LEBANON — There’s a phrase in Buddhism — Bodhisattva — that refers to a person who delays nirvana in order to stay on earth and to help others who are suffering.
It’s also the way Hilary Michaud, who died at 91 on July 9, lived her life as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. It was seen in the way she was devoted to furthering her education — going back to school to support her children and obtaining a doctorate in her 60s — to continue to counsel women who suffered from sexual assault and other traumas.
“She knew about suffering herself because she had a rather traumatic upbringing. Instead of becoming bitter about it and dwelling on that aspect of things, she always wanted to grow, to transcend,” said her husband of 38 years, Ron Michaud.
“She ended up, as somebody said, ‘strong in her broken places.’ She never became bitter the way a lot of people do because of the different challenges she had. She opened her heart and became more of an optimist and more of a lover of herself and of people. She was strong in that regard.”
Born Hilary Blesh in 1929 in Sacramento, Calif., her father, the late Rudi Blesh, was a well-known jazz critic who promoted the work of Black musicians. She grew up with progressive ideals which led her to be a strong feminist and believer in civil rights. Her mother suffered from mental illness and her parents divorced when she was young. During her adolescence, she spent some time in a group home for children, where she took it upon herself to teach another child there to read and swim.
“She really empathized and tried and tried to get him to be able to do the two things that he was disabled to do. She said that that was a pivotal point in her development, probably who made her who she became later as a therapist,” Ron Michaud said. “She said he saved her life because it gave her something important to do when she was suffering and lonely herself.”
She got married for the first time at 19 and had two children, before divorcing her husband. She married again and had two more children. She raised her family in New York City, Holland and Rome, where her second husband spent time as an architect, and Marblehead, Mass. Her two oldest children — Carl Hultberg and Stephanie Hultberg — predeceased her.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was a turning point for her, Ron Michaud said.
“After Martin Luther King died, she had an awakening. She identified with him when he was alive in terms of his nonviolent ideology and then there was the murder,” he said. “It was like hope in a sense was (extinguished) and she didn’t want to live in a world where hope didn’t exist. She decided to champion hope and love.”
That lead her to a lifelong dedication to studying and practicing Buddhism, and to establish a teen center for Black youth in neighboring Lynn, Mass., which only lasted a year before it burned down. In the 1970s, she opened a natural food store in Marblehead.
“That was really her first, in my opinion, it was something that was hers,” said Michaud’s youngest daughter, Alison Tirone, of Byfield, Mass. “She absolutely loved the relationship with people coming in, would have a whole shelf of cookbooks and nutritional books. She really became quite the expert on nutrition.”
After her second marriage ended, Michaud decided to go back to school to study social work in order to better support her children.
“She was an exceptional role model for me as an adult learner,” said her daughter Genevieve Morton, of Salem, Mass.
She counseled youth and allowed her daughter’s classmates to move in with them for extra support. The family would listen to The Allman Brothers Band and Michaud had a great love for Eric Clapton. She taught her children to meditate.
“I was fortunate that my mom was hip,” Tirone said. “She was so intellectual and she could talk about writing, about art, about music.”
Michaud was drawn to helping women during a time when women’s trauma was not always taken seriously: She’d worked through her challenges and believed strongly in helping others in their journeys.
“She knew how to help other women do the same. They could change course at any time if that’s what they wanted to do,” said Dorie Porcelli, of Doylestown, Pa., a friend and fellow therapist who met Michaud when they both worked in the Upper Valley. “She believed in women’s abilities to overcome obstacles.”
She met Ron Michaud in the late 1970s when she started working for a counseling agency he had founded in Marblehead. He immediately recognized her talent in working with women who were coping with traumatic experience.
“She was successful where a lot of the mental health community wasn’t as successful as they should have been. She wanted to give women a special help up, to find their voice,” he said. “I saw her develop into a master therapist. She was really wonderful and good as a therapist. She certainly transcended me.”
They were drawn to each other from the start, but did not begin dating until Hilary Michaud went to work for another practice.
“We were out on a date and we were at the Ritz hotel in Boston, right on the common, and she proposed to me and I accepted,” Ron Michaud recalled. “Later on we’d go back to the Ritz every year and I would get on my knees and plead for marriage with her, which was wonderful. She was an inspiration to me, always, during the whole 38 years.”
The couple moved to the Upper Valley in the mid-1980s so Hilary Michaud could pursue her doctorate at Antioch New England. They lived in Enfield before moving to Lebanon.
“The fact that she graduated with her Ph.D. when she was (66) was an amazing graduation. I just stood up and yelled ‘go mom,’ ” Morton said.
Michaud then went into private practice and continued to pursue knowledge to continue to better help her clients.
“She was quite dedicated to that special knowledge,” said Deborah Jones, who met Michaud when they were both working at a practice in New London. “She was very, very capable and very highly motivated wherever she aimed herself. She was all in.”
Even though she technically retired at 86, she kept speaking to clients until just up to her death.
“I train actors and I am a great fan of a good therapist being a supervisor and a guide,” said Ronni Stewart, a former Dartmouth professor who sought out Michaud. The two connected in their shared interest in Buddhism and time spent living abroad. “We were able to have conversations with bits of Italian, French and Dutch thrown in.”
She had a great love for a good mystery novel, a strong cup of tea and crossword puzzles.
“She had all the greatest tea equipment I ever saw,” Porcelli said. “I learned you never steep tea for more than four minutes. It has to be exactly four minutes.”
For a time, Morton tried to get her involved in Sudoku puzzles, but Michaud quit because she didn’t feel like she was learning anything from them.
“That’s why she loved the crossword puzzles, because she was always learning a new word,” Morton said. “She wanted to learn something new every day.”
At at a time when many people would be planning their retirement, Michaud didn’t consider it.
“My mother always said she was not the type to sit back and knit or watch television,” Tirone said. “Her hobby was continuing her intellect.”
She was also an impeccable dresser and knew how to put together a good outfit. Once, while at a thrift store with Jones, Michaud insisted that her friend buy a wool shawl.
“She said, ‘Deborah, that, yes, that,’ ” Jones, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, recalled when she hesitated over the purchase. “It’s this item that always brings her back to me and she was right. This is a very lovely item that I wouldn’t have except for her.”
She was a member of the Board of Directors at Karme Choling in Barnet, Vt., one of the first Buddhist centers in the United States and North America and she had a deep love for hiking in the White Mountains and her two dogs, Josie and Penny.
Michaud didn’t set out to break any barriers, but to the people who loved her she did just that, by using her hard-fought knowledge to help people heal from their traumas so that they could live fuller lives.
“Everything that happened in her life was relevant to who she was as a therapist and as a mature woman. She used everything to better herself,” Porcelli said. “She wanted to be of service to the world. She wasn’t content to just sit and watch. She was very involved.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
