Hemingway Grandaughter Terrified She’ll ‘Wake Up One Day And Be Crazy’ [Video]

Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of the iconic American novelist Ernest Hemingway, admitted that she fears she may someday fall into mental illness like so many other in her family.

Mariel, who has found success both as an actress and a model, is more of a mental health advocate these days due to the tragic grip such illnesses have had on her family for generations. Most of you probably know that Ernest committed suicide, but you may not know that six others from the family have done the same, including Mariel’s own sister, Margaux.

“I was afraid that I was going to wake up one day and be crazy,” Mariel says in a clip from “Super Soul Sunday” on OWN. “I really thought it’s in my blood. Everybody says it’s genetic, and so you worry.”

Still, Mariel has chosen to live her life regardless of what might happen.

“You have to be very conscious and aware. You can’t just put it on cruise control. You have to be conscious every moment,” she says. “When I live that way, and it’s my choice and it’s my joy, then I know I overcome anything. Any obstacle. But it took me to have to go through it. It took me to be afraid.”

“Because you were afraid you were going to end up like that,” Oprah says in reference to the Hemingway family members who have taken their lives.

“Oh yeah,” Mariel says. “When my sister killed herself, I actually thought, ‘Oh, no.’ I thought it was like the baton being passed to me. It’s my turn.”

She continued:

“And here’s the horrible thing about worrying you’re going to go crazy, is you’re not going to know you’re crazy. You’re just going to wake up and be in a hospital. You won’t even know you’re there.”

In a documentary film titled Running From Crazy, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, Mariel said that she believed the Hemingway name to be cursed. She also revealed that her father, Jack Hemingway (son of Ernest) sexually abused her sisters Margaux and Joan.