“‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’ ‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice. ‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“We are all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
The first time I heard that line, with the Cheshire Cat’s wide grin, it felt silly, whimsical…something you smile at and move past. But lately for me, it has started to feel more like a confession. A truth spoken softly, realizing that life doesn’t always make sense.
Let’s be honest… Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland was never about logic. It was about disorientation through whimsy, an unsettling world filled with absurd characters saying profound things, a world where the rules change without warning, where courage and fear live side by side, and where you’re expected to keep moving forward even when nothing feels steady beneath your feet. In that way, it feels eerily familiar—especially for military families who live in a constant state of almost never knowing what comes next, and especially, especially true for military families this last month. It feels like the whole world is, in fact, filled with madness—by every definition.
A Spinning Mind
One night, curled up on the couch, I looked up from my phone and asked my husband, Jamie, “What’s happening in your head right now?”
He barely peeled his eyes away from the TV. We were deep into another true crime documentary—my latest attempt at shutting out the world for a couple of hours.
“What?” he said.
“No—right now,” I pressed. “What are you thinking about, this very second?”
He sighed, paused the show, and said, “Whether or not the husband did it.”
That was it. Those were the entire contents of his mind.
“So nothing else?” I asked. “No spinning thoughts? No mental checklist? No thinking about why decisions are being made? Who is making them? Why no one is calling to ask me what I think about said decisions? No feeling lazy about how we should be paying closer attention to what is happening? Just…tumbleweeds?”
He looked at me like I was the strange one. Jamie carries his fear and worries in other ways, and that is his story to tell, but that’s when it hit me: we don’t all carry the madness the same way either.
Some of us hold it tightly, quietly, constantly. Some of us set it down for a while and pick it back up later, (or, in some cases, we leave it where we laid it down). While none of those ways of coping are wrong, they do all belong to the same story.
So I find the Cat’s quote comforting in a way… WE are all mad here. Not broken. Not failing. Just human—navigating a world that rarely offers clear answers, if any at all.
Belonging doesn’t come from having it all together. It comes from sitting beside someone on your couch who understands the chaos you carry—and doesn’t need you to explain it, doesn’t often understand it themselves but shows up anyway, to squeeze your hand and hit play on the TV one more time.
There are days when the noise is too loud—when the talk of new wars, sacrifice, and uncertainty makes even something as simple as a cup of tea with a silly hat-wearing friend feel impossible. And still, we show up. We love. We try. We endure.
Finding Our Way
Later in the story, Alice says, “It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
After Jamie’s retirement from the Army, I felt myself let out a big breath—a breath that I had been holding for over 20 years of war—and with that exhale came so many unknowables, mostly about who I was and what I wanted. And then, my boys decided to attend West Point, and suddenly *big breath in* as they are on the brink of graduation and joining the “Big Army,” I find myself inhaling even harder, deeper. The strain of holding my breath comes rushing back into my body, and I have to remind myself over and over again: Just let go. Breathe, Amy.
The truth is, it’s no use going back to yesterday. We were different people then. Thank goodness, we are different people now.
So on the days when you feel a little “mad,” a little unraveled at the edges, know this: you are not alone. You are simply living in the in-between, the teeter-totter—where love stretches long distances, where fear and hope share the same breath, where each new minute brings a different emotion. This is not madness as the world defines it. This is life. This is survival. This is belonging.
The Cheshire Cat knew it all along. “We ARE all mad here”—and somehow, in that shared unraveling, we find one another.
Did this story resonate with you?
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Amy Uptgraft is VSP’s Artistic Director, as well as a playwright and theatre director who spent 21 years as an Army spouse—juggling endless moves, four kids, deployments and Bunco nights. She now lives in east Tennessee and is crazy about Shakespeare, murder podcasts and all things Dolly Parton, while currently adding Army Mom to her resume.
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Veterans Spouse Project (VSP) is the only nonprofit arts organization in the nation working to give voice to the experiences of military spouses through theatre and creative arts. Learn more about how to share, connect, listen, and create with us in your community.
