With Love, and Wafflenugget | Prologue + Chapter 1
The beginning of my second memoir about how I reclaimed me, fell in love, and was saved by a dog.
Prologue, October 2024
In many ways, I’m 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 aside from when I have fugue states.
I wish I could say I have a plan to make myself less messy – less chaotic and less unpredictable. But I can’t. I can’t at all. Because I am living with a serious mental illness. And it is messy, chaotic, and unpredictable. And so is healing.
Now, you’re likely balking at these statements as most do – C’mon Kate, you work at Harvard, for gosh sake. And also — you literally ran a company for legitimately five years. You can do anything you set your mind to. You are not a mess – but what most people don’t know is that 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. And because of that, I am in an entirely new, exhausted, chaotic chapter of existence.
And in that chapter, I can only work part-time at Harvard. Ten, maybe fourteen, hours a week.
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 from conditioning, years and years of societal conditioning, and even though I often feel like a complete and utter failure because of how messy, chaotic, and unpredictable I am, it is okay.
It really is okay to be this way – to only work part-time and be a flaming hot chaotic mess. Because that is honest. That is honest.
And only when I am honest can I heal.
On top of that, healing is hard. It is so – so – so very hard – and most don’t understand the work or value inherent in such a pursuit, especially when it makes money tighter than ever. But, I’d rather live simply and do this meaningful work of making a home for myself within myself than be the fake, picture-perfect, fairy tale recovery girl who mindlessly throws herself into hustle culture and its harms to prove I am something I’m not.
So yup, this is me coming out, so to speak.
I am coming out as absolutely batsh*t mentally ill.
(yes, you can laugh at that. Please do, actually. I am laughing right alongside ya.)
And even though we have all known it for a long, lonnnnnnnng while, I am proclaiming it once more. And for all those who are still curious about what I do all day, me too. My current understanding is that I think — a lot. And write a lot too. And try to read — when my attention span exists. But the rest of the time, I don’t know what I do all day, meaning a lot of my days are lost – lost to fugue states – in the woods – for hours I will never get back until I have a night terror about it.
But that — that is okay because I am still here.
Yes. I am still here, and in order to heal — in order to live in service of others like I so desperately want to – in order to champion the resilience I live and breathe and am but never ever feel, I have to write my whole story out and own its power. I need to reclaim – or claim in the first place – all that I survived and fought my way through. And most of all, I need to live and breathe and embody the truth that it is okay to be mentally ill – to be limited by my health – to be affected by the hell I lived through and continue to fight through day after day. Because if I can’t do that, then how can I honestly fight for others’ right to do the same?
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 show up, oh so messy me, and tackle that process of writing my full story in front of you. For as most of you know, to live with PTSD is to live with an identity shattered and that is exactly where I am at right now:
I am a broken mirror. Pieces are scattered everywhere. They don’t make sense. And they certainly don’t yet fit together. But they will. They will when I build a safe place for myself within myself. And the way I do that - the way I build a home for myself is to practice Kintsugi — the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold-infused lacquer. Yes, the way I heal is to pick up the pieces, one by one, and hold them, honor them, and put them back together while celebrating their history instead of hiding them in perpetual disguise.
And sure, I will make a mess as I craft my way through. Being the clutz I am, I will also certainly get cut. The edges are sharp. But the mayhem of the project and the sting of the cuts are no enemies of mine. They are merely the truth of healing and that – that is exactly what I am doing here, after all.
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 am sharing about my life after Maura.
This is the story of what happened next.
With Love, and Wafflenugget 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. But most importantly, this is the story of how I reclaimed me, fell in love, and was saved by a dog.
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.
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.
But I do remember returning to see my dying therapist, Atlas – the therapist who had recently told me I was a failure, that I had failed him and my parents, sending me spiraling into suicidality.
But I came back, and the whole appointment felt 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 derealization, a rare mode of survival my mind usually skipped over on its way to a full fugue state.
Derealization was like watching our session from above, like I was the little girl I used to be who played with her doll house. It looked just like that, actually, except this time, I was watching myself be the doll. Small. Timid. Inexplicably fragile. And acting out life, instead of living it.
Atlas’s cancer was taking him, and soon. He welcomed me to his office and when in for a hug like he always did, and even though I cowered as he approached, he still pulled me into a forced embrace.
And then, we began. I, on the couch. He, in his rocker.
Rather, he began, and there were no apologies.
There were no offers to explain his past outburst or his cruel remarks about how I was failing him and my parents. No. There was only him preaching and proselytizing – and telling me over and over that even if I told everyone 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.
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.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t say a word.
I just listened. I just sat there. I just held space. Head bowed, in quasi-prayer, I just listened.
He was dying.
It was what he needed at that moment, to say his goodbyes to the world. So even if he couldn’t be there for me, I would be there for him. Yes, even if this was my therapy appointment and he wasn’t yet in a hospital bed, I could sit vigil as he was actively 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 he grabbed my wrists before I could do so. He held them firmly and waited until my lowered head raised. I finally met his gaze. There was a lightness to it — one that wasn’t there all session.
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 — 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 while I was still in college free of charge — the Atlas who drove to Middlebury to pick me up and drove me back to admit me to the unit when my parents were abroad and my psychosis grew too severe — and 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 attempted suicide for the first and only time in my life, I chose to honor the old Atlas, the man he used to be and I agreed.
And with that, his cold bony hands released their grip, and for the first time in eight years, I 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
Love you. Always here if you need a bandaid. Have you heard of the other Japanese art, gyotaku, where they paint a fish and then press paper on it to make a print? Maybe you could do a human version (messy, I know). You could put paint on yourself and lie down on a big piece of paper. I bet when you look at that print, you’d see how beautiful you are, kintsugi places, and all.
Holy damn, you’re amazing, Kate. Thank you for sharing. I am very glad to have found you and your work and your truth. Which the world needs.