Episode 66: Zak Sandler
I am not Broken. I Stand as One, but I Come as 8 Billion.
Zak Sandler and I have a deeply personal and contemplative conversation about the experiences he has faced with his mental health and how he has managed to organize and successfully live his life with a brain that functions in a different way. From his original diagnosis as bipolar while an undergraduate student at Yale University, to becoming a highly creative Broadway pianist for such shows as Wicked and The Color Purple, Zak has traveled the road from despair to acceptance. And now he allows his native creativity to guide his response to his diagnosis.
Zak will tell you that he does not have a mental illness or a disorder. For him that language implies there’s something about him that needs to be fixed. He instead chooses the phrase “mental condition,” because it indicates that his bipolar diagnosis is simply a part of who he is. For him, denying that part of himself would be as significant a loss as losing a limb or losing his ability to see, to hear. To feel. To compose music. At core he is not broken. Indeed, he is quite whole and has the audacity to view his bipolar as a superpower. As a surprising gift that fuels his creative mind, allows him to make connections that most people cannot see, and rewrite the narrative of shame that colors many peoples’ responses to the stigma of mental conditions.
Zak’s courageous act of embracing his bipolar mind is an important and distinctive undertaking for a condition that is often misunderstood and feared – all of which he has himself experienced. He even goes so far as to say that the reality of his mind is not so different from the other billions of people living on the planet. That we are all living within our uniquely constructed and self-specific journeys, building vivid worlds within our own minds. Eight billion parallel universes creating one whole universe. One whole human experience. This distinction is how we move from shame to understanding and hopefully acceptance. That our differences, no matter how acute, are simply that – differences not deficiencies.
