91.3 WYSO's Book Nook: The Rumi Prescription Interview →

Vick Mickunas' 2021 interview with Melody Moezzi

Melody Moezzi made her first appearance on the program to discuss her latest memoir. It just came out in paperback. In this captivating book the author shares her powerful story about battling writer's block and depression and how the poetry of the Persian mystic Rumi eventually brought her solace and inspiration.

Her father had been sharing Rumi's poetry with his daughter for as long as she could remember. But it never really sank in until she needed it the most.

Melody teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and she has a long association with our region. She grew up in Dayton. Her dad was an obstetrician for many years here in the Miami Valley.

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The Book Nook on WYSO is presented by the Greene County Public Library with additional support from Washington-Centerville Public Library, Clark County Public Library, Dayton Metro Library, and Wright Memorial Public Library.

Vick Mickunas introduced the Book Nook author interview program for WYSO in 1994. Over the years he has produced more than 1500 interviews with writers, musicians, poets, politicians, and celebrities. Listen to the Book Nook with Vick Mickunas for intimate conversations about books with the writers who create them. Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News Sun.

Array of Faith Podcast

Melody Moezzi is an Iranian-American Muslim author, attorney, activist, and visiting professor of creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Kirkus calls her latest book, The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, “a heartening narrative of family, transformation, and courage” that “could shatter a variety of prejudices and stereotypes.”

https://arrayoffaith.podbean.com/e/melody-moezzi-muslim-practitioner

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/melody-moezzi-muslim-practitioner/id1533533369?i=1000510139162

CXMH Podcast (#106): Rumi, Personal Healing, & Fighting Injustice with Love

This week we’re joined by Melody Moezzi, author of the new book The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life. She talks with us about Rumi, her experiences with a bipolar diagnosis, the challenges between faith & mental healthcare, and how to fight injustice with love instead of anger. In the intro, Robert & Holly talk about end-of-the-school year traditions.

https://cxmhpodcast.com/show-notes/2020/05/24/106-moezzi

Moezzi ’01 Shares Reflections, Advice on Applying Rumi’s Wisdom to Modern Life (interview by Katie Aberbach)

The timing of the release of The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life (Penguin Random House, 2020) was far from ideal. Officially out March 3, the new book by Melody Moezzi ’01 was barely in readers’ hands before social distancing restrictions were imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Moezzi was able to participate in a handful of events near her home in Wilmington, N.C. . . . and then the remainder were canceled or rescheduled in virtual form.

However, The Rumi Prescription is the sort of book that people with extra free time on their hands—and the inclination to obtain meaning from difficult experiences—might value. Moezzi’s third book, The Rumi Prescription details how she came to interpret and apply the lessons of the 13th-century mystic poet Rumi to her modern-day world, a process that was ultimately life-changing.

An Iranian-American Muslim author, attorney, activist, and visiting professor of creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Moezzi has also written about mental health in her 2014 memoir Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life. On May 18, she will participate in a live Zoom conversation about The Rumi Prescription with fellow mental wellness activist and illustrator Ellen Forney ’89, as part of a series offered by Literati bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Click here to join the event on May 18.

Moezzi recently answered questions about The Rumi Prescription, how Rumi’s words can apply to today’s world, and her advice for taking care of your mental health during a pandemic.

First of all, how’s The Rumi Prescription doing? What a time to launch a new book.

Melody Moezzi: It’s not the best time to be releasing a book, but it turns out that the topic of this book is actually something that is helpful for people right now, so I’m glad for that. At least people seem to be finding comfort in it.

I even wrote a bit about the power of viruses in the book. I’ve always sort of admired them, how these tiny things can invade and replicate—I have a master’s in public health and both my parents are doctors. I’ve always thought it was a miracle that this [sort of pandemic] hadn’t happened in my lifetime at least.

In the book itself, [the discussion of viruses is] more about how the way that you learn to find a vaccine is to study the virus itself. Rumi suggests that the cure for whatever pain or ailment you have begins with respecting and studying that pain. He says (in my translation): For a viable cure, pain is the key. Your injury invites the remedy.

What can Rumi offer us today, particularly in the midst of a pandemic?

MM: He has a lot of poems that I’ve found a great deal of comfort in during this time. Here’s one: Why seek pilgrimage at some distant shore, when the Beloved is right next door? Initially when my book tour was canceled and all this happened, it was a nice reminder that you don’t need to go far to find hope, to find healing. It’s right where you are.

What other words of Rumi’s do you think can apply lately?

MM: These are a few others I’m finding comfort in right now: [All translations are Moezzi’s.]

• You went out in search of gold far and wide, but all along you were gold on the inside.

• Every storm the Beloved unfurls permits the sea to scatter pearls.

• Become the sky and the clouds that create the rain, not the gutter that carries it to the drain.

• Welcome every guest, no matter how grotesque.
  Be as hospitable to calamity as to ecstasy, to anxiety as to tranquility.
  Today’s misery sweeps your home clean, making way for tomorrow’s felicity.

You’ve written about mental health and particularly your own mental health before. What risks does this pandemic—in which many of us are being told to stay at home and away from others—pose to mental health?

MM: It poses a lot of risks. For instance, I deal with depression. My primary symptom is isolation. I isolate myself from the world, and one of the best things I can do to cure myself is to get out in the world, physically. It’s funny to have these symptoms imposed, and then hope that they don’t lead to the condition.

I’ve come to the conclusion that every day is different. I’m accepting that some days will be bad. But I have to remind myself that the next day can always be better. One of the biggest delusions of depression is that you’ve always felt this way and that you will always feel this way. It robs you of the insight that things can and will be different, better.

I know of so many people [with mental health conditions] who are far more successful than I am, in every field, who have written me personally because they’ve read my books and have said, “Thank you for being public about this, in a way that I never could.” It’s important to remember that people living with mental health conditions are highly capable, and in some cases extra capable. Being able to see that kind of triumph in the face of adversity, both in my own life and in the lives of the many wildly successful people who write to me to share their stories, has been a huge source of pride and inspiration for me. I have no doubt that it has helped keep me well.

How can anybody protect their mental health right now?

MM: One of the top things I would suggest is to maintain a routine—not necessarily the same routine that you had before. But create a routine for yourself, keep it up, and don’t think too far ahead into future, because the answer to pretty much everything right now is “we just don’t know.”

What Rumi specifically says about this is: Forget your plans and embrace uncertainty. Only then will you find stability. If you think about it, so much of life is uncertain and if you find a way to embrace that instead of constantly fighting it, you’ve found a viable path to peace.

You grew up hearing about Rumi from your dad, who was a huge fan of Rumi’s poetry, but you didn’t get to know Rumi well until much later in life.

MM: I grew up with Rumi in the house; he was everywhere. Every lesson my father has ever taught me was accompanied by a couplet or a quatrain. But I never embraced Rumi on my own until after I had a manic episode that overlapped with a mystical experience [and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder]. That mystical experience included this feeling of being deeply connected to every other living thing on the planet, down to the cellular level, to the point where I recognized that I couldn’t harm any other living thing without also harming myself, because we were connected.

After that experience, I’ve never been able to question, even intellectually, the existence of the Beloved in the same way. Certain things strike me on a daily basis, like cutting open a head of cabbage with all those intricate curves and twists inside that seem to reflect the grooves that form our own brains. I know these are ordinary patterns, but they also seem extraordinary to me. This sense of awe in the ordinary is what that mystical experience woke up within me. It’s not always at the forefront of my awareness, but I know it’s always true. I see these sorts of reflections and connections everywhere now.

Do you think Rumi made those same sorts of connections?

MM: Yes. His poetry isn’t meant to be read while sitting. Rather, it’s meant to be sung while spinning. He was the first of the so-called whirling dervishes, and honestly, if he were alive today, I suspect that he, too, may have been hospitalized. Our planet has a long history of confusing wisdom for madness and vice versa.

It’s interesting. When I start to go manic, I often start to rhyme. Rumi wrote in rhyming couplets; my translations [of his words in The Rumi Prescription] are all rhyming as well, because I found it important to maintain the musicality of his verse. I actually started rhyming in my own prose without trying for a few pages in the middle of the book, and writing those few pages was so strange for me. I actually feared that I might be going manic because of how naturally rhyming comes to me when I’ve been manic or hypomanic in the past. But thankfully, I was fine. I stopped writing for the day after that, centered myself, and was able to go to sleep. I think what protected me from going manic there (apart from sleeping and the fact that I take meds for my condition) was being so ensconced in Rumi’s poetry at the time, poetry that is not only deeply spiritual, but that is also part of my own culture and ancestry.

But again, just for the record, I do take meds as well. I’m not in any way suggesting that anyone with bipolar or any other serious mental health condition can be cured by poetry alone. I’m just saying that it can be intensely healing, both for people like me with serious mental health conditions and for others with no psychiatric diagnosis to speak of but who live in a world that seems to be getting crazier by the minute.

This book isn’t for people with mental health conditions, it’s for people with emotions, which is just another way of saying everyone.

As a person of Persian descent, do you feel like Rumi’s words resonate on a deeper level with you?

MM: I think so. There’s something powerful about connecting with the culture, history, and rituals of your ancestors, and for me, as an Iranian-American Muslimah, this was certainly the case. I want my readers to find comfort in Rumi’s poetry, and I’m confident that they will, but I also want them to find comfort and healing in their own unique cultures and histories.

Of course, being who I am, I also want people who aren’t Persian and don’t speak Farsi to fully understand that this poet was a Muslim, an Iranian, and a refugee. Why? Because as an American, I’m tired of my country banning people who meet any or all of these criteria. So in addition to being a book that I hope will help my readers come closer to the Beloved within themselves and within all of us, this is also a book that I hope will remind my fellow Americans that this poet whose verses they seem to love so much is also a Middle Eastern, Muslim refugee. . . . My hope is that this book will help . . . encourage readers to start doing the work of making this world and this country a place that welcomes instead of bans Muslim and Middle Easterners like Rumi and me.

The Adroit Journal: An Ode to Self-Care—And Rumi: A Conversation with Melody Moezzi (interview by Merideth Doench)

When I picked up Melody Moezzi’s latest memoir, The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, I had the distinct feeling this book landed in my hands for a reason. I’d been searching for a work that could nourish my creative soul for some time, a work that could speak to the struggles of our modern life and creating art. The Rumi Prescription is the book I’ve been waiting for.

Moezzi’s other books, War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims and Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life, feature a strong voice matched only by its sheer wit and brilliance. Moezzi’s latest memoir is no different. It centers the teachings of the Sufi poet, Rumi, and how his ancient words speak to our ever-present life maladies, such as depression, anxiety, and distraction, to name a few. The memoir was sparked, however, by Moezzi’s own creative block and inability to write. In a last ditch effort, she turned for answers in the poetry of Rumi, which her father had recited her entire life. Through Rumi’s teachings and her father’s guidance, Moezzi details for us how she went from the depths of creative despair to breaking through the barriers that once held her back.

Moezzi and I grew up in Centerville, a sleepy suburb of Dayton, Ohio, and the home of Esther Price Candy Company. Moezzi’s sister, Romana and I were friends, as only backyards separated our homes. Our fathers worked at the same hospital. Despite our seeming similarities growing up, though, Rumi (or any other poet) was not a regular discussion in my household. As I read this book, I found myself hungry to know more about Rumi and sad that I hadn’t experienced a father who shared lines of poetry as prescriptions for my everyday ailments. Perhaps that’s why it feels like kismet helped to guide this book into my hands.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Melody Moezzi to ask her a few questions about her writing process and The Rumi Prescription.

WILMA Magazine's Living Guide: Author Melody Moezzi on her newest book →

by Johanna Cano

Melody Moezzi is an activist, speaker, columnist, attorney, visiting assistant professor at UNCW, and most recently, the author of her newest book The Rumi Prescription.

Her impressive resume, and writing endeavors, were guided by her desire to make a difference in the world and finding different ways of attempting to do so.

“I do what I do because I want to change the world, and I’m optimistic (some may say delusional) enough to still think that I can,” Moezzi says. “More specifically, I want to make the city, state, country, and planet we live in a more just and empathetic place. That’s why I became an activist as a teenager, and it’s why I became a lawyer as a young adult. But I’m impatient and the law moves painfully slowly, and aside from hula-hooping, writing is my only other talent.”

Moezzi wrote her first book, War on Error: Real Stories of American-Muslims, while attending Emory University School of Law. The book was aimed at combating the rising hostility and discrimination targeting Muslims, and especially Muslim-Americans after 9/11, she says.

“I quickly realized that it was much easier to change minds as a writer than it was to change the law as a lawyer. And bonus: writing was a lot more fun than lawyering,” Moezzi says.

So, she decided to become a full-time writer. “I feel incredibly blessed that this has worked for me, and I’m grateful to everyone who has helped make my career possible, because writing is indeed a solitary profession, but making a career out of it is not something I ever could have achieved on my own,” she says. “My family sacrificed for this; my friends encouraged me to keep at it when things felt hopeless, and a whole boatload of strangers who have since become friends have supported me along the way.”

In her new book, The Rumi Prescription, Moezzi translates and examines the work of the 13th-century Persian poet and applies her discoveries to her own life.

Moezzi is currently on a book tour in many locations in North Carolina and California.

Read the full interview: https://www.wilmamag.com/living-guide