Episode 45: Surviving a Tragedy with Manya Chylinski, Part One

00;00;08;17 – 00;00;59;25
Rick Hoaglund
Today we’re meeting Manya Chylinski, a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing over ten years ago. On that tragic day, Manya witnessed unimaginable events that left a lasting impact. While she survived the physical danger, the emotional and psychological effects of that experience would stay with her. Instead of letting the trauma define her, Manya has turned her journey into one of healing. She is now a powerful voice for trauma awareness and mental health. Welcome to On Topic with Empathia. I’m Rick Hoaglund, your host. In this episode, Manya shares her story of survival and recovery. Let’s hear Manya’s incredible life story of strength, wisdom, and the transformative power of resilience. Manya, tell me a little bit, just tell me your experience. Let’s start there. What’s your story?

00;00;59;28 – 00;04;41;23
Manya Chylinski
My story, in terms of the reason that you and I are speaking today, started on April 15th, 2013. I was excited to have gotten seats in the bleacher seats at the finish line of the Boston Marathon that year. And our seats were good for 2:00 on. And that’s where I was at 249 when a bomb exploded across the street from me. And in that moment, I certainly had no concept of how different my life was going to become. Because in that moment, I was frozen in place. I was staring straight ahead across the street at where the bomb exploded, and I was watching the cloud of smoke get bigger and rise, you know, in front of the building. And I saw the people on the other side running away, kind of like ripples on a pond. And, in as much as I had any conscious thoughts, I thought to myself, they just ruined the Boston Marathon. I knew it was a bomb, and I don’t know how because I was there with some friends and later when we shared our experiences, they all didn’t necessarily think it was a bomb or know that it was a bomb. And as my brain was looking over and trying to figure out what was happening, I saw a woman standing in front of a broken plate glass window. And at that moment, she was the only person that I saw. And I couldn’t understand how she was still standing there, because I knew it was a bomb and I knew it had to be catastrophic. And as my brain was trying to process all of this, the second bomb went off. And that was only 12 or 14 seconds, but in my mind, a lot of things happened in that very short amount of time. And when I turned to look down the street to see the second bomb again, I saw the smoke rising and I knew it was a bomb and felt so disoriented and so confused, because even though in that very short amount of time, I felt like I knew what was happening. I had no idea what was happening, and my brain was desperately trying to figure out how to, how to keep me safe. And after the second bomb went off, my friends and I said, we have to get out of here. So then we evacuated and we were in the bleacher seats opposite the sidewalk where the bomb exploded that, leaving bleacher seats, if you think about it, you have to walk down the stairs, which actually took us closer to the bombing site. So I looked straight down at my feet and never looked back across the street at the, at the site, I just, I knew, I think my brain knew not to look. It was not a conscious decision. And we got a few hundred yards away. We came around to the front of the Boston Public Library and standing there, and I was just sobbing, like that is how I express my stress, which is through copious amounts of tears. And those were the first tears of very many over the last 11.5 years.

00;04;41;25 – 00;04;56;22
Rick Hoaglund
So I’m going to ask kind of a weird question, but I have a reason for it. When this happened and you were evacuating, were you running? Were groups running? Were they kind of orderly? I mean, what was going on with the group that you were with, with the crowd? The whole crowd?

00;04;56;24 – 00;07;04;19
Manya Chylinski
I would say from my perspective, the evacuation of the bleachers was fairly orderly. If you think about how bleacher seats work, you, there’s stairs and you then you walk to your aisle and you scoot yourself over to your seat. Some people did that. I went straight over the seats, just diagonal. Straightest line between me and the top of the, you know, the exit. And I think several other people did that as well. And there was no pushing, no jostling. We were moving, I think, fairly quickly. And everybody understood the assignment. We need to get out of here because we don’t know what is happening. And there was an official from the marathon who was standing there. And I don’t remember exactly what he was saying, but it was something like, “come this way to exit the bleachers” or “this way turn to your right.” And when we got to the bottom of the bleachers, there were, we went, I’m just thinking geographically. We got to a point and we turned left, and that took us in one direction in front of the library. And there were very few people near us. So I think that maybe several people got to that decision point and made a right behind the bleachers and, and exited a different way. When we exited, it didn’t feel like there was a cross of people. And at one point, I remember seeing somebody walking toward us as we were walking away from the bleachers. And I screamed at this woman, “Turn around. A bomb went off.” You know, I don’t know where they’re going. I have no idea where they were when it happened. Maybe they got separated from their people because there were five of us in our group. Two of us evacuated together, and we lost the other three. And eventually, you know, found her thanks to cell phones and eventually found our way together.

00;07;04;21 – 00;07;29;04
Rick Hoaglund
So what was going through your head? I mean, you saw this. You said you were kind of numb for a second. You knew it was a bomb. But was your brain saying “I’ve got to get out of here” kind of panic? Or was it orderly? I’ve never asked this of someone that’s gone through something like this before. But I don’t know how I would react. And I think most of our listeners have no idea how they would react. So I’m getting a little bit personal with you. I hope that’s okay.

00;07;29;07 – 00;09;49;09
Manya Chylinski
That is okay. And it’s a good question. In fact, nobody has ever asked me this question. I would say I didn’t consciously feel panic. I am certain that my brain and the system that is designed to keep me safe and fight, flight, freeze. For me, it was freeze. You know, when the first bomb went off, I froze. And then it was the second bomb that kind of clicked. Hey, we need to get out of here. And I don’t remember a conscious experience of panic. But as I said, when we got around the corner was maybe 2 or 3 minutes later, I was sobbing. And that continued on and off for the rest of the afternoon. We would, we had to walk around the the crime scene to get back to where, to get back home. And we also huddled around outside not knowing what to do. Like you see in those photos from a mass casualty event. And in some moments I was fine and I was able to answer people’s questions. There were a lot of people who didn’t know what had happened. They just knew people were running. They weren’t in the same spot we were. They didn’t see it was a bomb. They didn’t know it was a bomb. I met several people who were family or friends of runners who were trying to figure out if their runner was okay. Had they crossed the finish line ahead of time before the bomb exploded? And I remember I was able to help some people realize that their person was probably going to be okay because they said, oh, they finished ten minutes ago. Would they have been there? No, they would not have been there. And we helped some people. We made some calls on our cell phones. So there were moments where it was, I felt, I’m not going to say normal, but I was, I was present. And then other moments I just would be sobbing from thinking about what was happening.

00;09;49;11 – 00;09;58;16
Rick Hoaglund
So did you react looking at it today and you think back on it? Did you react in a way that you thought you would react?

00;09;58;18 – 00;11;28;09
Manya Chylinski
I’ve never thought about it that way. I can say that I have looked back on my reaction, and it makes perfect sense to me that I behaved the way that I behaved. I know of survivors of the bombing who have shared with me their reactions. Very, very, very different from mine. One person just started running, just picked a direction and started running and didn’t stop for a very long time until they got very, very far away from the area. You know, but I also know people who didn’t necessarily know what was going on. So they had a different kind of response than mine, which was at the time knowing it was a bomb, and then later on proving that, that to be correct. I feel like I reacted in the way that was appropriate for me and I did not, like I said, I did not consciously feel a sense of panic or fear, but I know that the entire experience was my body, afraid for my life and all of the things I was doing was to protect myself. But that was almost automatic for me. That didn’t bubble up to my brain until we stopped moving and then I realized how awful it all was.

00;11;28;11 – 00;11;50;07
Rick Hoaglund
So in this immediate aftermath of the bombing, and maybe we can say until you get home, let’s just use that time period. How are you doing mentally and physically? Like, that’s a lot to go through. And did you just go home or did someone stop you and try to get your information? I mean, I don’t know what happens after this. So what what does happen or what happened in this case?

00;11;50;09 – 00;15;14;06
Manya Chylinski
So in this case, I had posted a picture of the finish line at 2:14 p.m. on Facebook and said, this is so great, I’m at the finish line. This is amazing. All of these people are winners, no matter how long it takes you to get across the finish line. And I still fully believe that because I could barely run to the corner if there was an emergency. So I had posted that on Facebook at some point after we evacuated, and we were standing around not very far, trying to figure out what should we do, where should we go, what’s safe, what? What’s happening? I realized, oh no, now very many people know that I was here who might, I think some people in my family and friends would have suspected that I was there, but now people for sure knew that I was there. So the cell service was overwhelmed, as you might imagine. I got many texts and some partial texts. I got some partial voicemail messages and had a very difficult time sending anything out. I think the system was just overwhelmed and a family member did get through on text, and I texted back, sort of, I’m okay, I was there. I’m okay. Share this. Like, please, I can’t, I can’t figure out how to deal with everybody right now. And then we decided, there were rumors of another bomb. And I remember we were standing outside and up outside a T station, the Boston subway system, and somebody said, should we go inside? And we all agreed that going inside felt really dangerous. And we felt safer outside. And in retrospect, I find this so fascinating because the bomb went off when we were outside. So I find it curious that in that moment, in our state of fear and still trying to figure out what is happening, there was the fear of going inside. And we, we started to hear some of the numbers of the number of people who were physically injured, of the number of people who were killed. And I remember thinking, well, I’m really glad I’m okay, like I didn’t, I don’t have a catastrophic injury. I was not killed. I felt very distraught to learn that I had essentially witnessed several people being murdered. And that was the feeling that I had initially as we were evacuating and making our way home. And I got home, and as you did, turned on CNN to figure out, do they know what’s happened? Who was this? Who did this? What happened? And, you know, then went through the cycle of of that and.

00;15;14;08 – 00;15;20;22
Rick Hoaglund
Did you find yourself almost addicted to news about it? Were you curious about it or did you shun it?

00;15;20;25 – 00;18;48;11
Manya Chylinski
Yes and no. I was very curious about it that day. When I got home, I at that time still had a landline and my cell phone was dead. So I called parents and other folks and helped people know that I was okay, and was glued to the news for the next few days. For those of you who don’t remember specifically, the marathon is on a Monday and in the middle of Thursday night/Friday morning, they identified the individuals who did this and they continued to wreak havoc. And they killed a police officer on Friday morning. And then there was a lockdown for the whole area. It was voluntary. Please, please don’t go out. They stopped running the subway system and the streets were essentially bare. And that morning I canceled my plans. I had been going to drive somewhere and I thought, I don’t want to be out if these people are out there. And had been glued to the news through all of this and started watching the news as the chase and capture and all of this stuff was unfolding. And at some point on Friday morning, I realized, and I actually said to myself, this is not a television show where the resolution will be in an hour. This is ongoing and there’s no way to know when this is going to end. And this is giving me a headache. Just this anticipation and anxiety of watching this and and knowing that they were so close but still trying to. And it felt so important to me that they had identified the individuals who did this. I had been very nervous that that would be hanging out there for months or years, where we would never figure out who did it. And that was a very unsettling feeling. So that Friday, I turned off the TV. I didn’t go on social media and it was later that evening that I heard people cheering outside my window just on the street, not specifically near my window. And I thought, I feel like something has happened. And then I reconnected to the world and discovered the resolution. And then it felt less important to be watching the news on an ongoing basis at that point, because the Who did this question had been the big one that was, was connecting me to the news. The other big thing that had been connecting me to watching the news was trying to find evidence that what I was experiencing was normal. Like, where are they talking about the mental health side of this? Are they? Or am I just feeling this way because I can’t get it together? And so those were the two things I kept paying attention to. And after that Friday, I did continue to watch the news, but on a reduced level. And I started to realize, no, they’re just not talking about the mental health impacts. So I can keep looking. But I need to not be surprised to not find them.

00;18;48;13 – 00;19;11;23
Rick Hoaglund
And I know this might be hard to put into words, but what were you feeling like? The immediate aftermath? We know what you were feeling, but you kind of talked about going home. And I will say, you put yourself and maybe I’m wrong, kind of in isolation because you were watching the news and then and you couldn’t really get out because you had these people on the loose as well. But what, what were you going through in your mind?

00;19;11;26 – 00;24;25;10
Manya Chylinski
Well, I appreciate that you use the word isolation because I worked from home even back then. And I look back now and I wonder how my experience would have been different if I’d had an office to go into where we could talk about the experience, or even if I didn’t want to talk about it, I’d be surrounded by people who were talking about it, or at least there to be supportive. I had a conference call mid-morning the next day, and I’m going to be honest with you, it didn’t occur to me that I was affected really initially. So I guess I’ll just go to work and I guess I’ll just log on to this conference call. And it was a conference call with a company in Boston, and I remember being dumbfounded that not one person mentioned it. It was not even in passing at the beginning of the call like, hey, I hope everybody’s okay. Just no acknowledgment that this thing had happened. And that also contributed to me feeling like, oh, it’s just me. And while we were on the call, I smelled the bomb and my body went right back into, we are in danger, how do we save you? And I was sitting in my office and something clicked and the logical part of my brain said, I’m in my office. I didn’t hear anything. I don’t see smoke. I don’t see flame. I don’t hear sirens. Maybe I’m okay. And at some point I went out later and I was talking to a police officer, and I said, “would there still be the odor of the bomb in the air here in the neighborhood. Now, you know, the next day”. And he said no. And then told me a story of a friend of his, another police officer who was working right near where the bomb went off. And he explained how he immediately washed all his clothes and took a really long shower to get the smell out of his, his hair and off his body. And I realized that for no reason I can possibly explain to you, when I woke up the next day, I put on the exact same clothes and they smelled smoky like the bomb. And that is fascinating to me that I would put on the same clothes the next day, but certainly I would not have told you that I had smelled the bomb. That was not a sense that I initially thought was part of my experience. Until then, I smelled it on my clothes and, you know, then it was just, life just was really hard for those next few days. And I had a, you know, four day long headache. And it was just the stress. And I wasn’t sleeping very well. And for two nights in a row, I had chips and queso sauce for dinner because that’s all I could do. I mean, I and I walked to CVS to buy that for dinner. I couldn’t even deal with what was in my cupboard. And the following Monday, the mayor’s office held a moment of silence at 249, in honor of those who had been killed. And I turned on the TV and watched that because that felt like this is really important. And when that was over, within a half an hour of that being over, I had phoned the behavioral health department at my doctor’s office and said, I need to come in and see someone. And all the intake questions are pretty general. Are you a harm to yourself or others? And so I just answered very matter of factly, no. Yes. This. No. Boom boom boom. And she said, well, why are you? So the last question was, why do you want to see someone? And my whole demeanor changed from just speaking normally, like I’m talking to you now. I squeaked out and started crying. I was at the finish line and the next thing that happened is I discovered one can get an emergency mental health appointment, and they got me in the next day. And I realized later it was somebody’s lunch hour. They got me in at noon. I’m sure that was the only time somebody had available. And that was the beginning of many, many hours of therapy with several different therapists over the last years.

00;24;25;13 – 00;24;37;28
Rick Hoaglund
So if you could go back and see yourself again, what would you tell yourself? It’s not necessarily, you can add this, what you would do differently? But what advice would you give yourself?

00;24;38;00 – 00;26;08;12
Manya Chylinski
The first thing I would tell myself. No matter what you see on the news, or you hear or don’t hear. What you are feeling is perfectly normal. It is normal to be distressed after experiencing something like this. And just because the response isn’t focusing on it, or the city hasn’t acknowledged it, or it’s not on CNN, don’t worry about that. It is real and what you are dealing with is real. And I think the other thing I would, the other advice I would give myself is to work a little harder to be in community. It was very easy for me to isolate myself because my work was, you know, work from home by myself and loved it then, still love it now. But it requires effort to make sure that you’re doing things with people so you’re not isolating. And after the bombing, I just couldn’t be bothered with that. So I did have a couple friends I managed to meet with, and I would encourage myself to pursue more of that, more just reaching out to people saying, can you come over? Can I come over? Can we be together? I just don’t want to be alone.

00;26;08;14 – 00;26;25;01
Rick Hoaglund
So this event changed your life. Definitely. So how has it changed it? And in any ways, did it change it for better? You have come out of this. Maybe more resilient. I’m just guessing.

00;26;25;03 – 00;26;42;25
Manya Chylinski
Oh, yes. I didn’t even really know the term resilience. Talking about humans and psychological resiliency. That wasn’t even a concept I’d ever thought of before. And I definitely am more resilient now. And.

00;26;42;27 – 00;27;03;29
Rick Hoaglund
And resiliency. Meaning that if you were to face another event, hopefully nothing like this, but even a trouble in your life, you know that you have some skills that you’re able to pull from, right? Like it’s it’s sort of in your toolbox. I, I really try not to use that term because everyone uses it, but I’m going to use it anyway. It’s in your toolbox.

00;27;04;01 – 00;30;11;16
Manya Chylinski
Yes. And I have had instances since then where I see evidence of using these tools, recognizing I have these tools. Several years ago, so pre-COVID, there was a fireworks show over the Charles River in Boston. I think it was May, so not 4th of July when we all know there’s a fireworks show. And I just where I live, I can hear it, but I can’t see it. So I was sitting on my couch and I heard a bomb go off and absolutely just started running towards my front door. And then I heard a second bomb go off. And then I ran towards my bedroom because I needed shoes, because I should have shoes on if I’m going to die from a bomb going off, and then a third bomb goes off and I run to the front door and I think, am I safer in my house or am I safer outside because I don’t know where the bombs are? And then a fourth bomb goes off and I sit down next to my front door, and I’m just sobbing because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to take care of myself. I don’t know what’s happening. And I have my phone with me and somebody texts me. It’s a fireworks show. So my friends knew. They knew something, that I would be distressed by this. And then I think I texted somebody else. Are you okay? Am I okay? What’s happening? And somebody else called me, although I didn’t pick it up. And I realized, okay, I do not like this. I’m very activated right now, but I actually am safe and my friends are a phone call away. And one of them is, you know, two buildings away if I need them, and started doing some of my breathing exercises. And by the time the fireworks show ended, you know, I was still pretty amped up. But I was okay. And I had, I do a lot of self-talk, and I had been able to kind of talk myself down and a little bit later, you know, a couple days later, I look back and I thought, wow, look what I did. That is resiliency. Those are the tools that I learned very specifically the self-talk and the breathing exercises that I never thought about before this. And I’ve had other instances, you know, different situations where I’m able to, as you say, use those tools in my toolbox. And I sometimes look and think, oh my goodness, what was my life like before when I dealt with something difficult because I didn’t have these tools or, or not to the extent that I do now.

00;30;11;18 – 00;30;27;04
Rick Hoaglund
So you talked about some of the things that you, you felt were those things that you learned kind of innately, or did you learn them through like a therapist or a reading or, or how did you come to build your toolbox? I just put it that way.

00;30;27;06 – 00;33;54;27
Manya Chylinski
It was a mix of all of those. I mentioned that I went to therapy about a week later. I had several instances of therapy, different therapists, some trauma counselors, some group counseling for, for survivors of the bombing, for people who were at the finish line. So it was a lot of folks like me with, you know, mental and emotional wounds and not with physical wounds. And I feel like I took something away from each of those. I also started doing yoga. I started with a trauma sensitive yoga class, which is done a little bit differently than a traditional yoga class, and then moved from that to yoga in the community and realized that the, the mindfulness aspect of yoga and the exercise pieces of it, both were beneficial to me. And my yoga is gentle yoga and restorative yoga, not the sweaty, hot yoga, you know, aerobics exercise kind of thing. So I started to, you know, do a lot of reading. I read Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score. I innately knew, I didn’t know I knew this, but I knew that it was stuck in my body, that the trauma was stuck in my body. But I didn’t, I didn’t have the words for that. I didn’t understand that. I didn’t know that my feeling that was a truth. I just because early on, I just didn’t know anything. I didn’t know why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I didn’t know that it was okay to feel the way I was feeling. I didn’t know how to stop feeling the way I was feeling. You know? I, I am a cryer. When I get emotional, happy, sad, I will cry at commercials for the Olympics. I am, just tears are my thing. Initially that day I cried a lot. And then there was a while where I was numb and I didn’t. I didn’t feel things and I didn’t cry at things. And then I didn’t understand why am I not crying? Because I’m, I’m, I cry at the most ridiculous things. So this was horrible. And I’m not crying. What does that mean? So it was so confusing that I was reading everything I could get my hands on. Any time a therapist or a counselor would say, check out this resource, I would. So I feel like it was a mix of all of those ways that I built my toolkit. And, you know, yoga was something that I continued because I realized the benefits. I am a walker. I love to go for long walks, and that is something that has been a very big part of my healing. In fact, at one point I was trying to decide, could I do something like walk across the country because that’s how much stuff I need to get out, like a walk that long is what I need to get all this stuff out. I did not, and I still have in the back of my mind want to do something like that, but that comes from I’ve recognized how important movement is for me to manage anxiety and panic.

00;33;54;29 – 00;34;20;21
Rick Hoaglund
So you just talked about your healing. Are you healed? Are you still healing? Will it continue for as long as you can imagine? And I know that seems a little strange, but I’m just kind of figuring out like is this with you the, of course the memories with you the rest of your life, but what do you think?

00;34;20;23 – 00;38;05;17
Manya Chylinski
Yes, to all of you above. Yes, I’m healed. Yes, I am still healing. And yes, it’s going to be with me for the rest of my life. And I will tell you that that realization was a huge milestone in my healing journey. When all of this started, like I mentioned, I didn’t know what I was feeling. I didn’t know how to, how to deal with it. I didn’t know what was the right, quote unquote, “thing to do” to take care of myself, so I started kind of doing everything. I thought my job after going through this trauma, my job in my life, was to get myself back to the place I was before the bombing, to the person that I was. So it was the whole goal of all of this work that I’m doing is to get back to the person that I was. And I also thought that you could put a pin in the map or circle a date on the calendar, and that was where I was going for, I’m going to get to this place. I’m going to get to this day, and I will be back to who I was, and everything will be great. And I can just go back to the life that I had before. And the day that I realized, or I don’t think it was a day. But when I finally realized, no, that’s not it. It’s not. It isn’t a place in the future, or a spot on the map, or a date on the calendar where I can officially say I am, I’m 100% healed and ta-dah. That day, that moment when I realized that felt so good. It changed things. It made me realize, or it helped me realize that the journey is the thing. And I do feel so much different now, 11 years on, and I now can go for many days without remembering that I’m a survivor of the bombing, without it being this thing that hanging over me. So it is always going to be with me. But it is, I’ve moved past the acute phase. I move past that middle, messy middle where you’re trying to figure it all out, and now it is just part of who I am. And when I look at those resiliency skills, we were talking about that toolkit. I know where that came from. So even if I get to a place or when I get to a place where, you know, it’s long enough ago that it’s just one of those memories of your life and so many other things have happened to me, I still will have the tools that I learned and that, that always connects me to that. Rick I have said, I don’t know if this is controversial, but I have said that the bombing was a gift. I can’t make it unhappen, but I’ve learned so much about compassion and empathy for myself and for others. And have this whole new awakening as an advocate and consultant in the job, the whole new work that I do and I look back and think, I wouldn’t want to go back to the person I was before, she was fine. But this is different than I could have ever imagined.

00;38;05;19 – 00;38;35;01
Rick Hoaglund
In our next episode, Manya takes the tools that she has learned to a whole new level in both her personal life, as well as making changes that could affect the way that you’re treated during a traumatic event. To hear other episodes of On Topic with Empathia, visit our website Empathia.com. Follow us on social media @empathia and subscribe to On Topic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund, thanks for listening to On Topic with Empathia.