Mindy Kaling’s life has come full circle.
The groundbreaking writer, actor and producer, 43, is opening up about how she still deals with grief following the death of her mother and how parenting two kids on her own has given her a new perspective on work-life balance.
While speaking to Marie Claire on a range of topics — motherhood, mental health, her successful career — for its "Wellness Issue," Kaling discussed the experience of losing her mother to pancreatic cancer in 2012, and recalled trying to mask the emotional turmoil by “working 14, 16, hours a day.”
“I can only describe it as just anguish for two years,” she said of that time. It ultimately became too much to bear on her own, which is why she decided to seek the help of a therapist — though, admittedly, it required her to unlearn cultural biases from her South Asian upbringing.
“If someone you knew or someone in your family or extended family was seeing a therapist or seeing a psychologist or going on medication or anything like that, it was seen as a real problem, a real sadness [or] tragedy for a family,” she explained. “That's just the way that I was raised — [like] the other Indian people around me… [Families] try to deal with it through closed doors and certainly not by asking someone outside of your family or outside of the community for help with that.”
“I don't want my kids to grow up that way. And I don't wanna be that way for myself,” she said of breaking the cycle. “Ultimately, it's about efficiency. I think you can get things done more if you're able to talk to the right people about the things going on in your life. I remember thinking, This is extremely helpful, but this would have even been helpful when I was younger, when I had issues.”
“Life is so hard,” she added. “And I don't think you should just have to depend on friends and family to get you through those things.”
Therapy, she says, has also helped her understand where her priorities should lie, as a single mother of two children: Katherine, 4, and Spencer, 1.
“I think in my twenties I was only focused on, Okay, I don't want to get fired. I want to be successful, and I was only thinking about myself,” she said. “In no way was I thinking about things that are the most important to me now, which is my health, holding the door open behind me for other people… I kind of lived a way more selfish existence, which is also boring… [Now] I'm surrounded by so many more people. My immediate family, obviously, with my children, but also this community of young women on my show.”
When reflecting on her choice to have kids on her own in her late-thirties, the Never Have I Ever producer said that it was one of the smartest — and most mature — decisions she’s made in her life.
“I waited until I had the means and that made all the difference,” she explained of motherhood. “The choice to have a child — by yourself, on your own terms — it was the best part of my life… It's the thing that I hope women feel confident doing by themselves.”
“I wish every 19-year-old girl would come home from college and that the gift — instead of buying them jewelry or a vacation or whatever — is that their parents would take them to freeze their eggs,” she later advised. “They could do that once and have all these eggs for them, for their futures… to focus in your twenties and thirties on your career, and yes, love, but to know that when you're emotionally ready, and, if you don't have a partner, you can still have children.”
The showrunner’s passion to empower women in her writing — especially Indian women — is evident in her list of projects, which also includes HBO’s The Sex Lives of College Girls. Being able to do that, she explains, is a blessing.