Wafflenugget (2025)

13/06/2025

I went to the hospital yesterday for a psychiatry appointment. It was in the same hospital I stayed in 21 times in the psych ward.

I’ve been back many times before — for exposure therapy sessions, checkups galore and insurance compliance, of course.

But this time, walking through those double doors, waffle proudly striding by my side, it was different. It was entirely different.

I didn’t realize it at first. All I noticed were the smiles. All I could see was that every single person we passed was grinning and could not contain it.

I puzzled over this unusual display of joy in the hospital when we made it to the elevator. What was going on? Was it free cone day? Or was there a headline I missed? But as I looked down, about to pull out my phone and check, I saw my beaming bear and couldn’t contain my own grin. I realized the answer sat right beside me, turkey leg rocking proud.

It was her. They were all smiling because of her. Yes, they were all smiling because of my beloved bear.

I marveled at the joy she brings as I continued to witness it in every doctor, every nurse and every human we passed by in the hallway.

When we finally made it there — through the sprawling labyrinth that is Hitchcock, the appointment passed in ease. We talked symptoms for a few minutes and then segued into discussions about psych lit and the lack of research on fugue states, his kids and how 16 whole years had passed since I started seeing him.

We also spoke about Waffle — about how much she had helped me when the meds and endless behavioral therapy couldn’t. He remarked over and over about how very far I had come and how continually amazed he was at the effort I put in to my own care and survival.

When we left — I took the long way back to the car with a visit to my favorite painting and a drop in on my sister who now works there as a doctor herself.

Everywhere we went, the smiles continued. Kids clapped their hands, patients beamed in unexpected glee and even the surliest of security officers couldn’t hide the glimmer in their eyes.

👇💜 Continued 💜👇

02/06/2025

This best girl had her oncology recheck last Friday and SHE IS STILL CANCER FREE!!!!! I do not have words for this gift but her smile says it all!!!!! Holy cannoli Waffle strong!!! 💜

To celebrate, we went for her first swim of the summer and ate alllll the cheeseburgers! Also made a purple life vest for my sweet princess purple and sent her one and my heart is officially bursting seeing her swim in it cancer free for the first swim of the summer 💜😭

It’s certainly been a tough few years for this sweet bear of mine but to have her here — joyous and well — just wow.

Thank you for loving us through it all!

Big hugs and snugs,
Kate, Dave and the girls

30/04/2025

The answer is always them
And a good dose of fresh air.

Yes
The answer is always them
And a shift in perspective.

~

I finally got out my camera this weekend
Just like I finally got out of bed

And amidst the grey and brown malaise that the landscape of Vermont offers in April
And my mind seems perpetually consumed by as of late,
I found what I was looking for.

Yes, in the smile of my ten year old
The zoomies of my wild silk
And the slow, relentless miracle of seasons on earth
I found what I was looking for.

I found hope
The belief in what we cannot yet see

And the reminder that just like the maple trees that grow dormant
And the ferns that curl into a cocoon of safety all winter long
I have seasons too.

Yes,
I have seasons too
And that doesn’t make me less
That doesn’t make me broken
It makes me alive

Yes,
It makes me alive
And it means that after my grey and brown malaise
Just like the spring flowers
I will bloom.

________

Radical Transparency: Waffy and Tug are rocking their tried and true Front Range Dog Harness — the only adventure harnesses these girls will ever need. But seriously. Waffle has had her purple vest since she was one and Tug has had her pink vest since she was two and they will never need another one because Ruffwear gear is actually built to last. Massive gratitude to for welcoming us back for a second year as ambassadors. We couldn’t be more honored to be the representing owner-trained team. Truly. What a gift.

25/04/2025

They keep checking on me.
Head resting on my feet
Paws draped across my lap

They’ve been doing bark alerts too
Especially when my stillness seems to creep
towards forever

I never told them
But I never have to.
They just know.
I am not okay.

When I was first diagnosed with dissociative disorder four and a half years ago I thought,
Okay, that explains it.
That finally explains it.

I lose time
I end up in the woods
I can’t remember my past

Now, all I have to do is learn to stay.
Now, all I have to do is be here and now — earthside.
How hard can that be?

If only that had been the case
If only the work was merely about presence
A practice there is actually no mere about

But instead
Instead
This phase of recovery is not only about presence
It’s about presence while the memories of my past return

It’s about living in a body that remembers
Everything

Standing on that bridge ready to jump
Being held down for only his pleasure
Scooping medications out of the toilet and swallowing them whole to avoid the ever gnawing withdrawal
And running — running — running as fast as I can from the demons of my mind that forever chase me.

Yes,
It’s about living through it once more
But this time,
with feeling

Yes, now I see
Ever so clearly
The work really is —
to stay
And there is absolutely nothing simple or easy about it

And while I don’t want to stay right now
As every fiber of my being is tormented and completely devoured by a past that feels entirely unsurvivable
I look down

And instead of the river raging hundreds of yards below me
and the false salvation that jump might pretend to afford
I see them

Yes
I see them
And I choose the hardest work I will ever know

I choose to stay
For them
Until I learn how to stay for me as well.

~
~
~
~
Please know: I can contract for my safety.

If you are struggling with thoughts of su1c1de, I don’t presume to get it.

I’m also here with you and believe wholeheartedly in us both.

I also encourage you to use the resources below — they have saved my life countless times 💜👇😘

___________

21/04/2025

May the cookies (or donuts, if you’re me) be plentiful today!

19/04/2025

I offer her the short cut
She’s ten, after all
And dinner is already waiting

But there she stands
Beaming
Four paws
Firmly set
Solid on soggy ground

She glances at the shorter way home
As if my people pleasing has finally worn off

But her stubborn stance says it all

And as her head turns back to the long way home
She embodies the truth she has taught me every day she’s walked this sweet earth.

Mom.
You and me.
Together.
We do the hard things.

28/03/2025

HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY, TUGGIE!!!!! 🎉🎂🥳You light up our lives, you sweet wiggly chonk!!! We truly cannot believe you are already four!! Oh, how time flies when you are given the gift of a best girl.

Here’s to you and your magic my wild silk!

Yes, here’s to you and your magic indeed!

We love you the most (even if sassy sister someone’s pretends she feels otherwise) and can’t wait for another year adventuring all over the globe with you!!!

Now team, you want to do!! 💜🎉😘

26/02/2025

For as long as I can remember, holidays were not my family’s thing.

“It’s just a day for needless consumption,” my mom would say.

“It’s your mother’s fight against capitalism,” my father would explain thereafter in hushed tones.

But Valentine’s Day was different. It was a day to honor love — out loud.

It was a day to say I love you — boldly, beautifully and with abandon. And though it was never said explicitly, it was abundantly clear why.

Valentine’s Day was the holiday our family loved because love is the greatest thing we can ever know.

Yes, love is the greatest gift we can ever receive and with it — together — we can survive whatever the world throws our way.

So leading up to the day, boxes of cardstock and glitter, doilies and ribbon that sat abandoned in the basement all year would make their way to the dining room and for a few short weeks, it became a Valentine card workshop. A bonanza of red, white, pink qnd purple, we’d cut and glue, write and muse and make handmade valentines for each other and our classmates.

When the day would arrive, as if we were getting up for Christmas stockings, we would wake up extra early and gather at the table over my dad’s blueberry coffee cake that he’d made starting at four am.

And there — we’d give each other handmade, heart covered love notes.

Yes, there over coffee cake that was three hours in the making we would celebrate love.

At school I wasn’t as enamored with the holiday. I always felt embarrassed that my valentines for classmates were handmade while theirs were store bought candy boxes or ‘cool’ Lizzie McGuire cut outs.

But at home, I always loved that my family celebrated it our way.

We continued this tradition through childhood and some of college. We even kept it going when I was in the psych ward — when I turned my room into a valentines workshop and my echocardiogram into my craft paper.

But somewhere along the way — after hospitalization six or seven, I stopped participating. As I weathered hallucinations, days on the bathroom floor lost to medication side effects and paranoia of epic proportion, my belief in love and its power to connect us and defy all odds dwindled.
Continued 💜👇

06/02/2025

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to live a “big life” — a life full of faraway places, smooshed pb + j’s on snow capped mountain tops, and remote adventures you can’t even dream up until you live them.

This dream — born out of a childhood spent outside and on backpacking, canoeing and sea kayaking trips with my parents — drove me for years.

It’s quite simple really —

I am happiest outdoors.

I am happiest moving my body in nature.

I am happiest living my second grade dream — to live “recess” — my favorite subject.

As I grew up and my health deteriorated more and more, I made peace with the loss of my mind. I’d been taught it was broken anyway.

But as I weathered nausea, dizziness, double vision and a tremor so great it rivaled my grandfather’s in college, I struggled to make peace with losing my body and that dream.

But when the fugue states began at age 21 and I lost time and place too, that dream all but withered.

~
It’s been a wild two decades for this body of mine but today, my hands no longer tremor and I only have medication side effects a few times a week so I think it’s time I dare to dream once more.

But this time,

Yes — this time —

My dream of a big life won’t be about how it looks in pictures or stories.

It won’t be about how far away I can adventure from home or how tall the mountain I climb is on the map.

Instead,

My dream is about how big I can make this very moment.

Yes, my dream is about how much I can be here — earthside — right now — in the cold winter sun as the snow crunches beneath my feet and my girls frolic, free in the ever knowing truth that the biggest life we can ever live is the one that is spent together and felt in its entirety in the here and now.

10/12/2024

HIP HOP HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY, WAFFY BEAR!!!!!!

We do not have words for you, our super survivalist!! No, we do not have words for the honor — the gift — and the privilege that is you, our bunny bear.

And — instead of trying to find them — of trying to write the enormity of saving me from my demons, giving us a family and surviving an emergency splenectomy, paralysis and cancer — I’m going to spam the internet with random puppy pics and go snuggle you in the snowbank and shower you in cookies.

To all of you — whether you joined a decade ago or only recently —

Thank you for being here.

One day — hopefully soon — when my fugue states calm a bit more, we will return fully to this page and launch Waffle’s Wildflowers — an initiative to plant, grow and gift wildflowers to local psych wards to brighten the rooms of people like me who live with serious mental illness.

Until then though, I’m working on saving myself and living up to the lifesaving love my two best girls, husband and community give me every day.

May you know that even if we’ve never met you in person,

We love you.

And you being here with us — bearing witness to our freedom — is what dreams are really made of.

With fireside snugs from Tuggie and snowbank snugs from the birthday bear,
We wish you a day.
Because just like you, exactly as you are,
A day is always enough.

Kindly,
Kate + Dave

07/12/2024

Me: Want to come in for breakfast? Waffy: 👆

Sending love and all the snowmersaults your way from these two best girls and me!

Whether you’re playing in the snow or cuddling by the fire this weekend, we hope it honors you with kindness.

Kindly,
Kate

04/09/2024

And on my 37th birthday,
I was given the world’s greatest gift —

more time
with you.

💜

~

Waffle’s CT showed no masses in her abdomen or chest on August 14, 2024.

Her lymph node is still a bit swollen and she somehow now has two broken ribs 🙈 but they believe the swelling is her baseline and the rib breaks are due to her lung surgery.

So — according to her oncologist —

WAFFY IS OFFICIALLY CANCER FREE!!!!

There aren’t words for the gratitude and relief. Truly.

All I know is holy heck, we are celebrating this super survivalist and every second we get with her.

~

To keep the hystiocytic sarcoma at bay, we are following the evidence based best practice and finishing the course of chemotherapy.

She has two more treatments left so for the week after those, lots of snuggles, chicken and rice and long afternoon naps help her weather the nausea.

But the other weeks — the two weeks off — she is her sassy, energetic, sister policing self.

And in two months, just in time for her favorite season — the season of snow — we will be throwing her the most epic party to celebrate her fight and still being here with us. Yes. Still here with us.

~

I don’t know if this marks my return to this page. Time away from social media has been deeply healing. I’m more regulated and have far less fugue states when I delete this app from my phone entirely.

But when I’m away, I miss you.
If you feel the same, please join us on Substack.
I share all the waffy and tug photos there and we would so love to have you.

Regardless, I just wanted you all to know the good news.

You have championed us through so much — adventures galore, nyc trips aplenty and of course, Waffy’s emergency splenectomy, broken back, paralysis and now, cancer. What a ride.

So truly — Thank you for being here and loving my best girls right alongside me. It is such a gift.

With love and all the snugs from Waffy and Tuggie.

Kindly,
Kate

____________________
Service dog vests by our beloved partner who has supported my best girl, break from social media and mental health with nothing but love.

Wafflenugget

13/06/2025

02/06/2025

30/04/2025

25/04/2025

21/04/2025

19/04/2025

28/03/2025

26/02/2025

06/02/2025

10/12/2024

07/12/2024

04/09/2024

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