The snow arrived in Vermont this week. It is absolutely stunning. There is just something remarkable about it. The brightness it brings. The clean slate it offers. The deep and true quiet it ushers in. And of course, the snowmersaults and snow smackerels of my one best bear.

I’ve been leaning hard into win…

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Good Morning, Beautiful Human,

I have not had a fugue state in two months. Two months and three days. I mean, it’s not like I’m counting or anything (biggest lol).

I believe this is the longest I have gone without one. I, of course, can’t know for certain because I don’…

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Hello Beautiful Human — 

Thank you so much for being here. I never thought I would be read, let alone live outside a locked residential psych ward, so I really do mean that.

This is the story of how, after being told I’d only survive in a locked psychiatric ward, I rebuilt my life by re-wiring my entire brain.

Most importantly, this is the story of how I reclaimed myself — and how love and a dog named Waffle saved me.

To read the story of my life before that time, you can do so here.

Please note: This is undoubtedly a work in process (not progress, I am not here to optimize myself). I live with dissociative fugue and a shattered memory, so I’m writing this through memory reconsolidation work with my therapist, journal entries, health records, and interviews (all names unless explicitly stated are pseudonyms). As a result, it is undoubtedly messy, just like me.

And now, without further ado, enjoy the book I hope to one day call — With Love and Wafflenugget.

As always, thank you for the honor of being seen and read. I still can hardly believe it’s the case, but I don’t take that privilege lightly at all.

I never imagined this story would find so many kind humans and that so many kind humans would stay to read it. So truly — thank you. Every quiet read, comment, and solidarity story you shared of your own — I feel it and it matters so damn much.

A dear friend and mentor said it best: When it comes to books, we must write from scars, not open wounds. That is where true meaning, beauty and wisdom lie.
Be patient with those wounds, my love. They will be scars one day soon.

She is right and that’s why even though writing these chapters has, at times, been an enormous struggle, I wanted to offer them in gratitude. Thank you for walking this path with me. Your presence here makes the telling possible.

The ‘Maura & Me’ Complete Chapter Archive

Sending love, best girl snugs, and a dork dance,

K Speer

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 Maura — how she spoke and moved through the world. Her irreverent hope and undying enthusiasm that you just couldn’t diminish, even with the darkest of moods or manifestations of self. This new 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. The girl who jumped off cliffs on skis and into 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 again and 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. Did she know this?

But there wasn’t one. There wasn’t a single one and as I continued to puzzle over it, I realized that might not be such a bad thing.

Maybe that’s okay…? Maybe it’s okay that Nivi doesn’t know what happened to me… Maybe this is the chance I’ve been waiting for — my chance to have friends at that empty table in the corner like I promised my dad.

Seizing the rare moment of optimism, I opened my Notes app and began drafting a response. After 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 talks?!

How do I speak the language of ‘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.

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, I thought.

Yes. Maybe that Kate isn’t dead, after all, indeed.

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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

When Atlas, my therapist, originally suggested moving into town, I had been very open to it… excited even.

The idea of moving, of being in a place where I could do things, be a part of things, meet people, see people, and engage with them was as alluring as any daydream could be. But my lived reality held a different truth entirely — one built on terror and consumed entirely with fear. 

The night before I officially moved in, I didn’t sleep. The idea of being in public, of being seen, and living in a place where I could no longer exit and enter my apartment in complete privacy, without being scrutinized, ate me alive.

What would people think of me? 

Would they know I heard voices and saw demons? 

Would they know I was chased by a psychopathic hallucination of myself or spent time in a psych ward and felt more myself there than anywhere else?

Yes, what would people think of me?

And how am I supposed to walk so they don’t?

What does it mean to walk right? And move right? And wear clothes right? And just be right?

How do I human — right? Or more importantly, how do I human so they don’t notice me at all?

Yes, how do I human so I don’t ever have to explain myself? My three-hour showers to clean off the world, my conversations with what everyone else thinks is "thin air," and my endless trips to the bathroom to change my black leggings yet again because of chronic incontinence?

The fear grew like the red, hot, thorn-adorned vine it was. It crept up my legs, my hips, my abdomen, its barbs digging in with venomous enthusiasm as it clung ever tighter to my puckering skin. From there, it crept up my chest and toward my neck, beginning to suffocate me whole, and as I struggled to break free — to roll over and over again away from this reckoning — its barbs dug in, and the truth took hold.  No amount of watching DVDs on my computer and replicating the human behavior I witnessed there was ever going to compensate for the disaster I was. Nothing could fix me.

And as the vines sliced their way across my chin, my lips, my nose, my eyes, my head, I disappeared into a fugue before the real-life terror buried me alive.

I came to a few short hours later. Alert. Rigid. I was in my truck, parked just down the road from my childhood best friend’s home.

I ended up there a lot after I lost time. It was the best possible outcome when I did so. I guess you could say it was my favorite re-entry from a fugue state: the kindest one. 

As the early morning light began to glow, and two does peered curiously through my windshield, I knew this was it. This was my final chance to flee before my time in safety was over. To run? Or to stay?

Yes.

To run?

Or to stay?

Every single part of me wanted to run, to disappear, to hide away and lose time forever. I wanted to be a nobody, a shadow of an existence that only went to work two hours, four days a week without talking to anyone, and then a human who slept, showered, tamed hallucinations and lost herself and time for the rest of her life.

Yes, every fiber of my petrified being wanted to run and join Maura, to be done once and for all.

But I had promised. I had promised Maura that I would fight for people like us.

And, when I had tried to leave — that one single time — my parents wept and cried hysterically. Yes, when I tried that, my parents hurt more than they already did.

So, with a deep breath, I turned the keys in the ignition, shifted into first gear, and drove back for the final time to my little cabin in the woods, where I showered off my excrement, put on clean clothes, and even brushed my teeth.

To spare my dad that moment that always came with any knock on my door — an endless second when the fear of my death by suicide took hold, where he was forced to pause to get enough oxygen in his lungs before knocking in case the worst had happened — I sat myself down on the steps of my little porch to greet him. And when he pulled in the drive, I leapt up with enthusiasm I didn’t have and mustered the biggest smile.

“Good Morning, Daddio! Thank you so much for helping me move today!”

The move reminded me of college and of all the times he'd moved me before.  Into dorm rooms. Out of dorm rooms. Into my first apartment at Middlebury. Out of that apartment. And back home. Back for what we assumed was for good.

Every time we moved together, my dad would find a way to smile and laugh and, at the very least, pretend to have fun. It was how we did everything when I was a kid. My Dad was an outward-bound instructor and both he and my mom raised us to believe that hard work and hardship were guaranteed – always – but that joy was a choice we were privileged enough to make. And joy was everywhere if we were creative enough to find it. 

I was always good at crafting joy out of thin air. Whether it was turning a stick into a pony to ride down a slot canyon, collecting rocks as currency for my future imaginary kingdom, or making handmade valentines for the entire psych ward staff, my creativity always came to life with in pursuit of joy. Even so, it was hard to find joy that Saturday morning. Actually, it was damn near impossible. 

The stairs to my new apartment were narrow and the people that I thought were going to be my friends, my neighbors, didn't even make eye contact or say hello once. To either of us. My Dad was unfazed by this, but I couldn't let it go. It was like my neighbors just knew… I was insane. I was contaminated, and my very existence might contaminate them – yes, contaminate them with my filthy, filthy mind.

As we bumped our way up the stairs and struggled with the geometry of its tight corners, it wasn’t the finite Jenga that sucked the joy right out of the move, it was the striking realization that my dad had aged considerably since the last time we did this at Middlebury.

When did his hair turn gray? 

When did his eyes grow so many wrinkles? 

When had the man who always joked about my Interior design obsession and the endless piles of furniture, decor, and fort materials become him? 

Yes, when had so much time passed? 

Every time we made it into the apartment with another trip of stuff and surveyed the dark, thickly carpeted space of this new place I was supposed to call home, I witnessed how weathered he had grown, and how fragile. Most of all, I witnessed the toll my life had taken — in the faraway gaze, in the tears cresting on newly folded wrinkles, and in the opening and closing of his mouth upon the realization that there was no joy or joke to be found there today. 

Yes, every time we crossed the threshold, it was so abundantly clear — the decade of me being suicidal, intermittently psychotic, chronically incontinent, and in endlessly volatile free fall had worn on him. This was not what he had wished for for his child.  This was not the life he wanted for me. Whatsoever. It was actually everything he’d devoted his entire career to fighting against, and here I was, still sick, still alone, absolutely debilitated by disability at age 26.

But there was nothing we could do to change it at that moment.  There was nothing we could do to change it at all.

And even though I felt that sentiment deeply — that hopelessness, that powerlessness, that far away look, and that absolute sorrow, I didn't want him to linger there or be there with me in it any longer than he had to be. So, I did what he and my mom had taught me to do on every backpacking trip and tough day at tutoring. I made the choice to find the joy, and I attempted a joke.

“Well, now that I don't live in the boonies, I’m guaranteed to make friends!”

My dad (bless his heart) faked a smile, so I carried on and daydreamed up a dinner scene at the table we had just set up in the corner. I told him I’d be serving pesto pasta and chicken to my new friends in no time and that then, if he could be brave enough to believe it, we would go get drinks at my favorite childhood restaurant, Molly’s Balloon.

He faked another smile as I continued to spout details of this life “I was about to have,” but there was no belief in it. The hope was gone. 

But even if he didn't have hope (and I barely did either), I had promised Maura that I would try. Yes, I had promised Maura that I wouldn’t give up and I would keep fighting. So boldly, bravely, I went over to him, and put both my hands on his far thinner, far more fragile shoulders than I'd ever remember him having, and I said, 

“No, Dad, really.  I will have friends. I will have friends at that table. I will rebuild this life of mine because today, I begin again. Yes, today, this is just the beginning.”

To keep reading the next chapter, join us here:

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As always, thank you for the honor of being read and seen. You — truly — are a gift. to me.

With love, and a hug, I wish you a day.

Kindly,

Kate

Prologue, October 2024

In many ways, I am in absolute free fall. It makes complete sense, of course — breakdowns are breakthroughs, and I am finally awake — aware — and at home in this body of mine. Except when I have fugue states, of course.

I wish I could say I have a plan to make myself less messy, chaotic, and unpredictable. But I can’t. I can’t at all. Because I am living with a serious mental illness. And that — that is inherently, just like me — messy, chaotic and oh so unpredictable.

Now, some of you may be balking at these statements. Most do. I hear it a lot, even from my friends. C’mon, Kate, you work at Harvard. You literally ran a company for five years. You do everything you set your mind to. Please stop saying you are a mess.

But what most people don’t know is this:

I am no longer in a chronic state of fight or flight.

I am no longer a living, breathing, running trauma reaction fueled by pounding, relentless adrenaline.

I am in burnout, complete and utter burnout.

And, because of that, I cannot push through anything like I used to.

I can only work part-time, and even then, I still need the entire weekend to recover in bed.

That fact alone brings up all sorts of self-loathing. It also sets off every cruel voice my mind can conjure – I mean, Kate, what do you do all day? And honestly, what kind of a piece of shit are you if you could push through your symptoms for the dogs, but now you can’t push through to serve people like you, who are actually dying from serious mental illness?

But those voices of self-hatred are not born in truth. They are born in conditioning, years and years of societal conditioning, and even though I often feel like a complete and utter failure because of how exhausted I am right now, I am determined to learn that it is okay.

Yes, I am determined to learn that it is okay to be an exhausted mess because that is honest.

And only when I am honest can I actually heal.

So yup, this is me coming out, so to speak.

This is me coming out as absolutely batsh*t mentally ill.

(Yes, you can laugh at that. Please do, actually. Because we all know this and knew this, but I somehow still need to write it down and proclaim it on the internet because, well, I’m mentally ill. )

Now, for all those who are still curious about what I do all day, me too. I mean, seriously, where do my days go?

My current understanding is that I think — a lot. And write a lot too. But the rest of the time, the hours are lost – lost to fugue states and misadventures that I won’t ever remember unless I one day have a night terror about them.

I’m not going to pretend that reality — rather, lack thereof — is okay or even something comprehensible. It’s not. It also feels downright terrible. But I am still here, unlike so many of my late friends.

So, in their honor and in order to heal so I can live in that honor, I continue. I continue to reclaim – or claim in the first place – all that I survived and fought my way through.

So, at least for now, while I weather these days that often get lost, I am going to practice slowing down and being kind to myself. I am going to practice showing up, oh so messy me, and tackling the process of writing my full story in front of you.

And while I am very much a broken mirror with pieces scattered everywhere, when I write them out, even if they cut me and hurt so very much as I process them, afterwards, they come home to me.

So, this week, I begin that practice. I begin picking up my many pieces and learning to hold them close, sharp edges and all.

And this week, I begin by sharing about my life after Maura and what happened next in the book I hope to one day call: With Love and Wafflenugget.

For recent newcomers — a quick note

Welcome! I am so grateful that you are here — that we are here together.

Maura was my best friend who is no longer with us after a struggle with bipolar disorder. If you would like to read about Maura and my life with her, and the experiences that preceded this memoir, you can find the full story at the link below.

Read Maura + Me Here

With Love, and Wafflenugget

Chapter 1. Life After Maura

Human warning: the following piece mentions suicide and depersonalization-derealization. As always, please choose YOU and your well-being first and foremost, so if these subjects could harm you, please DO NOT read it.

 I don't remember life after Maura, at least the first bit.  I was in a fugue state. 

I do remember returning to see my dying therapist, Atlas, though. It was after his colon cancer and fear of death had left him so triggered by my sorrow that he told me, in a messy burst of humanity, that I was a failure — that I had failed him and my parents in every single way.

The whole mess of that appointment had resulted in my suicide attempt, and there’s no way to dice it differently. The entire thing was a downright disaster.

But I couldn’t process that truth at the time. I was still hallucinating, losing time to fugue states, and lost in a fog of intense antipsychotics. So, believing I had to go or I’d be sent to a locked residential ward, I went back to see him as my therapist after I got out of the hospital.

The whole appointment played out like a bad dream. My body was so ravaged from the prior few weeks — the fugue states, the suicide attempt, the psych ward stay, and Maura’s passing — that as I entered his office, I slipped into a state of what I now know was derealization.

Derealization, for me, meant I watched my life from above. It meant I became the little girl I used to be, the one who played with her dollhouse. Except this time, I watched myself be the doll. I was the doll. Or wasn’t I? I didn’t know. Either way, that doll or I? was small, timid, and inexplicably fragile. She acted out life instead of living it. She was there, but she wasn’t, all at the same time.

From above, I could see it clearly. Atlas’s cancer was taking him, and taking him soon. His clothes hung loosely. His belt did too. It was pulled to the smallest point, and still he kept grasping — grasping to keep his pants up and on his waist.

Atlas welcomed me to his office like he always did. He strode over and went in for a hug. And even though I or the doll cowered as he approached, he still pulled me in for a forced embrace, completely detached and unaware of how violating it felt — a truth the old Atlas would never have overlooked.

And then, we began — I, on the couch. He, in his rocker. Us, in our usual positions.

Except this time, it was just he who began.

Without a single mention of the last appointment, his past outburst, and the cruel remarks about how I was failing him and my parents, he just talked. Actually no. He just preached and proselytized — telling me over and over that even if I had told everyone in the hospital that I hadn’t attempted, he knew the truth, but he could forgive me for what I had done. Yes, he could forgive me for what I had done, and even if I didn’t deserve it, he would give it because he was that kind.

I wish I could say that right then and there, I called him out on his own survival mode and the cruelty it was creating.

Yes. I wish I could say I stood up and left once and for all in that moment.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t say a word. A single word, all session.

I just listened. I just sat there. I just held space. Head bowed, in quasi-prayer, taking it all because I knew the truth that he refused to admit.

He was dying.

When his sermon finally ended, and the 90-minute session that had dragged on and on finally came to an end, I rose and attempted a hurried exit. But, as I crossed the room in a scamper of steps, he grabbed my right wrist before I could make it to the door. Holding it firmly, he waited until my lowered head raised.

I finally met his gaze and was surprised by what I found. There was a lightness to it — one that wasn’t there all session — one that was like the old Atlas I knew and loved so dearly.

Kate, that thing we talked about a few weeks ago. You moving? You must do it. Okay? You must. Sign the lease. You have to stop hiding your beautiful self from this world. Promise me you will do it.

His pressured remarks caught me off guard. They were practical. They were out of concern. They were actually reminiscent of the old Atlas I knew — the Atlas that had offered me a lifeline in high school when I was depressed — the Atlas that had celebrated every word I’d ever written and invited me into his grad school writing program free of charge.

Yes, this was the Atlas who drove two hours to Middlebury to pick me up and two hours back to admit me to the unit when my parents were abroad and my psychotic suicidality grew too severe. This was the Atlas who had earned the words I wrote to myself before getting electroconvulsive therapy at age 20:

Atlas knows everything. You can trust him with your life.

Yes, this Atlas was the man who had guided me lovingly through years and years of darkness. So, even though his remarks from mere weeks ago had broken me so aggressively that I had attempted suicide for the first and only time in my life, I chose to honor him, the man he used to be, and I pleasantly agreed.

And with that, his cold, bony hands released their grip, and for the first time in eight years, I or the doll left without giving him a hug.

I made good on my promise. I signed the lease to move into downtown Hanover, New Hampshire, that very day.  My apartment at the time was tucked away in the woods in solitude, in refuge, in quiet — it was a hideaway that honored my fear and the closest thing to safety I knew in a world filled with hallucinations and paranoia. Despite all that, the move soon became one of Atlas’ greatest pieces of advice that I ever turned into action.

Of course, moving didn’t feel that way at first. It felt the opposite, in fact. For the move was when the lies – my many lies about how “okay” I was – gave out, and when my parents fully realized how alone I truly was in the world. 

It all came to a head when I had to be out of my apartment and into the new one by the end of the weekend. I had moved everything I could move on my own already – clothes, dishes, chairs, toiletries – by Friday. But without Maura, I had no one to ask to help me move my bed and the two little couches. Just like my last move, I had no one to help me except for my parents.

I had a grade-A breakdown before I summoned the courage to ask them. Fists pounding til they bled on freshly cleaned floorboards. Hysteria so loud that even the chickadees stopped chirping. But no amount of weeping or screaming or cursing the world and what it had done to my late best friend could change the fact that I had no one in my life except the people who had made me, to help me lift my sofa.

After a few quick paces to gather myself around my near-empty living room, I picked up my phone and dialed the only number I’ve ever known by heart – home.

My dad answered, and after hollow pleasantries, I mustered the strength to ask for his help moving my furniture that very weekend. He paused for a moment or two and then kindly asked what any normal dad might: of course, I’d love to, but what about your friends, sweetie? Might they help? My back has just been acting up so much lately.

It was an ordinary question. It was so simple. And yet, it was also so damning. 

I opened and closed and opened and closed my mouth. No words came out. No explanation could even make sense of this — how all the things I had said to protect them from my pain were lies, complete lies. So there, in the lingering silence, one that exemplified everything broken that I had become, my dad realized why I had asked him in the first place, and right then, over the phone, the entire house of cards fell.

With a sharp inhale that carried across the line, he realized that his daughter, who he finally thought was doing better after a decade of suffering – who finally had a job, a new therapist, and a second chance at life outside a psych ward, had no friends to speak of. No friends at all.

In panic, he tried to backtrack. He said his back was actually fine. He said he’d just overdone it exercising that day and that he would love to. But even though I appreciatively accepted the kind offer and his enthusiastic change of heart, I knew the damage was done. And after saying goodbye, he didn’t hang up fast enough so I heard it too.

Yes, before the line clicked, I heard him descend into gut-wrenching, truly soul-quaking sobs.

To keep reading, join us for Chapter 2, below:

And with these fluffy, cute faces, we send love and deep hope that you are staying kind to yourself.

Since recently I have been struggling with that a lot, and it is really hard to do, I thought I’d end this week’s newsletter by sharing my new practice for infusing self-compassion into my day. I begin morning pages with these words.

May they offer you a bit of refuge as you weather the world too:

~

it is hard to be human.
it is so very hard to be human.

and as long as we are honest 
and kind, 
there is no wrong way to do it.

so today, 
yes today,

may you be human.

and may you remember 
that it is hard to do so

so however you do it,
yes, however you do it,

it is enough.
it is forever and always enough.

~

And with that, I wish you a day.

Kindly,

Kate

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This is Chapter 29 of my unpublished memoir, Maura and Me, available only to members of The Healing Lab, an entirely reader-supported publication. Being a paid subscriber allows me to maintain the integrity of this space, and made it possible for me to complete this work. I am deeply grateful for your support.

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