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Acceptance the greatest gift: Hannaford and Doherty

On Feb. 24, a presentation to Senior and Middle School students by Headmaster Hal Hannaford and his wife, Susan Doherty, began with a recording of a young woman’s voice saying that her father “suffers from manic depression, but he suffers in anonymity.”
 
The voice was that of Alisse Hannaford, as she described her father’s compulsive behaviour. In the talk that followed, Hal and Susan unravelled their story of coping with Mr. Hannaford’s bi-polarity and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and Ms. Doherty’s battle with grave illness, and the relief they found through love and acceptance.
 
“In 2020 we still shy away from operating in the light,” said Ms. Doherty. “[But,] we propose that, in a climate of transparency, the pursuit of hiding, or staying safe, is no longer an option.”
 
The Hannaford-Doherty presentation has been three years in the making, and was first given at last year’s International Boys’ Schools Coalition conference in Montreal.
 
“I refused to talk publicly about my mood shifts for fear of reprisal, for fear of showing vulnerability,” said Mr. Hannaford. “I did not want to seem inadequate. I did not want anyone to think that I was not up to the challenge of leading a school.”
 
“And so I have…done my best to conceal who I really am. And I know there are others who share the same fear.”
 
“It has taken me the better part of my adult life to accept my behaviour,” he said. “It is not a malfunction. It is simply how my brain works.”
 
Mr. Hannaford’s condition first began to manifest itself in childhood, when his friends at summer camp tended to admire his drive and his capacity. This made him a natural leader, but at the cost of true friendship and human connection.
 
In the 1970s, he says, “I was in trouble and had no one to turn to.” He was dismissed from Queen’s University for failing four out of five classes, but he shrugged off his failure and went to work as a labourer in Halifax. “I had thrown away my future because I lacked insight about my own condition.”
 
In desperation, he says, he made his first healthy decision. He called his father in tears, and I asked him for help. “And he did not let me down.”
 
Renewed, he returned to Montreal and enrolled at Concordia University, where met Susan Doherty in an Economics class.
 
“I fell in love with the depressed version of Mr. Hannaford,” recalls Ms. Doherty. “I met him at the bottom of that long, slippery slide into the dirt. I saw humility instead of ego.”
 
But she was in for a bit of a surprise when his manic tendencies resurfaced. She hadn’t bargained for his energy levels and his obsessive tendencies.
 
The young couple enjoyed five years of stability. But, in 1985 while Mr. Hannaford was completing his MBA in France, he entered into what he calls “six months of full-on mania. At the end of the final semester, I fell into another void. I ran out of gas.”
 
At the same time, Ms. Doherty lost her voice. “I had a mental breakdown and Susan had a physical breakdown,” Mr. Hannaford recalls. “It’s a pattern that would be repeated many years later.”
 
In the early 1990s, Mr. Hannaford tried prescription drugs to relieve his symptoms, but couldn’t bear the side effects. “One day I just stopped swallowing those pills, but no one had warned me about the periods of cold-turkey withdrawal.”
 
In 2004, when Mr. Hannaford’s father died, he entered into what he describes as his longest and most severe depression, which lasted 14 months. At the time, he was headmaster at Royal St. George’s College in Toronto.
 
Ms. Doherty’s voice broke with emotion as she recalled an incident during this time. Returning from taking their son, Reid, to school one cold winter morning, she found her husband missing, his boots gone but his coat still hanging on the rack. She frantically called his name and followed his tracks in the snow as they led to a bridge over a ravine. For thirty-eight minutes she feared the worst, until she saw her husband trudging up the street in his pyjamas, carrying two containers of ice cream.
 
Ms. Doherty’s response was relief, followed by anger at her husband’s thoughtlessness. Realizing how selfish he had been, Mr. Hannaford resolved at that moment to be drug-free.
 
“I realized I could rely on the most powerful drug available: my family.”
 
“Everyone in this room has been touched by mental wellness issues,” Mr. Hannaford told the students. “In 2020, at last we are heading toward transparency.”
 
He feels his experiences taught him how to relate to students who have similar problems. “I am a more empathetic man because I suffer from depression,” he said. “Acceptance has been the greatest gift.”
 
For the couple, the tables turned in 2014, just as Susan was finishing her first novel. She broke her arm, an accident that ultimately led to her being diagnosed with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), an extremely rare autoimmune disease that can cause victims to die within 60 days from multiple organ failure.
 
While Hal and Susan were on vacation in Maine, her symptoms had spiralled out of control and they were summoned back to Montreal to see her oncologist. During the drive home, they saw a cloud in the sky shaped like an angel with outstretched wings. “She turned to me and whispered that we would be fine,” Mr. Hannaford recalls. “There was an incredible shift of energy between us. Some sort of higher power. Her certainty became my certainty.”
 
“For the first time in our marriage, I became the caregiver,” said Mr. Hannaford. “It’s one of the greatest gifts I have been able to give my wife of 37 years: to return the favour.”
 
After months of chemotherapy, they thought the HLH had been beaten, only to see it return with more ferocity. The only option was a stem-cell transplant, which ultimately cured her, but it was a long road back to health.
 
“Pain and suffering are part of the landscape of being human,” Mr. Hannaford said. “Nobody is exempt.”
 
“I came to realize that owning the symptoms of any illness, whether it’s mental or physical, is the ultimate freedom.”
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