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Lene Fogelberg - Beautiful Affliction |
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It almost does not seem appropriate to refer
to Lene Fogelberg as an author, because that moniker almost sounds too
distant, too formal, for the young Swedish woman, for really she is a
storyteller and that has a much warmer feel to it, as does her book,
Beautiful Affliction A Memoir.
Not many people write their Memoir when they are still thirty-something,
but Lene Fogelberg has already lived a lifetime and more. Her story
begins as a young child in Sweden when the doctors determined that there
was absolutely nothing wrong with her health and how throughout her life
when it became apparent that something was going on inside of her and
that she could not do even the simplest of activities without tiring
quickly, that indeed something was wrong. This is also a love story,
about the love of Lene and her husband Anders who met when Lene was
twelve years old and he was fourteen. It is the love of a family, their
two young daughters and Lene and Anders’ parents. It is about how
Anders’ job transfer to America for the briefest period of time,
slightly more than a year, became the catalyst in enabling doctors to
discover that if Lene did not have open heart surgery quickly that
Like no other book that we have ever read before
Beautiful Affliction A Memoir
will have you crying, will have you believing once again that miracles
really do happen and will have you grow in admiration of Lene Fogelberg
and be moved by her husband’s devotion to her. The book also ends on a
bit of a funny note, but we will leave that for the readers to discover
for themselves.
Fogelberg uses an interesting style of writing, as the chapters
alternate between different times in her life. One chapter will begin
with her life in Sweden as a child and through to adulthood, while the
next chapter will begin with their belongings arriving in America from
Sweden and progressing through her brief stay in America. This book
reads like a suspense filled novel and you sometimes have to remind
yourself that this is a real story.
Lene Fogelberg talks about her writing style, “I spent a lot of time
thinking about the structure of my story, realizing it could easily be
weighed down with many flashbacks if I started the story where I wanted
to start it; with the move to Philadelphia. But in my case the backstory
is as important as the main story, to fully understand what is going on.
And then I realized I could use this tension between past and present,
alternating chapters, to gradually let the reader in, until the climax
of the story. After that the flashback chapter ends. I was inspired by
authors such as Jodi Picoult, Muriel Barbery and Tatiana de Rosnay, who
have used this technique of alternating chapters, even though they used
it in different ways than me, alternating between different characters,
whereas I use it to go back and forth in time.”
Although she was in a race against time and time almost ran out for her,
good fortune smiled upon her, just in the nick of time
and she explains, “My life took an interesting turn when, after years of
searching for answers of what was wrong with me, my congenital heart
disease was discovered on a routine physical in the U.S. After that,
things happened quickly and led to my life narrowly being saved under
dramatic circumstances. What hit me the most was that all the years of
pain and despair turned out to be part of the miracle that saved my
life. I just wanted to share (with others) that no matter how dark
everything might seem, it might be part of a beautiful pattern taking
shape in your life.”
What a contrast that was to her life in Sweden, where she says, “I was
desperately lonely and heartbroken. Anders tried to help me as much as
he could, but of course he had to work and support our family, and his
job required a lot of travelling, so I was often alone. It is hard work
taking care of toddlers even for a healthy person, and in my case my
heart disease was so advanced that I was like a ninety-year-old lady. I
knew I wouldn’t be able to live for much longer and that knowledge broke
my heart. I would look at my beautiful girls and just cry, so afraid to
leave them behind.”
Fogelberg talks about why it was important for her to write this story
about her life, “I wrote it for my younger self, to comfort that scared
and desperately unhappy girl and tell her that everything would work out
in the end. My story is really a story about a miracle, a love story,
and a story about never giving up. I felt that maybe there were people
out there as unhappy as I had been, and I wanted to be a friend to them.
I am also on a mission to raise awareness of heart disease, which is the
number one killer, but still isn’t much talked about, compared to other
afflictions. I also want to ease the stigma of depression, which is a
common companion of heart disease, or often manifested on its own, and
it is a terrible thing to go through; it affects every part of your life
and changes you. I want readers who have been through something similar,
to find an honest voice that resonates with them. (For those) readers
who have not experienced heart disease or depression I want to instill
(in them) empathy and compassion, since I believe we all have people in
our life affected by one or the other, and well, we all go through
difficult stuff in our lives, so my story is for every reader actually.
I think my experiences can be translated to all kinds of challenges. My
goodness, now it sounds like my book is all about pain and suffering,
but there’s also some fun and good laughs in there, so it’s not all
affliction.”
Although, there have been some changes made in the delivery of
healthcare services in Sweden and Lene Fogelberg notes those at the end
of her book, we think that North American readers will be somewhat
surprised to learn some of the challenges that Fogelberg faced with
receiving appropriate care in her homeland.
She says, “Primary care was almost impossible to gain access to, in my
experience, back then in my hometown in Sweden and to see any kind of a
specialist took a year of waiting in line. We were often left with the
only option to go to the emergency room, where we had to wait for hours
only to see a doctor that would indicate to me that my matter ‘wasn't
urgent’.”
Throughout those years in addition to the physical toll that her heart
problems took on her body, Lene Fogelberg also paid a heavy price
emotionally.
She explains, “I was desperately lonely and heartbroken. Anders (her
husband) tried to help me as much as he could, but of course he had to
work and support our family, and his job required a lot of travelling,
so I was often alone. It is hard work taking care of toddlers even for a
healthy person, and in my case my heart disease was so advanced I was
like a ninety-year-old lady. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live for much
longer and that knowledge broke my heart. I would look at my beautiful
girls and just cry, so afraid to leave them behind.”
For some couples enduring so many years of challenges may have spelled
the end of their marriage, but Anders and Lene hung in there.
“Like all couples we have our ups and downs, which are inevitable I
think. But I was very lucky to meet the love of my life early on. I was
just twelve years old and he was fourteen when we met at a scout camp.
We married young, at twenty and twenty-two, and that has helped us to
navigate through some of the pitfalls. We learned a lot from each other,
how to express our feelings, and how to be supportive of each other, and
generous. We have never had the mindset of "meeting halfway,” but
instead we both give 100 percent and that way we’re sure to meet up
somewhere. Sometimes he has to give 100 percent and sometimes I do. The
years when I was sick in my undiscovered heart disease, my husband was
amazing and he still is. He would come home from work trips and
immediately he would start doing laundry, dishes and cook dinner.
However, when he was away I did all of the housekeeping and I took care
of the kids, even though I was so tired that I could barely walk. We
both hung in there, because we knew the other one did all they could,”
she says.
Eventually, the time came for the Fogelbergs to leave their American
home in Philadelphia and return to Sweden, but they did so with mixed
emotions.
“We had a hard time leaving Philadelphia, and we managed to stay for
some extra months, all in all for a year and one-half. We still talk a
lot about our time in the U.S. and a part of us will always feel like it
is home to us. We do feel like it was meant to be, because there were so
many unique circumstances that led us to the very heart surgeon who
saved me. I am humbled and grateful whenever I think about it, and it
has made me feel compelled to share my story in hope
of raising awareness of heart disease, especially heart disease that
is difficult to discover and easily missed by the medical community.
These cases are tragedies, and I wish nobody had to suddenly die of
heart disease, especially treatable heart disease,” she says.
Over time, Lene Fogelberg’s body healed and we cannot say that she
regained her health, because she actually experienced being completely
healthy for the first time. Just like in any situation in life that
involves trauma, it often takes a lot longer for the emotional scars to
heal.
She says, “Emotional scars can take a long time to heal. I am still
healing and still struggling at times. For several years after my open
heart surgeries I would have trouble falling asleep at night, because at
the moment of falling asleep I would wake up in panic, feeling like I
was falling into a dark abyss. It slowly got better, but now I am
struggling with the prospect of more surgeries down the lane, which I’d
rather not think about, but it’s hard not to. Thankfully my heart is
still doing well, so future surgeries are barely on the horizon, but
it’s a fact of my life that I have to deal with, emotionally.”
Fogleberg says that since their time in America, “We went back to
Sweden, but actually it was difficult to settle in, like nothing had
happened. We had been through such life-altering experiences that going
back to the life we lived before seemed out of reach in many ways. I
don’t know how to describe it better than we felt restless, and when my
husband got a job offer to go to Indonesia we gladly accepted. We felt
we needed an adventure, and that’s what we got! We immersed ourselves in
the Southeast Asian culture and we learned so much. We stayed in Jakarta
for four years, and then we moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we
have been living for a year and one-half now. We love it here, but a
piece of my heart will always be American, metaphorically and
literally.”
Lene Fogelberg just finished writing her next book, which is a fiction
novel that is set in Jakarta.
She describes the novel as, “a hilarious and heartbreaking family drama
where I mix east with west, and urban life with ancient myths of Java.
It has a very unusual main character, but I think that readers of
Beautiful Affliction will
recognize my literary world.”
To learn more about Lene Fogelberg please
visit her website. Her book
Beautiful Affliction A Memoir
is available through Amazon.
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