Camp Gave Me a Reason to Keep Going

Editor's Note

This remarkable essay from Lily Cartier describes how experiences at YMCA family camps helped her heal from a traumatic high school diagnosis. Lily grew up attending YMCA camps, and today, she serves as the seasonal office coordinator at YMCA Camp Northern Lights.

If this essay inspires you to share yours, contact me at lettertotheeditor@ymcanorth.org and I’d love to talk about it with you.  

Natalie King, Editor

YMCA Camp du Nord was the second place I called home growing up. It was at this magical place I learned how to be myself. I learned to swim in Lake Burntside. I declared my hatred for leeches on Siam Point. I met all of my best friends while singing in age groups. In front of the old Totem Pole, I learned that one day, I could live in these woods for the whole summer. This one week of summer was the time I looked forward to the most, and I counted down the days until it was my turn on the North Arm again. It was sacred to me.  

The week at camp became the cornerstone of my soul. I channeled the freeness I felt in the woods whenever the days got dark. I would write letters to my camp friends and hope to find their faces among the stars. Songbook lyrics filled up the long school days so brightly that I couldn’t help but love every single thing about this whole life. There was nothing I loved more in the world than du Nord.

2016, the year I was 13, was big for me. I had finally convinced my wary parents to send me to the Boundary Waters with YMCA Camp Widjiwagan. The future glittered with independence in the summer and the first year of high school was just around the corner. I was in love with the life in front of me.

Then, the unimaginable. While on my Widji trip, I spiked a dangerous fever and had to be evacuated. As it turns out, the seemingly random symptoms I had been experiencing over the past couple of years had all come to a head, and I became really sick. I was admitted to the hospital for countless tests and treatments.

The memories are still hazy for me, even now at 22.

I was eventually diagnosed with lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease where the immune system is so overactive that it starts to attack healthy cells and organs. Typically, it is diagnosed in adulthood, not during the first year of teenhood.

I missed my first semester of high school. I learned how to swallow a serious amount of pills at once. I watched a lot of cooking shows. I had a lot of doctor’s appointments. And I dreamt of camp. This is all I remember, really. Just snapshots of things I lost as I adapted to a new way of life.

I was trapped inside of a body no longer my own. I do not remember much of 
high school.

My transcript shows I was a good student; however, I had developed such severe anxiety that I was essentially nonverbal outside of my house for two years. What I do remember, though, is camp. Camp was consistent, amidst so much change. In the summer of 2017, the week I spent at camp was the only week I did not feel sick. It was the only week that I was able to feel my former self seep through to the forefront. My words did not get stuck in my throat as I learned to love myself again. In this new body I did not entirely recognize, camp helped me to heal from the inside out.

There is a moment during that week that I come back to when the days are hard. I was floating in the water, the sun was shining, and for the first time in a long time, I did not have the hospital on my mind. When I eventually stood up, I could feel my body standing under me in the water. I could feel the warmth soaking into my skin. I could hear the laughter on the shore and my friends calling me to get ice cream. I remember running down the trail in my sandals and swimsuit, smiling and knowing that everything was going to work out in the end.

If you have never experienced such a medical scare, it might be difficult to understand this feeling. This feeling of recognizing my body again as something strong, something that can hold me, something that can heal. “Everything will work out in the end” has been my mantra since that moment, and WOW, was I right! I am about to graduate with honors in my major and with three minors. I started a school club, have held many jobs, made the most beautiful friends, and most importantly, I am healthier than I have ever been.

I worked one summer on program staff at du Nord. It was everything I imagined it could be, and more. Every day, I felt like I was proving to my younger self that dreams do come true. The next year, I was offered the lead art barn position at YMCA Camp Northern Lights and made the switch to a new camp. The location was different, but the love that I felt from the people around me was just as strong. I credit the clean air and water of Burntside for my healing, but I also credit the people. These people make me feel whole, no matter what is going on in life.

I say every year that it’ll be my last, that I will venture out into the real world and get a” real” job. But there is nothing more real to me than the Northwoods. So, I am headed into my fifth summer working at family camp this June, now as the office coordinator at Northern Lights.  

If you ask any camp kid why camp is so important to them, they’ll say it made them into the person they are today. I say the same — camp made me into the person I am today. Additionally, I can say that camp saved me. Camp gave me a reason to keep going. Camp is how I define love.