photo © D. Finney Photography
“I think the most meaningful thing I can do to normalize the conversation about mental illness is to just talk about it.”
—DANIELLE BELTON, editor-in-chief, The Root
“One month I was in a mental hospital. The next month I moved to Washington, DC. And now here I am, working in the middle of Times Square,” Danielle Belton said, almost disbelievingly. It was a hot summer day in July 2019 when I interviewed her at The Root’s offices in the heart of New York City.
I first met Danielle at the annual Women’s Media Center Awards Gala on November 1, 2018, a sold-out event at the lavish Capitale Ballroom in Manhattan’s Little Italy, a historic building hailed for its colossal Corinthian columns, marble floors, and sixty-five-foot vaulted ceilings. A nonprofit organization created by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem, the Women’s Media Center’s mission is to raise the visibility and viability of women and girls in the media, and that particular night leaders and champions for women in journalism were being honored. But there was one media powerhouse I was lucky enough to meet even before the celebratory dinner began, and she happened to be standing just to the right of me.
The room was already overflowing with hundreds of honorees, presenters, and attendees when I found myself standing next to Danielle Belton, the editor-in-chief of The Root, a celebrated digital news source providing black news, opinion, politics, and culture to millions of readers. Since assuming this position only two years earlier, Danielle had already helped increase The Root’s monthly readership from 3.2 million to over 10 million by instilling, as she described it, “the journalistic merging of escapism with activism.”
November also happened to be the month in which I was reviewing nominees for Women’s eNews’s annual 21 Leaders for the 21st Century Awards Gala, which takes place each May. I was on the lookout for someone to receive one very special award, The Rita Henley Jensen Award for Investigative Journalism, named in honor of our organization’s founder. Rita was a journalist whose research and writing particularly focused on how our country’s health services fail women of color. I thought of Danielle for the award that night, but it wasn’t until I heard her acceptance speech at our gala six months later that I realized just how perfect a candidate she really was.
The Women’s eNews Awards Gala took place on Monday, May 6, 2019, and Danielle took to the podium in a way that was overtly self-assured, almost shockingly so in light of what she was about to say. Instead of discussing journalistic accomplishments, she chose to share her most personal battles with mental health, and how she overcame numerous bouts of chronic sleeplessness and even suicidal ideation to stay alive. It was equally surprising that Danielle spoke in a voice that was decisive and direct, complemented by a stance that was commanding yet relaxed. One would normally not expect someone to address an audience of strangers in such a calm and composed manner, particularly when revealing her most personal battles with mental illness, which are still often considered taboo. Yet that is likely why the entire audience rose to its feet in applause at the end of her speech. How many of these people have also experienced mental health hardships, or have had loved ones who have? I wondered.
When I got together with Danielle a few weeks later, I asked about whether she considered the audience and how many other people were likely in the same boat, or knew someone who was.
“I want others who have similarly suffered to know that they can have lives as well,” she told me.
She then spoke more specifically about her mental health history and how she got to this point of being in a position to help others. In December 2005, while working as an entertainment reporter in California, she was hospitalized at UCLA Medical Center, where she remained for two and a half weeks. Misdiagnosed with depression, she was placed on numerous medications, eventually prescribed a minimum of seven to ten pills per day. “I had tried every pill at that point,” she said, until she was correctly diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “I was then put on one pill, lithium, the drug of choice for this condition,” she told me.
“I then went back to my job, but I still wasn’t feeling well,” Danielle recalled. “Lithium made me feel super flat, so much so that I could no longer do my job.” In 2007, she moved back to her parents’ home in St. Louis, Missouri, which also meant returning to her bedroom in the basement. “In my mind, I didn’t do anything for a year,” Danielle said, shaking her head. “I felt completely dysfunctional and was preparing to give up on life.” Ultimately, she was offered a job at a public relations firm. But after three months, she again felt depressed, and so she quit. “This was what continually happened to me,” she said. “I would last all of three months at a job before I’d get super depressed, and then I’d leave.”
This was when her love of writing saved her. “I missed writing so much that I started a blog called The Black Snob,” Danielle recalled, shifting her eyes to look up at the ceiling. “It was supposed to serve as my alter ego, reflecting on race, mental health, politics, and culture.” The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. When Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucus in 2008, she had already been writing about race and politics, so she felt even more inspired to build an audience. “It was Christmas 2008, and I took a job at a local Macy’s folding sweaters, cleaning dressing rooms, and tidying up racks, all the while writing about Michelle Obama and her fashion choices,” she recalled. One of the first bloggers to write about Ms. Obama’s style, Danielle was then invited to discuss the topic on major news outlets like Dateline, NPR, and The Associated Press. She was overcome shortly thereafter by bouts of depression and suicidality, as is typical of someone with bipolar disorder, even though she was taking her medication. That’s when her older sister, Denise, took her to St. Mary’s hospital to admit her for full time mental health care.
After spending about a week in the hospital, Danielle was invited to speak at a Black Policy Conference at Harvard University. Although yearning to go, she was terrified. “I had never been to the East Coast,” she said. It was then that Danielle’s mother spoke with the attending psychiatrist about it, and his response, Danielle said, was life-altering. “I think Danielle’s problem is that she can’t do nothing because that makes her sick, and doing too much also makes her sick,” he said. This was the first time Danielle ever considered the possibility that she could work, but also rest in between. “It never occurred to me that I could do both,” she reflected amusedly.
She did go to Harvard to speak at the conference, and received what she described as overwhelmingly positive feedback. “I was the rock star on my panel,” she recalled. From then on, she became fully energized and obsessed with moving to the East Coast—first to Washington, DC, then to New York City.
Yet Danielle’s mental health would soon be challenged again, not once, but twice. Her close friend, Toya Watts, whom she met while working in DC, died from colon cancer at age forty-eight in 2014. Then Danielle’s mother, diagnosed with dementia in 2013, passed in 2018. “But when she passed,” Danielle told me, “it helped me realize that I needed to live my life because nothing is guaranteed.”
It was in 2015, while still reeling from her mother’s memory loss and her friend’s death, that she contacted The Root and asked for a full-time job, even though she was still feeling depressed. She was offered a position as associate editor, and within a year was promoted to managing editor. “When I was offered the managing editor position, I almost didn’t take it,” Danielle recalled. “My friends had to remind me of who I was and what I could do.” Looking back, she believes this job saved her life, she told me, “because I realized I had to be responsible for more than myself, for other people who reported to me.”
Now leading The Root’s editorial team as its editor-in-chief, she ensures that coverage of mental health issues is front and center. Whether it be by publishing articles about the struggles of the famous, as was the case in the August 2018 article entitled “Serena Williams Just Got Real—and Relatable—About Postpartum Emotional Fallout,” or about the struggles of Black people in general, as in the May 2018 piece, “It’s OK Not to Be OK: 2 Black Teens Use Tech to Prevent Suicide,” or when Danielle posted a piece about her own battles in May 2019 in an article called “Being Bipolar Means Always Having to Say, ‘Um … What’s Your Name Again?’” Danielle is using her experiences to impart knowledge, courage, and persistence, hoping this will help others as much as it has helped her.
“I used to think about death every day, but now I can’t remember the last time I thought about dying,” Danielle told me. “Instead, I now focus on living.”
And she is now writing a book, a humorous book entitled Bipolar Logic, to help remove some of the stigma surrounding this disorder. “Bipolar is scary, but those who have it need to learn that it’s a condition you live with.” Her major concern is that too many people who are diagnosed with it are “in the closet,” so Danielle wants them to see that she has an important job, a family, and many friends, even though, as she says, “I just happen to have this.” As our interview comes to a close, she sits forward in her chair, her eyes beaming with hope and positivity. “Life is good now, because I found compassion, love, and patience for myself.” She also said she learned how to make peace with herself and live with this disease viewing both as “a mystery and a mixed blessing, sometimes fueling my creativity, but always making me more in tune with the world around me.”