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HAZARD: I'm David Hazard, founder of Ascent, an international coaching program for authors.
I'm here today to talk with Mary Ellen Connelly, author of Losing Bear, a memoir about her
experience of the changes that happened in her relationship when it was discovered that
her older brother had schizophrenia. Mary Ellen, it's great to have you here today.
CONNELLY: Thank you, David. Good to be here.
HAZARD: I'm interested to know what inspired you to write your book, Losing Bear.
CONNELLY: Well, I've always enjoyed writing about my life, and a few years ago I wrote
a short piece about my relationship with Bear and how we were close when we were growing
up and he taught me to play guitar. And then...
HAZARD: Now, Bear is one of how many older brothers?
CONNELLY: I have five brothers...
HAZARD: Oh, my.
CONNELLY: Four older and one younger. Bear is my oldest brother.
HAZARD: He taught you how to play guitar.
CONNELLY: He taught me how to play guitar. He sang with me. We just, we had this incredible
closeness. And then, when he was in his twenties and I was in college, he was diagnosed with
schizophrenia. And it was a really tough experience for me to lose him to that disease. And it's,
I wrote a story about that a few years ago, and then last year when I decided I wanted
to write a memoir, it was in speaking with you that we realized that this was the kind
of story that could touch other people who had lost someone to either mental illness
or addictions or dementia.
HAZARD: You know, unfortunately, it's so widespread in our culture and it's becoming such an important
issue for us to focus on, given all the problems with healthcare, insurance, people up in the
air, not knowing what to do to help their loved ones. And I love the fact that your
book takes a very personal view of the relationship with someone who has been pulled into a severe
mental illness like this. Tell us briefly what your book is about.
CONNELLY: Well, it's about my relationship with Bear and how we were very close when
we were very young, and then what it has been like for me over all these years of having
him pull away from me, losing him through the, the disease, basically, that he has.
HAZARD: And give us some examples of how you saw him pulling away, how you felt you were
losing him.
CONNELLY: Well, early on, when he was having some really severe symptoms, he was just not
connected to anyone. You would look in his eyes and he would just be dead. And he lost
all features in his face and he was just very, very flat, wouldn't interact with you or talk
with you much at all. And that's changed and varied at times over the years, but I just
don't feel like I can talk to him or count on him for advice about anything as I used
to.
HAZARD: Well, and interesting that you should bring that up because, having worked with
you through the memoir, you told, you tell some very poignant stories about, you know,
being a young girl and beginning to develop relationships with boys and needing somebody
in your life as kind of an older, older boy as a mentor to kind of talk to you about the
vagaries of teenage relationships. And it seemed that you had a good relationship with
Bear...
CONNELLY: Yes.
HAZARD: And he could give you advice on those sort of things.
CONNELLY: Absolutely.
HAZARD: Yeah.
CONNELLY: Yeah.
HAZARD: Were there other things, other ways you would characterize your relationship with
him before the illness struck?
CONNELLY: Well, music was a huge connection for us. He would, he's loved music, he loved
singing. We would play, he would play our albums and we'd sing along in the living room
and have a good time, dance and stuff. And he taught me to play guitar, and that was
really special. It was something that I wanted to do, mostly just to get closer to him.
HAZARD: And then you mention a time, much later in life or somewhat later, when you
were at a, I believe it was a grandparents' anniversary party, and the family got up to
sing and Bear was not there. Could you tell us about that experience a little bit?
CONNELLY: Well, he was there. In that particular instance, he was there but he was a little
bit out of it. And he was standing up there singing, and I guess I know this mostly from
the picture, because you see us all singing and he's just kind of, has that flat affect.
HAZARD: So there's the there but not there experience...
CONNELLY: Right. Absolutely.
HAZARD: Yeah, and I imagine that there must be so many tens of thousands of people who
have that experience with someone in their life. The person is physically present but
not there.
CONNELLY: Yes.
HAZARD: Yeah, and you bring that out very poignantly in your book, this gap between
the person who was and the person who's there now.
CONNELLY: Right.
HAZARD: Who do you think will benefit most from reading your book?
CONNELLY: I think anyone who has someone in their life who is there but not there, is
lost to them whether they've got an addiction and they're just not acting the way they used
to an d they're really not able to connect in the same way they used to, or an illness,
a mental illness, or a dementia. Just anybody that's got to deal with that and deal with
those dueling feelings that you have of loving someone and wanting to be close to them and
yet a little bit afraid or a little bit just wary of what you're gonna get when you talk
to them.
HAZARD: Just apprehensive.
CONNELLY: Apprehensive, yeah.
HAZARD: Do you find that sometimes you, it's sort of this, you have this sort of fragile
feeling of I don't want to say the wrong thing and I'm not sure what the right thing is to
say? Is that part of the issue?
CONNELLY: Yes, just, yeah. Some walking on eggshells, just want to make sure that you
don't set anything off, do anything wrong that's gonna offend them.
HAZARD: Yeah, and I'm guessing, unfortunately, that that's a very uncommon experience for
people dealing with someone with this kind of illness.
CONNELLY: Yeah, I would think.
HAZARD: Did you make any interesting or unusual discoveries while you were working on this
memoir?
CONNELLY: Yeah, one of the things that really struck me was how different my experience
was of losing Bear from my brothers'. I have four other brothers, and I was just especially
close to Bear, and maybe more sensitive as a girl, or as the only girl, that my experience
of losing him was very, very heart-wrenching and difficult. And while I can't say that
it wasn't difficult for my other brothers, I really can't speak for them, I just feel
like mine was just a different experience. I also learned a lot more about schizophrenia.
I finally did some research and learned what the disease does to the person, what it does
to the family, and it was like encountering an old friend reading about his symptoms more
globally. That this really is how people are. And I think if I had known that earlier in
my life, had made the effort to research it, I would have understood him a little better.
Might have made it easier.
HAZARD: I imagine that when someone's going through an experience like this, you're just
trying to manage the day-to-day relationship.
CONNELLY: Absolutely.
HAZARD: And the, I would suppose that the thought of going out and doing more research
to understand what you're dealing with might be difficult for some people. Do you have
any recommendations of how somebody can find good, simple but helpful information on, in
this case, schizophrenia?
CONNELLY: Right, well, there are certainly organizations out there that have a lot of
information. The web is a wonderful resource. There are books on it that really go into
depth about the disease and about how it impacts families as well as the person.
HAZARD: So you would recommend that family and friends become informed as well about
the disease itself.
CONNELLY: I think so, yeah. I think I was sort of in denial, not wanting to know, maybe.
Wanting to just relate to Bear as Bear and didn't want to let go of my perception of
who he was. But I think it would help to really know.
HAZARD: Mary Ellen, I have been coaching authors since 1978 and, in my experience, just about
everybody who goes through the process of writing a book, particularly a personal, very
personal story like yours, goes through some kind of change or experiences an awakening.
Did you experience that while you were writing this memoir?
CONNELLY: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think, overall, writing it was painful. There were
many tears shed in the writing of this book, and the thinking about going back to those
times that were very painful and difficult, but cathartic. And also learning more has
just given more a more sense of calmness and peace about where we are.
HAZARD: Mary Ellen, if there is one thing that you hope your readers would take away
from this book, what is it?
CONNELLY: I just hope that people will learn from my story that there are different ways
to cope with losing a loved one or dealing with someone who is there but not there for
them and that these dueling feelings of love and fear and hope and loss, they're normal
and that we have to just get on with our lives and find ways to cope with it.
HAZARD: Mary Ellen, thank you so much for your good work on this very moving memoir,
and thank you for visiting with me today.
CONNELLY: Thank you.
HAZARD: I'm David Hazard, founder of Ascent. I've been talking today with Mary Ellen Connelly,
author of the book Losing Bear. If you're in need of coaching services, if you're in
need of developing covers, page designs, web designs, please find us on the web at www.itsyourlifebethere.com.