Utah

As I sit here in the hotel waiting for Dean to arrive at the Salt Lake City Airport, I cannot help but reflect on what has taken place in my life from the day we came here with Hannah in 2004 until now. Back then I came with a very strange sense of adventure mixed with intense, raw fear. Hannah had nearly died twice that year, just before admission and again while IN a hospital in an inpatient program. In debt beyond belief, having just mortgaged our home to get her into the first month of residential treatment we landed at this airport. Today's departure binds the back cover to this book of experience we know as Utah.

Years ago, Brigham Young arrived here in this valley where I now sit. At the end of his journey, after coming through the Wasatch Mountains, he looked out over the vast space in front of him and said, "This is the place." For him it was THE place he'd been searching for. The place where his people, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, could safely settle and become the people they wanted to be. What they wanted was simply their "own" place, a place where they could continue to live and practice their religious beliefs. They clearly wanted this so badly that they were eager to endure the harsh realities of the journey, only to come to a place that would test them even further.

As I gather my own thoughts today, I realize how much my own experience in making this journey to Utah, mirrors that Mormon journey so long ago. This has also been “the place” for me to settle and establish myself. My husband and daughter would also concur that their experience here has accomplished similar things in their lives. It may sound trite but in every way, we have each found a new sense of self out here in what began as Brigham Young’s Utah.

In bringing Hannah to Avalon Hills, a residential eating disorders program for adolescents in the Cache Valley of northern Utah, we had no concept that our journey would lead to eventual employment and relocation to that beautiful place. The first 5 months of our experiences there were spent with Hannah living at the treatment center and Dean and I coming and going for visits with her and family therapy. It was a healing time for her and a revealing time for all of us. We learned a great deal about her illness and our family’s dysfunction as well as the dysfunction of life in our home community. We spent much of that time in a paradoxical state of numbness and awe. The realities of what we were dealing with were very difficult, but the immense sense of authentic healing that was taking place in our lives was profound. It was clear that God had led us to the perfect program and therapist to lead us out of the darkness we’d been in for far too long. We not only invested all of our material wealth in the process, but heart and soul as well. Our hope was always that we would learn what we needed to, that Hannah would learn what she needed to and we would return to our home in Nebraska and move on. As with most families in our situation, the road to recovery is full of the unexpected and unpredictable.

As fall approached that year we made plans to take a road trip out to Utah to bring Hannah home and stop in Colorado on the way back for a short family vacation. We were so looking forward to a fun family experience together after all we’d been through. You can imagine our dismay when that hope was shattered when we got to our hotel and the reality of our severely anxious and symptomatic daughter began to set in. Instead of the pleasant and enjoyable time we’d envisioned, we were all a mess and in the end just got through it and headed home. Shortly after Hannah’s re-entry back into our home community, her relapse became severe enough that she was put on a plane and headed back to Utah to be readmitted. It was a devastating time for all of us.

The following months were spent continuing our utmost devotion to figuring out what would work in Hannah’s life so that she could successfully recover. The treatment center developed what they would later call the “Hannah” plan. A plan where she would transition slowly from the controlled treatment setting there and come home for short visits that would be extended as time went on. By November she was progressing fairly well but by that time it was clear that more drastic family changes were in store for us. I resigned from my job as an elementary school teacher because I just couldn’t keep up with my responsibilities at school and the intensity of a daughter in early recovery. Her outpatient follow up care had to be done in Omaha about 2 hours away from us and would often include as many as 2 and sometimes 3 trips a week. It was truly an exhausting time.

As Christians, my husband and I have always sought guidance from God in our lives and this situation was no exception. As we sought that direction in this state of fatigue and desperation, we both began to sense that our family needed a new place to start over. Since we had both really loved our time in Utah, Dean decided to pursue employment there. It was just weeks later and things fell into place for us to relocate. On New Year’s Eve of 2004 we pulled into the city of Logan to begin our new life there. Before long we both had employment and Hannah was settled into a local charter high school. It was such a surreal time for us. The following 5 years brought us more of the most difficult and faith-stretching experiences we could ever have imagined living through.

Hannah continued to pursue recovery and as she did time began to reveal that she was dealing with much more than the initial struggle with bulimia that started us down this amazing pathway. At some point along the way her psychiatrist added bipolar 2 and borderline personality disorder to her complex mental state. As parents we learned that recovery for any one of these illnesses can take a long time and that the answers were as individual as a person’s fingerprints. In order for us to understand her and understand how we could be part of the solution, beyond merely paying for treatment, we knew we would have to continually grow ourselves. We read books, we met with other parents in the midst of, or having gone through, similar experiences through a NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) Friends and Family Class as well as through the network of parents we knew from Avalon Hills. We have met people from everywhere, several different religious persuasions, socioeconomic classes, and a variety of cultures all with similar threads of pain and growth weaving their way through each family’s own tapestry.

We are now on our new home in Cambridge, Minnesota, (writing this on a notebook computer in the moving truck). Our 23 year old daughter is waiting for us in our new home there. I’ve spent the last 5 weeks finishing up the semester of classes at Utah State University. I’m in the process of acquiring an endorsement in mild/moderate Special Education. It’s clear that the experiences of the last 7 years have carved out a place for this new professional direction in my life. My husband has returned to his vocation of selling grain handling equipment and Hannah’s working and continually moving forward.

People with my faith background often tell me that “God is good”. After all we’ve been through, I would have to concur. That said, what God has made clear to me in a myriad of ways, is that humanity is, in all its forms, God’s perfect creation. God's love and grace toward ALL of mankind is intense and personal. Both are readily available to meet anyone, anywhere. Dean and I have very literally met God in places where our strict fundamentalist persuasion would never have allowed us to look before. Had we not been given such a remarkable daughter (and I must add, her deep thinking inquisitive brother) we’d never ever have come to understand these truths.

In conclusion, it is very clear that Utah will live in our hearts forever as “the place”. It was where God took us, as very weary and broken people and gave us room to grow and re-establish our lives. We have been profoundly changed forever. I will thank God every day for the beauty of the Wasatch Mountains, the richness and grace given to us from our special friends there and especially for Avalon Hills…the magical place that started it all.