is a podcast and a love letter to our complicated families, parenting and achieving mental wellness, especially when mental illness runs in the family.
Listeners will be moved and likely even laugh, as everyday people to experts in their mental wellness fields offer insight and practical advice on how to overcome mental health obstacles. Solutions to difficult family issues will be discussed through eye-opening conversations.
Think of “Dear Family” as an intimate conversation you’d have when you confide in your sister or brother, or better yet, in your best friend, who we all know is your chosen family anyway.
Dear Family,’s mission is to entertain and enlighten through true personal stories about our complicated families, parenting and mental illness while offering useful information and resources to find mental wellness. Stigma and shame for family secrets and mental illness will be replaced with understanding, compassion, and practical advice.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
This is a really hard question because I look at all my failures and bumps in the road as my journey that has brought me to where I am today. I have no regrets.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://writenowrachel.com/podcast/
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writenowrachel/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writenowrachel/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/writenowrachel
- Other: https://linktr.ee/WriteNowRachel
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