Loss of Parent | Finding Alice

Saw this hands-on exhibit at the Portland Children’s Museum in May. I’m Finding Alice everywhere!

First of all, I just want to say thank you for all the support after I started this blog earlier in the year. I am so lucky to be surrounded by family and friends who rally behind my cockamamie ideas.

Secondly, I wanted to report back that I received an overwhelming amount of feedback from friends from all chapters of my life who shared that they, too, cope with anxiety and/or depression.

If you are following along with my blog because you can relate to some of those mental health challenges, just a reminder: We are SO NOT ALONE. I knew that, or at least suspected it, but it became very apparent when so many friends opened up to me about what they struggle with as well.

For this reason, I feel it’s important to share that I tabled the blog for the winter/spring because I got pretty walloped by a wave of depression. It wasn’t completely shocking – winter is historically a tough time of year for me, with like 7 minutes of sunshine per day. And after the fun of Christmas is over, January, February, and March (…and April…and most of May) in New Hampshire are long months. On the other hand, there was really no reason to feel so awful.

That’s what I’ve found to be so frustrating about depression. It can hit you so hard, and yet absolutely nothing is “wrong.” In fact, there are so many blessings in my life, I felt really ungrateful for feeling so down.

Thankfully, I wasn’t completely incapacitated, as I know many people can be. I just put my head down and focused on moving forward, but all of my energy went to keeping life normal for Rick and Ryan, and taking care of myself. There was no creative juice left for Finding Alice.

I want to put it in writing for myself, for when I have down moments again, and for anyone else who needs to read it: It will get better. When you are in the throes of it, it is virtually impossible to believe. But it will. It will get better.

Increasing my medication, maintaining regular check-ins with my therapist, lots and lots of prayer, adding more structure to my days, being patient, being grateful, and holding out hope for better days —these were some of the steps I took to help. I also tried to incorporate some exercise (let’s get real, this was minimal but since my baseline is fairly, um, nonexistant, I think even a little helped. To my body it must’ve felt like I was marathon training even though I was just walking on the treadmill!) Self-care was also key. For me, self-care treats are things like taking a bath while reading People or Us Magazine, and also watching or listening to comedians on Netflix and Spotify. Laughter is the best medicine, they say. (Well…maybe second to anti-depressants?)

As I prepared to get back into the blog, I was thinking about what to write for this post, and the Gospel reading on September 8 (Luke 14: 25-33) had a line that particularly struck me:

“No one who does not carry his cross and come after me can be my disciple.”

I had to smile and have a little conversation in my heart with my Mom, who was very vocal about the fact that we all have our crosses, our struggles, to carry—just as Jesus carried his cross. Whenever I’d lament the (seemingly) perfect life of a friend at school, or get down about something, she was always quick with the reminder, “We all have our crosses, Katie. And you wouldn’t want someone else’s.” It was always hard to argue with that one.

So, here’s to carrying our crosses. May we all find the strength to carry them each day and look for ways to help other carry theirs.

Finding Alice

It was probably two years ago now that I was sitting in church and the particular prayer on my mind was, Ok God, what do you want me to do with the rest of my life? After all, things hadn’t quite turned out as I’d expected.

Rick and I are both from big families. Mine includes 5 siblings and 15 nieces and nephews, and now a great-niece and a great-nephew! Rick’s includes a brother, a niece and a nephew, plus a large extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins. Naturally, when we got married seven years ago, we assumed we would also be blessed with a large family. Two months before our first anniversary, Ryan was born. We were off to a great start! We even picked our stroller based on how it would work for two kiddos because we were so sure another baby would soon follow. And then, nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, life was good. But from a baby perspective, it wasn’t going according to MY plan. Probably the most frustrating part was that I was so excited to use our name for a girl. (Well, we had a considerable list of girl names, but this was the front runner. And I’ll have you know I am breaking MAJOR Morris Family protocol by sharing a baby name…my sisters are going to be outraged. Sorry Mary, Eileen, and Colleen!) But if we had a baby girl, her name was going to be Alice. My Mom’s name.

Not long after we moved to New Hampshire, we learned that scar tissue was very likely the reason why I wasn’t getting pregnant. Over 25 years of Crohn’s disease meant a handful of surgeries, and surgeries can lead to scar tissue. Unfortunately when that’s in the lower abdominal area, it can affect the surrounding organs. So basically, it did not look good for more Feeney babies. I was used to, and accepted (not always gracefully), Crohn’s affecting other aspects of my life, but it had never occurred to me that it would impact my dreams of having a big family.

So back to the pew in St. Michael Church, asking God for guidance. I’m sitting there wondering, If I’m not going to have any more kids (the thing which I had assumed would occupy the better part of at least two decades) what do You want me to do with the rest of my life? At the time, Ryan was going to be starting a longer day of preschool, so I would have more time on my hands. Should I keep freelancing? Should I write something else? Should I go back to school?

Of course, God didn’t whisper in my ear as I was sitting there, and I wasn’t expecting that. I was just formally starting the convo and trying get serious about my own process of self-reflection at the same time.

When Mass was over, I had coffee on my mind, obviously. As I pulled out of my street parking spot, I was minding my own business, plotting my Dunkin Donuts order, when all of a sudden I noticed the car ahead of me had a vanity plate. The vanity plate read: ALICE.

Now, COME ON. Right?

So I really felt a sense of hope. Maybe another baby is still in the plan, I thought. I tried to keep the faith. But another year passed without any success.

Around this time, my Mom’s forgetfulness started to turn into something more. I remember a phone conversation I was having with one of my sisters. I told her the story of the vanity plate. “You know,” she said, “maybe the Alice is Mom. Maybe it has something to do with her.”

That hadn’t even really occurred to me. Of course when I first saw the vanity plate, my Mom wasn’t in any need of help. I’d like to think that in the very quick progression of her illness, until she passed away in December 2017, that I did help her. But I wasn’t her primary caregiver, and I wasn’t even able to contribute in the same ways that my other siblings did, because I was so far away in New Hampshire and my schedule was pretty limited with Ryan being in school. While I tried to help where I could, I just don’t feel like I did enough for her for that to be It.

I’m still trying to figure it out. And honestly, I haven’t given up hope on another baby. But for now, I’m starting this blog. I’m a writer. Might as well start with this! I’m calling it, Finding Alice. It’s kind of like my personal metaphor for finding out more about my purpose in life.

Some days Finding Alice will be a way for me to share how I’m finding my Mom, and her influence, in my day-to-day life.

I’ve been wondering if my purpose in life has something to do with my experiences with Crohn’s disease, depression, and anxiety, so I’ll share about these personal experiences as well. My hope is that this might help someone struggling with one of these things—or struggling with SOME thing. It always helps to know we are not alone. We all have our crosses to bear.

You’ll probably see a post or two about The Bachelor/Bachelorette, because I need some sort of outlet for all this cerebral stuff I’ve got going on up here in my brain.

Of course this wouldn’t be a blog written by me, if I didn’t share about my faith and how that has played, and continues to play, a role in my life. Will I be able to intertwine this with a Bachelor post? Only time will tell!

Finding Alice will also be a way for me to share and laugh about a smorgasbord of other life experiences. A way for me to fight the Facebook tendency, and I’ll fully admit, MY Facebook tendency, to post a select view of life. I’d prefer to live a little bit more authentically, even though that also means being a bit more vulnerable. I’ll admit, I’m terrified. See above: Anxiety.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with it! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed agonizing about writing this.

I welcome all comments INCLUDING differences of opinion as long as they are expressed with kindness and respect.

Finding Alice

Category / Loss of Parent

Well, hello there!

Here we go…