I did not expect my senior year of college to involve baking enough cookies to nearly warrant opening a bakery.
I’ve had plenty of wild, unexpected adventures at BC. For example, I had no intention of joining a Catholic newspaper, much less to have just concluded my term as editor-in-chief. I also thought that I left liturgical choir behind in high school, but alas, most of my life over the past four years has revolved around the Liturgy Arts Group. My junior year, I did not expect to train a service dog who promptly decided to retire herself, nor did I expect to be diagnosed, almost die from, and then go into remission from an extremely rare disease called MALS. Now my senior year, I did not expect to be training for my second Boston Marathon.
When I was fundraising for my first marathon on the Children’s Hospital team, I had a little fundraising idea to bake and deliver cookies to dorms. It was way more popular than expected, and it required an army of people.
Since then, we’ve done a cookie order almost monthly, and most recently, we just baked and delivered over 2,000 heart-shaped cookies for Valentine’s Day. Cookie baking became a “thin space”––a place to encounter Christ––in the number of people who continued to rally around me. Baking thousands of cookies is no small feat, and it takes dozens of people over several days in several kitchens across campus. I continue to find myself humbled and grateful by not only the number of orders, but moreso that these friends from LAG, Sons, or Gratia Plena take time from their busy lives to bake and run around campus with me.
One of the harder realities of my health journey was the isolation, which was made worse by isolation from COVID-19. My significant health decline started in March of 2020, and thus many of the people closest to me on campus were unaware of how quickly things were going downhill. Junior year, I was living in an apartment alone and all my classes were virtual. I had very little human interaction except for doctor’s appointments or hospital stays. I wonder often how different my experience would have been if not compounded with the pandemic. Even seemingly small things, like having clergy by my bedside during the scariest moments couldn’t happen because of COVID. I felt largely alone, until I fought for a diagnosis and came out the other side. And even then, many people who I emerged to afterward did not understand how sick I had been.
So, going from the extreme experience of isolation and then being united with friends and community my senior year, has been humbling when it comes to the support of my marathon-running and cookie-baking aspirations. I felt so alone, mostly because of this pandemic we had no control over, but then I have these communities rushing to my aid to cheer me on this year. And they didn’t just help with the first 1,200 cookies in the fall… they kept coming back. They kept expressing their love and support. And I cannot express back to them how much more it means to me than just helping with cookies.
One of my most treasured memories from BC will be the moments of reaching mile 21 in my first marathon. So many friends rallied together to line Comm Ave. I got the best hugs, the best high fives, and even some awesome friends who ran alongside me for a few yards. To see my closest friends from high school who now are here at BC, my LAG family, the underclassman staff of The Torch––it was a thin moment. It was a moment of promise, a moment of realizing that the isolation of younger Olivia with MALS alone in a hospital bed gave way to a girl who runs marathons and is surrounded by the most vibrant and caring community. The tears shed in that hospital bed became the tears that my mom, younger brother, and I shed together just after the finish line in Copley Square, as I rushed to hug them over a corral and we held each other and sobbed tears of gratitude and grief and healing.
Baking these heart-shaped cookies has healed my heart in ways that I did not know I needed. Last Valentine’s Day, I was found unresponsive by a nurse, barely breathing. I was told that night that I probably only had a few weeks left. This Valentine’s Day, I surrounded myself with the most loving people I have ever known, and we took one step closer to getting MALS treatment to be a reality at Boston Children’s Hospital and one step closer to Copley Square, round two, for me.
Previously the Campus News Editor and Catholicism 101 Editor, Olivia dabbles in The Torch’s writing and photography. She is a senior studying theology and applied psychology and human development with a minor in journalism. She is unashamedly passionate about youth ministry, Haiti, all things charismatic, the Oxford comma, and CatholicTV––where she can often be found as an on-camera news reporter or host of the To the Heights podcast.
- The Beauty of A Marathon - March 27, 2022
- A Tale of 5,000 Cookies and A Rare Disease - February 28, 2022
- Signing Off As Your Editor-in-Chief - December 25, 2021