“I was supposed to be happy.”
Kate D. Mahoney was touched by a miracle. She thought she should be forever grateful, but that wasn’t the case.
“I didn’t believe I deserved to want or need the things I wanted and needed,” Mahoney said. “I felt I shouldn’t use words like ‘fight’ or ‘battle’ because with so much illness and crisis, the fight was supposed to be behind me. It was supposed to be easier. I paced around my house lonelier than I’ve ever been but couldn’t pick up the phone or go outside.”
Mahoney’s “miracle story” may be a familiar one to you, but her reality is most likely a lesser-known journey.
Her story includes intense moments going back more than 20 years. In December 1992, Mahoney’s health was in the hands of God. At the age of 14, Mahoney was experiencing organ failure after an adverse reaction to chemotherapy meant to treat germ cell ovarian cancer.
After many weeks of praying for intercession from Mother Marianne — a former Central New York woman known for her ministry to patients with leprosy — Mahoney was released from Crouse Hospital on March 18, 1993.
Mahoney’s recovery is a miracle, according to the Roman Catholic Church.
“Traditionally reserved for the Christmas season, the lights [at Crouse] were turned on in February of 1993 when I was out of the ICU and recovering,” Mahoney said. “The switchboard received over 600 calls/inquiries as to why the lights were on and they were told that it was because a little girl — me — missed Christmas and her family and friends were celebrating now.”
A miracle — a beautiful thought, but also an immense responsibility, one that Mahoney would have to shoulder for the rest of her life. “Maybe you don’t think a ‘miracle girl’ could have so much doubt, fear, or pain,” she said. “You might even be thinking, right now, ‘She doesn’t deserve to feel sadness after being given so much!’”
Mahoney was given the gift of life more than once, and she has been grateful for this miracle, the support of family and their prayers, as well as the prayers from the Sisters of the St. Francis convent. However, she was struggling to live up to the image of “the miracle girl.”
“There was a time, not so long ago, I lost my message. I lost my purpose. I suffered from severe depression and anxiety, panic attacks that took away my ability to breathe let alone function,” Mahoney said. “It crept in and took over slowly, gently almost. Before I knew it, I couldn’t face what I felt was total failure. I believed I had let everyone around me down.”
For a long time, Mahoney tried to continue on in numerous directions, but only to feel she came up short once again. She wrestled with her thoughts — did she have the best job, was she pretty enough, was she thin enough, was she grateful enough, was she humble enough?
“There wasn’t an answer I could give that would be what anyone wanted to hear,” she said. “I didn’t make sense to anyone anyway. So I stayed silent. It truly terrified me. And it almost killed me.”
Though it was never an easy battle, Mahoney has come a long way from her days of confusion and struggle.
“With the support of my mom and multiple healing practitioners I slowly started to crawl out of the nothingness,” Kate said. “I wake up every day. In between deadlines, work obligations and even the mundane I fight, battle, harness happiness. I actually put it in my planner. By the time I go to bed it has morphed into gratitude.”
Mahoney has spent a lot of time thinking about who she was when she was sick. She has given many talks and speeches on the miracle, but mainly that — the miracle.
Now, she’s on a mission to continue to educate others about the miracle and what it means in terms of her faith, but also, she looks forward to sharing the “realness” of what she actually endured.
“The whole story isn’t the miracle,” Mahoney said. “Having life doesn’t mean it’s easy. We shouldn’t just smile and say. ‘I’m OK,’ when we are not. I work from a place of caring for the narrative and not judging a book by its cover. As soon as you think you know what you’re talking about, you have shut yourself off from growth. We are lifetime learners — that’s how my family has always been. I learned this especially from my grandmother and mother.”
Although Mahoney had once moved to Chicago to pursue an acting career, she returned to Syracuse to take on the role of caregiver to her parents, a role she took on for a period of time before even heading to the Windy City in 2006.
In 2009, her mother, Mary Speno Mahoney, had a hip replacement, and her father, John Francis Mahoney, was very ill with ailments that included liver cancer, and he was projected to have only a few months to live.
“That was a very clear and effortless decision,” Kate Mahoney said.
Although her father was sick, they still had their misunderstandings and their bad days, like all families
“Everything is not beautiful,” Mahoney said. “We have love and honesty in our home. There is being present…Ten times out of 10, that is wonderfully satisfying, deeply.”
John Francis Mahoney passed away on Nov. 24, 2012. A week after he was buried, Mary Speno Mahoney was alerted that she had a tumor on her brain.
“We viewed it as a gift,” Kate Mahoney said. We never had time to come down from the numbness after my father died.”
Mahoney and her mother made a collective effort to make the most of what they believed would only be one month of time left together.
“We had fancy parties and enjoyed fancy meals,” she said, as they prepared for her surgery. “We’ve had years of experiencing crisis and getting through it. There were years I couldn’t do it. I am not superhuman.”
Her mother recovered after a successful procedure on Dec. 31, 2012. And again, the Mahoney women would go on living. Although her father passed away the week of Thanksgiving, the holiday itself continues to be her favorite because it has always been about being grateful — truly grateful — it’s not about the “stuff,” she said.
“I am the recipient of a miracle, but I am just a person,” Mahoney said. “Mother Marianne humanized saints for me. It’s not a coincidence she was elected to the Women’s Hall of Fame. She was a force to be reckoned with. She was a teacher, a sister, a mother and a friend, and a medical administrator…and you can aspire to be all of this. The medical crisis requires faith and science — Mother Marianne embodied that in her role as medical administrator.”
Mahney, like everyone else, has struggles, but it has only amplified her gratitude.
“If I had never been sick I wouldn’t have been so well versed as a caregiver for my parents and by extension feel such a strong sense of identity in my role of advocate,” she said said. “The depression came when my purpose was lost because for the first time in my life I was neither a patient nor a caregiver.”
Now, there is more to the miracle — there is Kate.
