Melissa Fumero knows the dire health consequences that can arise when stress and anxiety go unchecked.
When she was in college, the actor learned the importance of heart health after her father underwent quintuple bypass surgery. “My father suffers from heart disease,” Fumero explains in a video interview with Variety. “We were very lucky that he worked a job in Manhattan, so he walked miles a day. That ended up being the thing that saved his life.”
Fumero is sharing her and her family’s experiences with heart disease in support of the American Heart Association to raise awareness about the impact that stress can have on overall physical health.
Reflecting on her childhood, Fumero says the “buzzing” energy she felt throughout her body and the sensation of her heart racing were usually written off as just a surge of adrenaline that was totally natural. After all, she was a “very hyper kid.”
At 8 years old, Fumero focused on dance class and obsessed over her favorite pop stars. Performing in the arts as a child was a “blessing in disguise,” she says, “because from a very early age, I had an outlet.”
For Fumero, it wasn’t until she was a teenager that she recognized how that “buzzing” energy was manifesting as anxiety and stress. “There were times where it would affect my performance,” she says. “I was like, ‘I have to really find things that work for me before I’m in front of an audience or on stage, because this is really starting to control me, and I think it should be the other way around.’ I really had to figure that out on my own.”
Then, in her early 20s, stress affected her acting. “This was kind of a tough phase. A great phase of my life, but also a tough phase,” Fumero says, recalling working her first professional job in the entertainment industry.
“This was the time where I physically felt stress the most, in terms of sleeping poorly, finding some of those not-so-great habits to lean on and getting really good at distracting myself to not deal with things that were hard,” she shares, also remembering times when she asked herself: “What are my coping mechanisms? Are there better ones out there?”
Fumero wishes she could tell her younger self to trust “all of those gut feelings” and “protect your confidence more,” noting that she was afflicted with imposter syndrome at the time. “That [job] really did a number on my confidence, and I left that experience thinking, ‘People in this business can be really difficult and terrible. Maybe I’m not good. Maybe this isn’t going to work out.’ Which is a terrible thing when you’re so young.”
Though that period presented many challenges, it was also when she met her future husband, fellow actor David Fumero, who “really brought a balance to all that hard stuff” at the start of her acting career. “He was experiencing it too, and so it was something we got to navigate together.”
And her support system has only grown since then. Fumero says becoming a mother to their sons, Enzo and Axel, in her thirties was “surprisingly empowering,” adding that “it brought a lot of the confidence and self-esteem that I lost back into my life.”
Now 40, Fumero, who practices yoga and meditation to manage stress, calls her past decade a “fun phase of personal and professional things coming together in a really great way. It has also been when I’ve figured out how important self-care is and prioritizing yourself to be your best self, professionally and personally, for the people in your life.”
It was at a recent American Heart Association event where Fumero learned that “only one in three Hispanic women are aware that heart disease is their No. 1 killer.” According to the organization, “On average, about one in every 16 Hispanic women aged 20 and older has coronary heart disease, the most common type of heart disease.”
Fumero, who is of Cuban descent, doesn’t take these numbers lightly, especially with her family history. “It made me think about the women in my family,” she says of the “shocking” statistic. “It’s important to raise awareness about it. It’s important for Latino women to talk about it.”
For more tips about managing stress for better health, visit heart.org/stress.
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