Paraag Marathe (President of the 49ers) shares a heartfelt story on mental health

0:08 Hi everybody. Thank you for uh coming out and supporting this great cause. And uh Dr. Sema and Hari, those are some 0:1616 secondsgreat stories. And I'll tell you, it's um it's really special to me to hear these stories, to see everybody here 0:2424 secondsbecause uh I also didn't have the language. I didn't have the words um for over a decade um after the story I'm 0:3232 secondsabout to tell you. Uh and it took me a really long time to to learn to to just have the words for it and to be okay 0:4040 secondsbeing vulnerable. So with that, I will uh just tell you a little story about my childhood and and uh what growing up in 0:4848 secondsthe Bay Area was like for me. I had your very typical stereotypical uh Indian-American upbringing. My dad was 0:5656 secondsan engineer from IIT. My mom was a homemaker. We lived uh in Saratoga. And it was just me and my sister. And we had 1:051 minute, 5 secondsthe the exact stereotype of a of an upbringing in the Bay Area being Indian-Americans as you could expect. Um 1:121 minute, 12 secondsyou know, we had our family parties uh with our family friends. Um I played a lot of sports. My sister read a lot of 1:201 minute, 20 secondsbooks and uh we ate dinner together as a as a family every night. Um in my family 1:281 minute, 28 secondsit was always about as long as you do well in school nothing else really mattered that much. 1:351 minute, 35 secondsSo get your straight A's and everything else you know you could do what you need to do. For me I just I didn't really 1:421 minute, 42 secondslike to study. I just spent all my time playing sports and you know was what didn't have cell phones back then. So, my mom sometimes would have to go 1:501 minute, 50 secondssearching the neighborhood to see what sport I was playing and where I was playing it. Uh, and my sister just loved to read and loved to um, you know, spend 1:591 minute, 59 secondsa lot of time by herself, but we both got good grades, so everything was supposedly okay. Um, long story short, 2:072 minutes, 7 secondsfast forward, my my parents ended up um, buying a pizza restaurant, a round table pizza right around the corner from our house. And our lives sort of changed 2:162 minutes, 16 secondsthen. I was 9 10 years old. when my sister was 3 years older. And suddenly at that time, everything sort of changed in that. We didn't do our family dinners 2:232 minutes, 23 secondsevery night. Um, and you know what little attention to the our emotional well-being we had growing up. We had 2:312 minutes, 31 secondseven less because there's no time for it because my mom and my dad were at the pizza restaurant almost every not almost every night. Um and so my sister was 2:402 minutes, 40 secondsalways struggling uh you know she struggled with depression uh and eventually anorexia 2:482 minutes, 48 secondsand after when she went to college I was in high school when she went to college is when it's first started manifesting at least physically uh where we where 2:562 minutes, 56 secondsyou could see it um and you know in our culture there is no room uh for uh 3:053 minutes, 5 secondsthere's no such thing as mental health there's no room for depression that just doesn't exist. You get straight A's, that's all that matters. You know, you 3:123 minutes, 12 secondsgo down the path of being a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer, uh, with your good grades, that that's all that matters. Um, and so my sister just was 3:223 minutes, 22 secondsgetting worse and worse. For the last, she passed away in 2005. 3:273 minutes, 27 secondsUm, for the last 10 years of her life, uh, she was, the last nine years of her life, she was living at home. Um, unable 3:343 minutes, 34 secondsto even go up and down the stairs. She was in and out of um she was in and out of uh emergency rooms and outpatient 3:423 minutes, 42 secondsfacilities. I remember at that time and it still is the case that inpatient facilities wouldn't take her because she was too low of a weight. They deemed it 3:503 minutes, 50 secondstoo much of a risk. It's another thing I've tried to advocate for. Um and and when she passed um you know it was 3:583 minutes, 58 secondssomething that I just learned the only thing I knew uh which was let me just keep going. The train is going. let me 4:054 minutes, 5 secondsjust keep going. And so I just poured myself into my job. And I defined myself by my job. I compartmentalized. I never 4:144 minutes, 14 secondsreally talked about it uh for years. Uh never really talked about it with my parents. My parents still don't really 4:224 minutes, 22 secondstalk about it. And we shut ourselves off when my sister was first sick. Uh we shut ourselves off from all the family parties. We went we were going to two or 4:314 minutes, 31 secondsthree a week or at least one or two a week to zero. Um, you know, I used to say to myself, um, I used to be I used 4:384 minutes, 38 secondsto not want to take my sister out uh during those last several years. Um, and I used to for ice cream or to a movie, just think she want to do normal things. 4:474 minutes, 47 secondsAnd I used to and I and I used to tell myself that I'm not going to do it because I'm just going to get mad at the other people that are looking at her and 4:564 minutes, 56 secondsit's going to make me bad. Uh, and so therefore, I'm not going to do it. And I can't believe that I lied to myself for so long and didn't realize that actually 5:045 minutes, 4 secondsit was me and my own shame and my own embarrassment of being seen with someone um you know so emaciated as my sister 5:115 minutes, 11 secondswas. Uh and it took me a long time to accept that uh because you know you it it's a it's a hard pill to swallow when you realize it's you just it's the 5:205 minutes, 20 secondsmirror uh that it's not it's not you know some bravery that I pretended that I had. What I learned for about myself 5:285 minutes, 28 secondsuh was that my job and what I did and my career that was just that's not who I am. That's just what I do. And who I am 5:375 minutes, 37 secondsis defined by who I love and who loves me. Who I like to spend time with, who I care about, who I pour my energy into, who I try to help and who tries to help 5:465 minutes, 46 secondsme. That's what matters. Um you know, my job is just a job. It it has nothing to 5:525 minutes, 52 secondsdo with my core. Um and you know I learned a lot of lessons uh over this journey that I've had. Um but there are 6:016 minutes, 1 secondfour that I want to share with you uh with respect to helping someone you love that might be dealing with something similar. 6:096 minutes, 9 secondsThe first is empathize not sympathize. 6:146 minutes, 14 secondsYou know a lot of times I would just kind of feel sorry for my sister. Um I was the social guy. She was the quiet 6:216 minutes, 21 secondsone and I would just sort of um yeah, I just feel bad for her. You know, I never actually tried to, you know, take a day 6:296 minutes, 29 secondsto walk in her shoes uh and truly think about what she she was just struggling. 6:346 minutes, 34 secondsShe was just crying out uh for for some companionship, for some support, just for a day of just being sort of having a 6:426 minutes, 42 secondsregular normal day, right? Um my parents used to in for me and for my parents, it was simple. was just like, "Oh, you just 6:506 minutes, 50 secondshave to eat food. It's simple. Just eat more food and you're going to be fine." That was not the sympathetic that was that was not solving anything. Um, and 6:586 minutes, 58 secondsso really empathizing and not sympathizing is important. Second thing is it's easy to hear someone. It's 7:057 minutes, 5 secondsanother thing to actually listen to them. You know, being able to actually understand what they are saying. You 7:147 minutes, 14 secondsknow, many times my sister was crying out for help and not in the easy way. 7:187 minutes, 18 secondsIt'd be easy if it was like, "I'm feeling very depressed. I'm feeling very sick. I'm feeling very lonely. Can you help me?" That's easy, right? But there 7:257 minutes, 25 secondswas lots of clued statements over the years that she would that she would say to us, and we just sort of discarded it 7:337 minutes, 33 secondsbecause to us it was just black and white. Uh, and there was no such thing as as um depression. It just doesn't 7:407 minutes, 40 secondsexist in our culture. It certainly didn't, you know, 20 25 years ago. Um so that to me is is really important as 7:487 minutes, 48 secondswell. Third is uh help and don't stop helping. It tries your patience uh to to 7:587 minutes, 58 secondsit is it is trying of one's patience to keep consistently coming back to help especially when you get rejected right 8:068 minutes, 6 secondsbut that's actually when someone needs you the most. I remember for me I would have uh periodic bouts of really going 8:148 minutes, 14 secondsall in and helping my sister. I remember I was um when no when I was in Cal and she was in law school she would did the 8:218 minutes, 21 secondslaw she did engineer law or a doctor I was in bad seed that did sports so she was a lawyer she was in law school and 8:298 minutes, 29 secondsuh you know we started like a brother sister chat line and we would email each other every day um and there then it 8:368 minutes, 36 secondswould stop at times and then I would just let it stop uh when I was working in San Francisco no um my at my fourth 8:468 minutes, 46 secondsyear at Berkeley when she was done with law school and like had to move back home and I remember like same thing we'd go through bouts where we were talking 8:548 minutes, 54 secondsall the time and then she would do something and she would just stop and then I'd say you know what I'm not why am I putting in all the effort uh it's 9:029 minutes, 2 secondsjust a one-way street and it's so much easier for me to just stay up in Berkeley and not come not come back home to Saratoga again it's just 9:119 minutes, 11 secondscompartmentalizing and so I went from being home every week to being home every two months uh just because they're just easy. My sister was at home with my parents and 9:199 minutes, 19 secondsit's just easy for me to just not be there. Um and but that's the opposite of what I should have been doing because when actually they're pulling back and 9:279 minutes, 27 secondsand even you know giving you signals that they don't care uh that's when you should be helping more. Uh and it's hard to do because people human interaction 9:379 minutes, 37 secondspeople crave reciprocity. They want to be treated the way that you know treat ones as as they do you. Uh, but it doesn't work like that when someone's 9:459 minutes, 45 secondssick. It doesn't work like that when someone needs help. Uh, when someone needs help, it's a one-way street. If you love them, it's a one-way street. 9:529 minutes, 52 secondsAnd don't stop helping. The fourth and final thing is just vulnerability. You know, we have a hard time in our culture, particularly our 10:0010 minutesIndian-American culture, our South Asian culture, about showing vulnerability. 10:0410 minutes, 4 secondsYou know, you're always trying to chase perfect. You're always trying to be everything that uh make your parents proud and really make your parents proud 10:1210 minutes, 12 secondsso they can show off to their friends at those family parties and all of the stuff that is honestly just because there is no perfect, right? And 10:2110 minutes, 21 secondsyou have social media and Instagram and Tik Tok and everything chasing uh you know everyone chasing whatever physical 10:2810 minutes, 28 secondsemotional type of beauty. But imper our imperfections are what make us special. 10:3410 minutes, 34 secondsOur imperfections are what make us human. Our imperfections are what allow special things to happen and special loves to grow and to bond. Uh there is 10:4310 minutes, 43 secondsno such thing as perfect and it's okay to talk about. Uh it's and and especially in our culture where you know 10:5010 minutes, 50 secondsthese conversations are are much more difficult to do. Now I stand here today I'm like saying nice words or saying 10:5810 minutes, 58 secondssaying words that seem easy to me like I could just uh like I could just uh go do this. But I also have trouble practicing 11:0411 minutes, 4 secondswhat I preach. I still have not had these conversations with my mom. Uh because I just don't know how. Uh we've 11:1311 minutes, 13 secondsjust had so many years of, you know, going a certain way and not talking about it. My mom is 25 minutes away right now and available and free and I 11:2111 minutes, 21 secondsdidn't want her to come because I didn't want this to be the first moment that I'm she's hearing me talk like this. Uh so it's it might seem easy for me to be 11:3011 minutes, 30 secondshere and talking about all this but even I struggle uh because even I'm imperfect that I can't even do this with my own 11:3711 minutes, 37 secondsmom. Uh and I my dad passed away four years ago. I was never able to have that conversation with my own dad. Uh so 11:4411 minutes, 44 secondsvulnerability is okay. And you know, all we can do is is love each other and know 11:5111 minutes, 51 secondsthat everybody everybody here has something that they're struggling with, has something that they're hiding, something that they're afraid to share 11:5911 minutes, 59 secondseven with the closest person in their life. Um, and if you just hear and empathize and show vulnerability and 12:0812 minutes, 8 secondshelp, but don't stop helping, at some point one day, maybe it's next Tuesday, maybe it's next year, maybe it's tomorrow, you're going to get that 12:1512 minutes, 15 secondslittle morsel uh, of information that allows you to make a difference in that person's life. And so, I hope you all 12:2212 minutes, 22 secondstake those moments, keep doing all those things, uh, and carry the torch and pay it forward and help someone that you love. So, thank you.