S2:E31: a good life

Thursday, May 6, 2021

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Episode description: What if life’s biggest tragedy could also be life’s greatest blessing? When lifelong ski patrol and EMT instructor Posie Mansfield lost her leg a month after she lost her husband, it seemed like everything she loved had been taken away from her. A decade later, she tells us why that loss is the greatest gift of her life.

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Laura: This is Shelter in Place, a podcast about coming together in a world that pulls us apart. From Oakland California to Hamilton Massachusetts, I’m Laura Joyce Davis.

Posie: I met my future husband in a first aid class. He was my instructor. As soon as I saw him, my heart melted. I met him and I said, “that's the man I'm going to marry.” And I did. We had so much in common. Every waking hour we were doing something together. We had a very rich life. 

Laura: This past weekend, as tulips and daffodils and magnolias bloomed all over Boston, my husband Nate and I walked along the esplanade hand in hand, revisiting the weekend when we first fell in love. 

“We were such kids then,” Nate said as we passed a group of teenagers lounging on the river dock where twenty years ago we’d watched the sun rise over the Charles. “We had no idea where life would take us.”

“Or how hard it would be,” I added.

Though Nate grew up on the north shore of Boston and we’ve been living a few miles from his childhood home for the past seven months, I’ve only been to Boston a handful of times. But the city holds great significance for me, because the first time I ever visited, I met Nate. A few months later, I returned to run the Boston marathon. That summer I returned once again, and we finally put words to what we’d both been feeling, and together dreamed of what our life could be.

We got married two years later, when we were in our mid-twenties. We couldn’t yet imagine becoming parents or spending a year in Manila, or getting stranded in Mexico by a hurricane, or having our lives upended by a pandemic, or any of the other adventures that would test our loyalty to each other and ultimately revise those original dreams. 

We’ve called season two of Shelter in Place Pandemic Odyssey, because while we’ve been making these episodes, we’ve also been on a journey that has taken us from one coast to another and out into the great unknown.

When I started this podcast in March of 2020, I thought I’d be doing it for a few weeks, that it would be a creative lifeline to get me through those long days until life went back to normal and we could head off for a sabbatical year in Mexico, a plan that was years in the making. I’d lined up partnerships with universities and we were in the process of securing housing. I’d exchanged emails with school superintendents, and we had plane tickets to visit for a weekend in May to finalize all of those plans before we’d make the move in July. 

I had no idea then that Nate would lose his job just a few weeks into the pandemic, that the borders would close, that “normal” would be a word we stopped using in everyday conversation. That all of our endless planning would land us not in Mexico, but Massachusetts. 

But life is like that sometimes. You can plan and plan, and then some outside force comes crashing down and you change course. Today, I’m speaking with someone who knows a lot about that. 

Posie: My name is Posey Mansfield. I'm an EMT instructor. I'm on vestry at Christ Church. I'm a Stephen minister. And I also am a certified peer visitor for the Amputee Coalition and a support group leader that I've founded back in 2011. 

Laura: Posie grew up on the North Shore of Boston, in Essex, one town over from where Nate grew up and where we’ve been living during this pandemic school year. When she was sixteen, she took a first aid class taught by an eighteen-year-old boy who immediately caught her eye.  

Posie: I met him and I said, “that's the man I'm going to marry.” And I did. He joined the Marine Corps during the Vietnam war and went to Vietnam. I went to the University of Mass in Amherst, and during that time we wanted to get married, so I met him in Hawaii on his RNR. I was 20 when I got married. He was 23. He went back to Vietnam. I went back to UMass. He came back from Vietnam in February of ‘70, and nine months later our first child was born.  

Laura: Posie and her husband had three other children together after that, but being parents didn’t slow them down.

Posie: My husband and I were on the national ski patrol from the time I was 16 and he was 18.  We were divisional examiners for the national ski patrol. We went to different mountains to run tests for the patrolmen who wanted to achieve a higher status. And so we took every weekend and every holiday, every vacation day, to go up skiing. So our kids came with us. We put the youngest one, who was two, in the nursery. When they were very little, we taught them how to ski. We bought a house with my husband's parents in Vermont, so our kids when they get tired, just skied down to the grandparents and got their hot chocolate. Our lives revolved around our winters up north skiing. 

Laura: Posie and her husband didn’t just share a passion for skiing. They shared everything.

Posie: We had so much in common. We really did so much together. I was an EMT on an ambulance and my husband was involved with ambulance services. We were both Red Cross instructors prior to that. Both of us worked for the Mass Department of Public Health. Every waking hour we were doing something together. Then I became very ill with a lot of gastrointestinal issues. I had a lot of surgeries. So that was a real setback for me. And he stepped up and took care of me and was there for me. We had a very rich life. 

Laura: In 2011, when Posie was about to celebrate her 62nd birthday, she got a phone call that changed her life forever. She learned that her husband had just had a massive heart attack and had died. 

Posie: I didn't quite know how I was going to cope with all that loss. We had just celebrated our 42nd anniversary. I was very angry at God. How would a loving God take the love of my life away from me after 42 years? I really struggled with that. 

Superbugs are strains of bacteria that are resistant to several types of antibiotics. Each year these drug-resistant bacteria infect more than 2 million people nationwide and kill at least 23,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and staph infections are just a few of the dangers we now face.

Laura: A month later, Posie was transporting a sick patient in an ambulance and caught a superbug. The Mayo Clinic defines superbugs as strains of bacteria that are resistant to most antibiotics. That drug resistance can be slowed, but not stopped. Superbugs can cause things like drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, pneumonia, staph infections, and skin infections. In Posie’s case, the superbug gave her an infection in the knee she’d had replaced nine years before. Just one month after her husband died, Posie lost her leg.

Posie: They amputated in January of 2011. I was still mourning the loss of my husband. I had been sick for quite a long time, and he had been there for me by my side the whole time. I suffered two huge losses all at once. 

Laura: When Posie was in rehab after her amputation, one of the clergy from the church she grew up in came to visit her. That church was a place she hadn’t been to in a long time.

Posie: I’d spent most of my childhood at Christ Church and we moved away. I kind of lost contact with my family at Christ Church. Father Bob was from Christ Church, and he came to my bedside and talked about loss. He said, “God knows suffering. He knows loss. He lost his only son.”

Laura: Father Bob wasn’t just spouting theology; he’d experienced that loss himself after his own son had taken his life a few years before. 

Posie: He said, “Go back to church. Find God in your life again. Experience the love that he has for you and for all of us.” He pointed me in the right direction. He said, “go back to Christchurch” and I did. 

I came to realize through all that loss, at one point that I was lost. I started praying more. And my faith grew stronger. I started living a life believing that I was called to do something bigger than just live my life.

Faith was always a part of my life, but it never was as strong as it was after I lost my husband. Coming back to the community of faith strengthened my faith and gave me so much strength. I found such love and welcoming. I realized that there was hope, there was a life after loss.

Laura: But even as Posie was finding encouragement in that faith community, she was also dealing with the very real challenges of life as a newly widowed amputee.

Posie: In some ways, I didn't know what direction my life was going to take. I had been sick for quite a long time, and my husband had been there for me by my side the whole time. 

After he died and after I lost my leg, I said, “I've got to get healthy. He would be right there telling me to get out of bed and get strong and healthy.” He would not want me to sit around and feel sorry for myself and to give up. I had to honor my husband's memory. Quitting was never an option for me because he had given me strength. I had to give that back to him. I had to give back to the God that had given me life.  And that's what I did. 

At the time I had four children and three grandchildren. They taught me to love myself, to look at myself. They didn't give up on me. They motivated me to keep going and to embrace life.

So I started participating in adaptive sports. I went back to skiing. I picked up surfing. I started water skiing and doing sled hockey and biking and kayaking. 

Participating in sports, as strange as it may sound, helped heal me. Getting up on the mountain and skiing down in the mountain air--there's no greater feeling. Getting in the ocean and surfing and feeling the salt water on your face--there's no greater healing than that. 

I found a whole new life for myself. I wasn't defined by my disability. I wasn't defined by my amputation. There was so much I could do.

I was missing a leg. I still had a soul and heart.

Laura: I’d like to think that if I suffered the kind of loss that Posie did, that I could face life with as much courage and hope as she has, that it wouldn’t make me resentful and bitter. I hope this is true. But even in this pandemic year, when my losses were relatively small, it’s been all too easy to feel discouraged. If I’m honest, I have a long way to go before I can claim to have faith like Posie’s. 

Posie: I did struggle for a while, but once I got back to Christ church, I realized that God is a loving God. And he doesn't promise us that there won't be struggles, that there won't be tragedy, that there won't be pain and suffering. He only promises us that he will walk with us through all the suffering that we endure.  

And that was what I found. I just felt like God gave me the strength to move on. That's where my strength came from. I realized after even a few months that even though I had suffered two great losses, that there was loss in life, and God had lost his only son. He had given him up for us. He knew suffering. And he knew what I was going through. I came to realize that the loss was losing my husband. The loss wasn't losing my leg. It was by the grace of God I lost my leg, and it gave me a whole new outlook on my life, a whole new way of appreciating my life, appreciating that I had been spared when I was in the hospital when I was septic and I could have died. I could have lost all my limbs. God spared me. God saved me. I was whole. In the eyes of God, I was whole. And I felt my calling was to share my story and live my life to the fullest.

Laura: That sense of calling to live life to the fullest and share her story prompted Posie to start a support group for amputees in 2011, just months after she lost her husband and her leg. 

Posie: Starting a support group and leading a support group for amputees made a huge difference. They would come to find support from people who had been through what they had been through, and healing and friendship and comradery. It gave me strength and gave me healing, and that was a real gift to me, that I could give back to others and they could share their story and give back to me. 

There is a life after amputation. There is something worth living for. And that's the blessing in life, is giving to others, sharing your story with others to give them the hope that I had found.

Laura: Posie’s support group started small, but it quickly grew.

Posie: We're called the COP Amputee Association. We're a 501c3. We started with three members sitting around a table sharing our story, and we realized we were onto something. There is nothing like somebody who's lost a limb sharing their story with somebody else who’s also lost a limb. Now we have over 80 members. We have two sites, and it's going strong. We all share something very special. 

Laura: This past weekend when Nate and I went to Boston, we tried to visit all of the places that were significant for us twenty years ago when we first met. One of those places was on Boylston, where the finish line for the Boston marathon is painted in blue and yellow. When I went to Boston in April twenty years ago to run the marathon for the first time, it’s was Nate’s face I was searching for as I crossed the finish line. Six years ago Nate and I ran that marathon together in the freezing rain and wept when we saw his parents, who greeted us with blankets and hugs and water. 

But not all of our memories of that finish line are happy ones. On April 15, 2013, as we watched the marathon from our home in California, homemade bombs planted by terrorists went off near the finish line, killing three people and injuring hundreds. Of those who survived, seventeen of them lost limbs. 

Posie: I was called in to help some of the marathon survivors. I visited them and I started spending a lot of time with them. I tried to show them that there was hope. They were returning to a life that was going to be very different, but it didn't mean that their life had changed so much that they couldn't enjoy it, and they couldn't love life, and they couldn't embrace their disability. And they went on to do great things and they are still doing great things.

And I really felt so blessed to have lost my leg, because I could share it with others, with these people who had suffered such horrific tragedy. I never would have met the most incredible people in my life if I hadn't lost my leg.

Laura: At the beginning of the episode I mentioned that we’ve been referring to this season as our pandemic Odyssey because of the unasked for adventure this pandemic year has been for our family. There’s a moment in Homer’s Odyssey when Odysseus is the guest of Alcinous, being entertained at a feast while he waits to get a ship to get him home. But the most interesting character in that scene isn’t Odysseus, but a blind poetry and minstrel named Demodokos, who some scholars think was a picture of Homer himself. 

Demodokos has the gift of sharing stories through song, and he does this so well that he actually makes Odysseus weep because of the pain and suffering those stories remind him of. Demodokos finally asks Odysseus who he really is, and in that exchange helps Odysseus to come to terms with his own suffering and finally head toward home. 

What’s interesting about Demodokos is that some scholars believe that Homer was writing himself into the story. Some accounts of Homer even say that he composed the Iliad and the Odyssey in his head. 

Like Odysseus, we’ve been away from home a lot longer than we thought we would. But Posie’s perspective gives me hope. In sharing her story with others, there have sometimes been tears. But ultimately she’s helped people like the marathon survivors find a truer, fuller, more whole version of themselves through that sharing. 

Posie: It's been very rewarding to see the life that they have created for themselves built on what was a tragedy, and they've risen above that. They're still very close as a group. They still get together and support each other. 

A lot of them have run the marathon since losing their limbs. They each took a different path and found a way to give back to others. Some of them have started foundations; one marathon survivor, Heather Abbott, she asked me to help her start her foundation to give back to others who had lost limbs. And she's raised more than a million dollars to help provide prosthetics to people who couldn't otherwise afford them, or that insurance wouldn't cover. 

And then there's Roseann Sdoia, who wrote a book called Perfect Strangers about three people who were perfect strangers who helped her during the marathon bombing. And then she went ahead and married the firefighter that saved her life. 

We all do things a little bit differently when we have a disability, but I've come to realize--and many of them have come to realize--that doing things differently isn't necessarily a bad thing. Having a positive attitude and believing in yourself and relying on others and supporting others really enriches your life, and really strengthens you and gives you the courage and the motivation to go on.  

Laura: Part of the way Posie has supported others is through advocacy for the disability community.

Posie: Before I lost my leg, before I had a disability, I didn't even think twice about curb cuts and ramps, and doors being too strong to open, and bathrooms that weren't wide enough to get through with a wheelchair. While we'd like to say that the world is accessible, it's not. Wheelchair accessibility into stores, into businesses, absence of ramps, absence of curb cuts on the sidewalk, handicapped parking it's too far away--it's something that I don't think the average person even thinks about. And I didn't either. 

It's not a disabled bodied world. It's an able-bodied world. The biggest drawback to equality is that people who are able-bodied don't see us as being equal and don’t give us a chance to thrive just as they would like to thrive. 

There is a lot of misconception about how people with amputations particularly may not need an advanced prosthesis, may not need more than to be able to get around their home, may not need to be able to walk on a rough surface or on a sidewalk or run or participate in sports.

I'm a lead advocate for the Amputee Coalition. I go to Washington every year to lobby for insurance fairness, because the insurance companies deny a lot of prosthetics. Some states have one limb per life; the insurance companies will pay only for one prosthetic your whole life. 

Right now Tammy Duckworth, who's a bilateral amputee, who lost her legs in Iraq.  She has sponsored a bill to study why people don't get prosthetics, are denied coverage, are denied access to proper care. It's bipartisan. And now it's been also introduced in the House. Access to care is not available to everybody. It's not equal across the board. 

Laura: I asked Posie how we could become better advocates for the disability community. She said it starts with our perception of that community. 

Posie: People used to see us as handicapped. People in wheelchairs, they were talking down to them, and talking loud, like they didn't think they could understand.

We want the public to see us as being differently abled, not handicapped. I do things differently--but I'm not handicapped.

I'm not disabled. I have a disability.

I think that's the difference in the conversation, is that we're not disabled; we are living with a disability. We're very much abled. We're whole in so many ways. Our lives are whole. So we've changed that conversation to talk about us as being “differently abled” or “adaptively abled.” That's been very refreshing.

Laura: Even though Posie is living in an able-bodied world, she hasn’t let it slow her down. She’s doing more now than before she lost her leg. And because she embraces her disability as a gift and not a curse, others in her life see it that way, too. 

Posie:  I have four wonderful children. I've got six beautiful grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. How I approach it has so much to do with how they approach it. Right from the bat, I talked about it being a cool leg. “Grammy's got a cool, awesome robot leg.” You have to have a little bit of a sense of humor. 

One of my grandchildren, one of the boys, he had to write a story in school when he was in fifth grade about who would I most like to be like? He said, “I want to be like Grammy. She drives. She skis. She does all these sports. She went skydiving. I want to be like Grammy.” I mean, how great is that? 

I'm still as active as ever. I'm still teaching EMTs. I can't work on a rig anymore because of my amputation, but I can still teach. I'm a certified peer visitor to the Amputee Coalition, which means I visit new amputees at rehabs and hospitals, and even prior to their amputation, to prepare them for their journey. I've continued our support group meetings. I'm really doing everything that I want to be doing. 

Laura: I find Posie’s perspective on life deeply refreshing and inspiring, but also incredibly challenging. Because living a full life hasn’t meant that life is easy. This past winter her faith was tested once again when she suddenly got very sick. 

Posie: I have asthma, and the day after Christmas, I was having trouble breathing. So I went to the emergency room and I tested positive for COVID. Breathing was the biggest issue, so I was hospitalized for nine days. And it was really scary. They almost put me on a ventilator because I just couldn't breathe. 

I just finished a post-COVID physical therapy program, because I was still suffering from some of the effects--the fatigue and the shortness of breath--and that was six months after I had the COVID.

Every time I have a surgery, every time I'm seriously ill brings me closer to God, not further away. I feel closer because I feel that he's with me. He's closest to me when I'm needing him the most.

Laura: Posie’s life isn’t easy, but it’s good. Losing her leg has brought her closer to the people in her life. It’s introduced her to people she never would have otherwise met. It’s given her a vision for how our world could be--a place where people need each other, where they share in each other’s struggles, where life is good because it’s full not just of activity, but of friendship and faith and hope.

Posie: There has been a lot of discord in this country. There's been a lot of division. I am hopeful that we can come together. I think we've hit a turning point, and I think it has to start with us--in our hometowns, in our communities, in our churches. I am hopeful that there is a future that's brighter than it is now.

I still miss my husband terribly. I'd give my other leg to have him back. But I also know that the life I have now is rich and full.

And I said to my kids, “I hope you'll understand when I say this: I'm living my life to the fullest. I'm loving my life. Not that I don't miss your dad, but I love my life as it is now. I'm giving back. I'm living life to the fullest. I'm participating in sports and I'm healthy. My life is full. 

Laura: When I think back not just on this pandemic year, but the last twenty years since Nate and I first met in Boston, there’s so much that didn’t go the way I’d hoped or planned for. There have been whole seasons of loss, times when I’ve wanted to quit not just marriage but the struggle of life. But what’s been surprising about all that reflection is realizing that the best moments of my life weren’t the easy ones. They were the times when I was faced with a struggle, and found that I didn’t have to face it alone. I’ve felt friendship and family and faith most profoundly when I’m faced with loss, when I remember that having a good life and an easy life aren’t actually the same thing. And when I look at my life that way, I realize that I do have a good life. I have friends who will be there for me when I’m struggling, a family that loves me even on my worst days, enough health to get me through each day. I’m living my life to the fullest. My life is full.

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As always, if you listen to the very end of the episode, you’ll hear Shelter in Place outtakes. But first, I’d like to thank some of our newest supporters, Tom and Mallory Smith. To extend that thank you, here’s one of our incredible Shelter in Place apprentices Clara Smith:

Clara: I wanted to thank my mom and dad, Mallory and Tom for supporting shelter in place on Patrion. It means so much to me that you guys are always. Supporting my work and listening to my work   my dad, Tom is an incredible storyteller himself.

And my mom Mallory is librarian who is always looking for new and exciting series to share with me.  the love of storytelling that you both have instilled in me continues through this apprenticeship.  So I appreciate that so much about both of you and thank you again.

Laura: If you’d like to support the good things happening here, including our apprenticeship program where we’re training the next generation of women podcasters and creative entrepreneurs, you can find information on how to donate to Shelter in Place for as little as a dollar a month on our website, shelterinplacepodcast.info. You can also sign up for our newsletter, take our listener survey, and find show notes for all of our episodes.

Shelter in Place is part of the Hurrdat Media network. The Shelter in Place music was created by Chase Horsman at Reaktor Productions. Additional music and sound effects for this episode come from Storyblocks. 

Nate Davis is our creative director, Alana Herlands is our producer, Sarah Edgell is our design director, and our amazing season 2 apprentices are Michele O'Brien, Samantha Skinner, Clara Smith, Elen Tekle, and Shweta Watwe.

Until next time, this is Shelter in Place. I’m Laura Joyce Davis.