Emi Nietfeld on Mental Health, Trauma, and Acceptance

When Emi Nietfeld was applying to colleges, she had her eyes set
firmly on the Ivy League. Through her childhood years spent in
foster care, shelters, psychiatric hospitals, very occasionally
with her problematic mother, and finally a boarding school, Emi
was fixated on getting into the most difficult college she could.
In an effort to tell her full story, she wrote an application
essay that included the struggles she had experienced with mental
health issues like eating disorders, depression, and suicidality.
That’s what she sent off to Yale as her early decision
application and she didn’t get in. Then Emi went back, kept all
the homelessness stuff but removed the mental health portions and
subsequently gained acceptance into Harvard.


Emi discusses the various meanings of the term “acceptance” in
her life and why she chose to write about her own sexual assault
in unsparing detail.


Emi Nietfeld's memoir, Acceptance: A Memoir, is out now
and will be available in paperback August 1st, 2023. Learn more
about Emi and her writing by visiting her website,
www.EmiNietfeld.com.


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