Don't Be Afraid To Do The Unusual Thing

“Last saved 2 years ago”.

That’s what my draft page says, though I know it’s actually been more like 3.

This is a true story, about a real person who was born over 130 years ago. It’s the first piece that I ever started writing for Vocal Media, and it has been sitting in publishing limbo since the very first day I got the nerve to try and be a real writer on a public platform.

It started out like this:

Once upon a time, about a century or so ago, a bright-eyed writer named Mary Magdaline sat down to compose an article for her local paper. It wasn't a complicated piece; just five short paragraphs about how she placed some of her furniture up for rent in her newspaper's 'Want Ads'. Lighthearted and upbeat, in her writing she describes the responses of her community.

One mother who replied asked for items for her daughter returning home from the hospital. In exchange, she agreed to make pickles and jelly for Mary Magdaline's family over the summer. Another couple didn't have the budget to buy new furniture for their returning college students, and her ad was the perfect fit for their needs. Other hard-working people without the proper financial resources reached out to her, and they worked together to find simple alternatives to money, such as doing laundry or weekly babysitting.

It was only a single ad, but it allowed her and others to connect, and help each other in resourceful and somewhat unconventional ways. "All of this was from one Want Ad." she wrote in the final paragraph. "It is a wonderful thing to have a medium in which so many hopes and desires may be expressed and fulfilled - so many friendly, helping hands joined in mutual aid". She titled it: Don't Be Afraid To Do The Unusual Thing.

That’s it. That’s all I managed to write. There is so much more to this story though. There’s so much more that I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the right words at the time. I think that’s because this story isn’t just about her writing an article a hundred years ago. It’s about a whole life, interrupted. It’s about the love and pain of a multigenerational family. And it’s also about me.

So let’s drop in to a different timeline now, not 130 years ago, but just a few decades ago, to the beginnings of yours truly…

I have always known there was something a little bit divergent about myself; something off maybe, ever since I was a young child. There’s forever been this broad spectrum of fluctuating emotions swimming within me. The highs have always been so high, and the lows have always been so low… like half my existence is straight pain and sadness, and then on the flip side, euphoria and beauty all around me. I’ve also always known that I absolutely adore writing and being creative. You can tell in my diary entries starting around 6 years old, with misspelled words and hand-drawn pictures of a tearful little me, feeling “different” from other kids.

The highs and lows from childhood onward have lead to a lot of waves in my life… There have been eras of creative blooming, crippling depressions, good grades, bad grades, peak performance and utter disappointment. There were periods (in no particular order) of anxiety, obsessive behaviors, switching schools, homeschool, eating disorder rehab, hermitage away in isolation, intense socializing, relationship and friendship traumas, post-traumatic stress, medicating and self-medicating, many many doctors appointments, therapy, group therapy, getting into every single college I applied to, and then crashing and burning, and dropping out after 2 years.

Although I was always loved and given whatever support was accessible, I very much felt like an outlier in my family. I didn’t understand the emotional waves that would hit me so abruptly, and neither did anyone else in my life. I felt like a black sheep and like a burden that just couldn’t get myself together, so full of potential but always falling short. It was around this time that I had left university, sitting out by the community pool one summer afternoon with my grandmother, that she casually mentioned the struggles in the life of her late mother-in-law. She used this very specific term, “manic-depressive”. I’ll never forget that moment, because it was like a lightbulb went off in my head.

Mary Magdaline isn’t some fictional character I invented. She was born in 1896, and she was a writer and editor for a popular newspaper in Iowa in the 1920’s and 30’s. She was a military wife, a ballroom dancer, and a mother to two children, yet she was also very much a creative and a bit of a wild woman, quite ahead of her time. She graduated from both high school and college, and had a blossoming and successful early career. She wrote articles on a wide variety of topics, from community events, to Hollywood movie reviews, to funny yet intriguing think-pieces on social issues, like the impact of men cat-calling women from their cars. She even had a posting once where you could send in a couple cents, and get a copy of her picture.

Around the time her children entered their teenage years, Mary Magdaline’s mental health began to increasingly decline. Although she was deeply loved by her family and given what was likely the best options healthcare could provide at the time, she spent a great deal of the rest of her life in and out of institutions. She was often treated with electroshock therapy (a common “remedy” to resistant depression in those days). Although she was sweet and physically present in the adult lives of her loving children, and grandchildren, she was often described as being not quite all there anymore. She talked very little and was usually lost in a world all her own. She passed away alone in an elder-care facility in her mid-90’s. There is a painting of a flowery field on a sunny day from that room, now quite yellowed, that hangs on my bedroom wall to this day.

Mary Magdaline was my great-grandmother. I never met her or knew all that much about her growing up. She died the year before I was born. The only things I can remember hearing about her as a child was that she was kind, quiet, and rather spacey, and how much my late great-grandfather had loved her. She wasn’t able to do a lot for herself in her later years, and often needed help with even very basic things like getting dressed. He was very devoted to her care, until his own twilight and death several years before hers. I think there was a subtle sadness in my family’s remembrance of her and her mental health, which is probably why it wasn’t brought up all that much.

Not too long after that day at the swimming pool, my grandmother dug up an old box from storage. Inside I found so many pieces of family history I had never seen before - Mary Magdaline's scrapbooks, high school photos, wedding portraits (which I later framed), diary entries about my grandfather as a little baby, and some of the articles she had written for her newspaper. They were ancient, but still mostly in amazing condition. It was as if they were breathing life and personality into this woman I had only ever known as a ghost.

She inspired me. I researched more of her history and the articles she had published in whatever I could dig up in historical records online. Her name was spelled and misspelled so many different ways on various documents. Her tombstone, which I found later with a friend in Arlington Cemetery, just reads "Magdalan P. (His Wife)". I was overwhelmed with an intense sadness at what her life could have been, had she been born in another time. Yet I was filled with a deep gratitude for her free spirit, the person that she was, and the fearless way she chose to live. In that moment, I became so much less alone in a modern world where I had often felt so terribly misunderstood. It was the birth of new courage in my own creative life. To continue to write and make art was perhaps, in a way, a means to continue to honor her, and all the untold stories of the lovely people that are the reason I am here today.

A lot has changed in the 3 years since I began writing this article. I've published 50 different entries on Vocal - mostly poems but a couple thought pieces and fictional stories as well. I became a mother for the first time myself last year, which has opened up new perspective for me in how I view life and the legacy of all that came before us. Later that same year, my grandmother died. A few months before her passing, while staying at the beach together, I showed her one of my Vocal poems that had done particularly well. She was so grateful that I had shared with her, and when she noticed my pen name "Mama Magdalene" (I had just chosen the spelling version I liked best), she asked if I knew that was the name of my great-grandmother, who was also a writer. Yep, I knew.

We don't live with the comprehension of the legacy that our future holds, or the impact we'll leave on the generations that will come after us. One day, we will all be ghosts, but we will continue to live on in all that remains of what we have left behind. If you've made it this far, thank you. I appreciate you taking this moment to read what I have to share, and better understand me. I hope that you have the courage to channel your pain into positive things, and unleash the beauty that lives inside of you. I hope you have the love in your heart to plant trees that you may never sit under. I hope you find all the joy and happiness in your life that you could ever want and need. I hope that you are never afraid to do the unusual thing.

All my love,

Mama Magdalene 💖