The Girl That Died
A wonderful week, Healing Out Loud November and the girl that died
*Beautiful – in this space – is about how purely yourself you are. May you remember that this truth is innate today and always.
Good Morning *Beautiful Human,
I hope this note finds you treading lightly on yourself amidst the heartbreak and heaviness of this world. While the darkness and overwhelm have deeply affected me, I carved out a very intentional space to find glimmers this week, and the practice was deeply grounding. It also offered so many gifts.
I will admit it feels more than a bit off-tune to write this amidst all that is happening in the world, but this week held inordinate joy for me. It held inordinate joy. Even writing that sentence as I sit here clickity-clacking on my keyboard at 5 am in the dark has me beaming.
Now, although younger versions of me would usually apologize for feeling this in wake of so much suffering, today I am not going to apologize. Instead, I am going to savor it and live it loudly as the reminder it is:
Life is not one thing. It is the messy magic of coexistence and duality. It is all the colors, and only when we express them, honor them, and hold kind space for them do we build a world where we all belong — together.
Beyond that, and since I very much have yet to find the exact words to express the magic I lived these past few days, I will simply offer this:
This week, for the first time in nineteen years, I woke up and knew – in my mind, body, and soul, that I survived.
Yes, for the first time since I was 18 and had electroconvulsive therapy, I woke up and knew I was 37 years old and not destined to live in a locked, residential psychiatric ward.
It’s hard to explain how powerful such an experience was when every day prior, I awoke in panic – in the grasp of confusion – trying to understand where I was, how I got there, and what was happening to me, but really, it’s quite simple. The experience was the gift of a lifetime, and this text with a bestie explains it perfectly:
I hope you know — you are a survivor too. Yes. you are still here and that really truly counts.
This week, I have another installment of Re-entry for you all. But before we jump into that, I want to say a loud and massive…
I felt beyond absurd and aggressive asking you all to “like” my posts last week now that this platform is evolving, and it really helped! By that, I mean this beautiful community grew by over 100 people, so truly - thank you!!
Healing Out Loud – Together: Sunday, November 24, 2024 at 1 pm ET
Like all other healing out-loud gatherings, we will write for the first fifteen minutes (free-write or with the prompts given) and then share our stories thereafter. The prompts this week will focus on survival care in the face of the holidays. And as always, it is free, open to everyone and there is no requirement to share or even have your video on.
Zoom invite
Topic: Healing Out Loud Together - November 2024 Time: Nov 24, 2024 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Password: 277659
On November 24, 2024 at 1 pm ET with password: 277659
Because I am getting extraaaaa fancy this month:
THE HEALING LAB! The countdown is on!
The Healing Lab is a project that aims to nourish you and your fight in this difficult time with experiments of self-exploration, reclamation, and care.
The idea behind it is simple — every beautiful human being has a practice they use to survive the world, AND everyone’s practice is different. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t grow into our practice of healing, self-discovery, and soul care together by amplifying the many practices humans use to do so. This project aims to do exactly that — to offer experiments to break our entrenched patterns of thought and behavior. And the best part of an experiment is — if you don’t like it or it doesn’t work, you can either try it again or pour it down the proverbial sink.
How The Healing Lab will work:
Each week, in addition to receiving personal essays in the newsletter from yours truly, the community will receive an experiment to try. Practices will include a variety of somatic experiencing, nervous system regulation, fear-facing, grounding, and connection exercises. Some exercises will be oriented to the individual and the body, while others will be community-facing because, yup, community and coming together in hard times matter most. The weekly experiment will be accompanied by a reflection prompt for those who would like to write about their experiences in tandem with the experiment.
It is my hope that some of these experiments offer a newfound pathway for you to move through the world. It also may hope that in doing it all together, we can embrace the messy magic of building a healing practice and life that loves us back while fostering community.
This offering will be entirely free, launching in December, and truly, all are welcome!
For recent newcomers — a quick note
Welcome! I am so grateful that you are here — that we are here together. Truly.
Over the past two years, I wrote Maura + Me here as a serial. Maura was my best friend who passed away tragically from bipolar disorder. I am now writing Re-entry: with Love and Wafflenugget here. However, if you would like to read my earlier essays about Maura and my life with her, you can find all the chapters of Maura and Me here. That said, all written work I share is written as stand-alone essays, so there is no pressure to do so whatsoever.
And now — finally — the chapter of the week. If you missed last week’s edition of Re-entry, you can read it here.
The Girl Who Died
I got the text a few days later. Somewhere between rearranging sofas, taming hallucinations, and endless, endless rituals to decontaminate myself and my new apartment, my phone pinged.
The words were bright and cheery.
“I'm moving to town! Actually! I'm here! Get ready for alllllll the fun!!!!!!!!!”
The exclamation points alone lit up my apartment. They reminded me of how Maura spoke and moved through the world – that irreverent hope and undying enthusiasm that you just couldn’t diminish, even with the darkest of moods or manifestations of self. The text and its words held everything I used to be, everything Maura had been, and everything – if I dared to recover and heal — I wanted to become again.
I read the words over and over and analyzed the exclamation points again and again.
Nivia. Nivi. She was someone I went to Middlebury with – someone who knew me before I lost my memory and mind. She knew the girl who walked across campus with a smile on her face saying hello to absolutely everyone – the one who table hopped at lunch from social group to social group, laughed with her full body – head and hair thrown back, not giving a single damn, jumped off cliffs on skis and in waterfalls before all the guys and had more invitations on a Saturday night to go party than she knew what to do with.
Yes – Nivi had been my friend at the very beginning of college – before the hypomanic breaks and rage episodes. Before the meds stole my body and sight. Before the suicidality took hold and the electroconvulsive therapy stole my memory and left me ravaged by ocd, hallucinations, and an illness hellbent on ending me once and for all.
I scanned her words over and over again, looking for some clue that she knew what had happened to me — how damaged and dark I had become – how isolated and small. I read them over and over, trying to figure out if she knew that the girl I had been had died. The girl had died.
But there wasn’t one. There wasn’t a single one.
I continued to puzzle over it.
Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay that Nivi doesn’t know what happened to me. Maybe — actually — this is the chance I’ve been waiting for — my chance to have friends at that empty table in the corner like I’d promised my dad.
I opened my notes app and began drafting a response. After writing and editing and writing and editing seven different drafts without coming up with one that felt right, I grabbed the box of my journals in desperation.
How in God's name did I use to speak?!
How do I speak young Kate?
If this is really going to work… if I really want to have a chance to be a friend — to be her friend — I have to speak that Kate. THAT Kate.
I flipped page after page and finally found my freshman-year ramblings.
Today, I begin – Again!
Today is a good day!!
Yes it is!! And yes it will be!
For even if I weep and even if I rage, it is okay.
It is OKAY!!
There is no wrong way to be a human, Kate!
There is absolutely no wrong way to be human at all!
I couldn’t help but burst out laughing as I read my words. What a ridiculous human being I had been. But just as quickly as I was laughing at my old self and how inordinately naive I had been, I realized that Nivi wasn’t speaking the way that she spoke. She was speaking the way that I used to speak and live. She was embodying young Kate – and the walking exclamation point I was that freshman year.
Pulling phrases directly from my neon pink scribbles, I found the words to respond.
“Oh my Golly goodness!!!! You're here!!!! I'm so, so, so, so excited!!!!!!!”
In true Nivi, energizer bunny form, she responded immediately.
“I ammmmm!!!! Want to hang out tomorrow?!!!!”
Before I even had a chance to answer, Nivi’s texts started coming in rapid fire. Fast and quick.
“I’m moving in today!
Do you still have your truck?!
Any way we could get me furniture tomorrow together?!
And you help me move in and decorate my place?! You’re the best decorator I know!!!! it could be so much funnnnn!!”
Slowly, pulling words from my journal pages, I responded in pure exclamation point glory. Little by little, the conversation lit me up.
I was going to get to help someone move!
I got to be a friend!
OMG, I had a friend who trusted me enough to ask me to help her move!!!
She wasn’t asking her dad. She was asking ME!!
HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!
We texted back for an hour or so, and after settling on meeting up at 9 am the next day, I realized I was no longer pulling hot pink scribbled phrases from my journal. I was no longer pausing to edit my texts even. No, I was writing and living the exclamation point I used to be, and as I collapsed into bed and drifted off into a deep sleep, I couldn’t help but smile.
Maybe that girl isn’t dead after all.
Yes. Maybe that Kate isn’t dead, after all, indeed.
As always, thank you for the honor of being seen. You are a true gift to me.
Hope to see many of you on Sunday.
With love and snuggles from my two girls,
Kindly,
Kate
Dr Waffle back in business!!
Life is always a mix of dark and light at the same time, but I have to believe that joy always, ultimately wins. Survival is joy.