The butterfly effect: meet author Karen Power

Losing twin boys at 24 weeks has brought author Karen Power on a journey that she never had envisioned for herself and her family. She has moved seamlessly from travel agent to adult education tutor, to author and now to professional speaker – all in a bid to learn from and get through her difficult life experiences. Living on a dairy farm in Co Waterford with her husband Michael and their two children, her second novel, On Butterfly Wings, recently hit the Irish best-sellers list in original fiction.

Some 14 years ago at age 34, Karen Power was thrilled to learn she was pregnant with twins.

She had an inkling before anyone else, including the doctors, that there were twins in there. When it was confirmed – after she experienced a small bleed that is considered normal when carrying twins – both herself and her husband Michael were in celebratory form.

Having told her family and friends, she basked in the clichés of “two for the price of one” and “how will you cope?” But Karen was never worried – it was the best news ever.

The 20-week scan was a milestone and the first time they would see their babies properly on screen. The nurse was excited about the clarity of the twins, but this was not to be a good sign, it turned out.

“We were so excited to see the babies that we didn’t really notice anything at first. But soon, I realised that the excitement that the nurse was initially portraying was petering out and the gynaecologist was quiet and was intently taking a lot of measurements. After the scan, he asked us to come into his office and it was then we wondered was something wrong,” says Karen.

The doctor explained that he thought that the placenta was creating too much water and this is why the scans were so clear. He didn’t hold out much hope for the babies’ survival.

“Devastation was the initial feeling, but then I thought, I’m not going to let these babies die. I will rest and I will do everything I am told to do to ensure they will be OK. I gathered that if I could get them to 27 weeks that they could be born and we could nurse them to health. However, I was omitting the doctor’s answers to Michael’s question: ‘What are the odds?’ To which he replied: ‘1%.’

“They lasted until 23 ½ weeks. I was brought into hospital with a terrible pain. I know now, I was actually in labour. The nurses and doctors were so good to me, but I couldn’t believe it was happening. I had never really believed anything bad would happen.”

Karen gave birth to Aidan first and later, baby Michael. She is ever grateful to the nursing staff at University Hospital Waterford who made imprints of her babies’ hands and feet in a lovely booklet, something physical to treasure long after her babies were laid to rest. Karen and Michael got to hold their babies, give them names and say goodbye. They have photographs of the two beautiful little lives that were due into this world that never quite made it.

Loosing a baby

“When you take a pregnancy test and it’s positive, your hopes and dreams become alive and real. So, if you lose your baby at four weeks or at 24 weeks, it doesn’t matter – you are shattered. We got to hold our babies and bury them, which was a blessing – some people don’t get that opportunity,” says Karen.

Karen and Michael also have a daughter, who was just five years old. Not long after the sad passing of the twins, Aisling was diagnosed with a learning difficulty called dyspraxia.

“We were already coping with the desolation of losing our baby boys when we learned that our much-loved daughter had problems that we didn’t really understand at the time. There was little known about dyspraxia back then and, even now, not everyone would understand its intricacies,” says Karen.

“It’s called the ‘hidden handicap’. Aisling looks perfect and is perfect in many ways but she finds tasks that other children her age find easy, to be very complicated. Playground activities, such as hopping, skipping and playing catch, were a nightmare, understanding the rules of a board game were a challenge. If you asked her to turn to page 10 in her reading book at school, it could take the length of time it would take someone else to read the page. Sports require coordination and so these were out too. It was heart-breaking as a mother to watch. She was always on the back foot and it led to isolation from other kids.

“Between the grief and the anger at this point, I felt life was so unfair. I was looking for someone to blame, but of course it was nobody’s fault. People were so good to me and I knew I had to move on for Aisling’s sake. I wanted to find out more about this condition and see how I could help her and help myself to cope too. I was managing a travel agency at the time and I began thinking about what else I could do. I decided to look into upskilling in the area of special needs so I could learn how I could best help Aisling progress.”

New journey

Karen studied special needs and went on to complete Adlerian psychology and this was the beginning of her new journey into education. As part of her psychology course, she was required to keep a diary. At first it was a blank screen or a blank page, but as soon as she started writing she couldn’t stop. With two women’s fiction books under her belt and a third in the pipeline, Karen writes fiction with obvious references to her life experience, attributing the characters in her books with the dilemmas and experiences that she knows so much about. The Butterfly Barn series was born.

Karen is clearly in love with the characters she has created and she is animated as she talks about her stories.

“The first book is set between Ireland and New York and it follows three women, Grace, Jessie and Sophia, whose lives intertwine to create a centre for holistic and creative therapies called Butterfly Barn. The book is about love, life, loss, friendship and the ability of the human spirit to endure. In the second book, On Butterfly Wings, Monique Chevalier meets Donagh Mullally at the newly established Butterfly Barn and their lives change in ways they never imagined. I like to bring in real life issues into my writing. While Butterfly Barn deals with loss and betrayal, the second novel deals with learning difficulties and literacy problems. Things I already know a lot about,” says Karen.

And in some small way, Butterfly Barn has become a reality for Karen, as since the publication of the books, she has been asked to host Butterfly Barn creativity days and workshops across the southeast through the Education Training Board and other community groups.

“Doors are opening in ways I never imagined,” she says. “I was thrilled to be asked to speak at the National Literacy Week event in Waterford last year and following that I was also invited to speak at Ireland’s first national baby loss awareness conference on 15 October last in Dublin – something that is obviously very close to my heart.”

The future

Karen is an extremely busy working mother to Eoghan, who is 11 and who is looking forward to going to secondary school next year, and Aisling, who is now 18 and a huge fan of horses and animals in general. She is preparing for LCA exams in the Ursuline Convent, having already completed a stunning Junior Cert, which began in a different school but ended up with a year of home schooling with Karen prior to the exams.

She is committed to her horse, Ollie, whom she has complete responsibility for, and she is a big fan of dressage, which she practises on the family farm surrounding their home in Kilmeaden.

“I had not envisaged home schooling Aisling, but circumstances led to this happening and I got huge support from the teachers at my old school and from Xcel in Waterford, through which Aisling sat her exams. She then took a year out to take courses in IT and horticulture before starting afresh in the Ursuline Convent where she is very happy today.

“I never thought my life would take this path,” ponders Karen. “Aisling and my babies have brought me on a journey and I have learned so much from her and their loss. I don’t believe I would ever have become a tutor in adult education or written books had it not been for these experiences. Every day, I feel very blessed and grateful that people are reading my novels and telling their friends near and far about them. I still can’t believe that my books are available in every bookshop in Ireland and through the library service. But at that low time of my life, I had two choices – I could wallow in my grief or I could see what difference I could make. If these stories can help just one person not to feel alone than it will have done enough.”

Butterfly Barn and On Butterfly Wings are available in all good bookshops and on Amazon. Karen will also be speaking at the Wexford Literary Festival on 28 May, along with library events over the coming months. Details of Karen’s Butterfly Barn creativity days and workshops are available from www.karenpowerauthor.com.

If you would like Karen to speak at an event in your area about any of the issues above, contact karenpowerauthor@gmail.com.