By the vitality of writing, a human can express ideas, images and facts from his surroundings to other individuals… for today and tomorrow. ~ Liwwät Böke, 1845
For me, writing is a pathway to understanding. Exploring a thought or idea by pecking away at my computer keyboard allows me to better know how I think or feel about whatever it is that gnaws beneath the surface of conscious thought.
This was especially true when writing my memoir, Rambler, where for years I searched to better understand the many facets of my husband Steve’s severe mental illness. When I first began writing about our family’s experience, I stayed close to the facts, recording the details of what happened. My initial effort read like a timeline of events: episodes documented, medications tried, coping strategies chronicled. By logging these details, I was able to grasp the scope of our family’s challenge.
But facts fail to reveal how one thinks about what happened. My timeline didn’t disclose the thoughts and feelings I’d harbored at my life being thrust into turmoil at a time when our family’s everyday rhythm was well established. Steve and I were in our early 40s at the onset of his illness and had three children at home. To know how I truly felt, I had to dig deeper into the issues surrounding the facts. I explored how the trajectory of my life changed and long-held dreams faded. How having young children complicated the situation. How the support of others was crucial in dealing with Steve’s illness. How the inherent strength of my ancestors helped me face our family’s challenge.
Through writing, understanding and perspective emerged. I came away from the experience with a greater appreciation of generational fortitude, a term I use when thinking about the strengths I inherited from those who came before. There were my parents, of course, who passed on a spirit of perseverance. With a dozen children of their own to care for, they served as wonderful role models for managing life’s many challenges. But there were others, for I descend from a long line of resolute individuals.
Among them was my great-great-great-grandmother, Liwwät Böke, born in Germany 212 years ago, on June 25, 1807. In the early1830s, she traveled alone to America to marry and establish a home far from the support of her extended family. Like most pioneer women’s lives, Liwwät’s was filled with hardship. Her only daughter died at the age of 15, and just three of her six children lived to maturity. In the prime of her life, her husband, Natz, fell from a tree and broke his hip and back. Confined to a bed, he died three years later, and responsibility for the farm fell to Liwwät and her young sons.
Unlike most pioneer women, though, Liwwät was also a writer and an artist. She wrote and drew pictures of growing up as a peasant girl in Germany and as a new American immigrant, leaving for future generations insight into what it was like to be a pioneer woman in the dark wooded lands of western Ohio. A century after her death, her writings and drawings were published in the book Liwwät Böke, 1807-1882, Pioneer.
Before writing Rambler, I knew little of Liwwät’s life. But as I searched for understanding my struggle with Steve’s illness, I looked more closely at hers. By doing so, I came to know the strength of character with which she lived—and as her great-great-great granddaughter, to see myself as a beneficiary of that strength. And in better knowing her life, perhaps I found the courage to share my own story.
By writing Rambler, I came to understand the strengths and talents of those who came before and realize that not everyone is as fortunate as I. For there are those who descend from generations with fewer advantages and may be less empowered to deal with life’s many challenges. Today I appreciate the generational fortitude on which I drew to deal with my husband’s illness, for without it, my story would have had a different ending.
