Sr. Anitawa Fearday, ASC, works on one of the 120 woven pieces she has created through the years (Submitted).

By Carlos Restrepo
For The Messenger

Every night before Sr. Anitawa Fearday turns out the light, she looks at a homemade vision board fastened to the wall of her room at Benedictine Living Community at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville.

The board is edged in blue gingham. Across the top, in plain block letters, are words that do not soften the subject: “Inner work for the end of my life.”

Below them is a collage Sr. Anitawa assembled after her second cancer diagnosis. “Abundance,” beside a reference to John 10:10. “Attitude of gratitude.” “Playful, loving curiosity.” “Enjoy the present moment.” Near the upper left is a phrase that sounds almost impossible: “Volunteer for cancer.”

“This got me through cancer,” Sr. Anitawa said. “This was my turning point. It’s the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night.”

She does not mean that she wanted the disease. She means that after a lifetime of volunteering for difficult assignments, distant missions and people living at society’s edges, she stopped treating cancer only as an intruder to be resisted.

“I volunteered to go to Bolivia. I volunteered for hospice, but I never volunteered for cancer,” Sr. Anitawa said. “When I volunteered for cancer, it made all the difference in the world.”

Accepting the illness did not make it less painful. It changed the question. Instead of asking only how she could defeat cancer, she began asking how she could grow through it and remain life-giving.

“That’s how I came to know that God loves me, even with cancer,” Sr. Anitawa said.

‘I don’t follow a pattern’

A few feet from the vision board are the woven pieces Sr. Anitawa creates from thread, fabric and repurposed picture frames. She has made about 120 over the years, many of them left behind in Bolivia, the landlocked South American country where she spent about four decades as a missionary.

There are mothers holding children, an open door she made during Advent, an Ascension scene constructed through negative space and a Paschal lamb connected to the Catholic ministry she founded in La Paz.

She is now weaving a rooster, a symbol of resurrection and the arrival of another day. The idea came from a 90-year-old Lutheran minister who participated in a book group Sr. Anitawa led and later left her a rooster decoration.

“I thought, ‘Why would she leave me a rooster?’” Sr. Anitawa said. “Then it came to me. The rooster speaks of a new day. It’s a symbol of resurrection for me.”

Asked how she decides where each color and thread belong, Sr. Anitawa offered a sentence that could also describe her religious life.

“I don’t follow a pattern,” she said. “I feel like I’m kind of a co-creator.”

She certainly has not followed many conventional patterns. She left home for the convent at 14, crossed cultures and continents, accompanied people threatened by political violence in Guatemala, traveled through the Bolivian Amazon by riverboat, founded a ministry in one of La Paz’s poorest areas and walked 332 miles across Spain at 70.

She survived malaria, hepatitis and cancer twice.

None of it came with a reliable set of instructions. The risks were real, and the final picture was rarely visible when she began. Yet, like her woven pieces, the work gradually took shape. Threads that appeared loose, dark or out of place became part of something larger.

A suitcase at 14

Sr. Anitawa was born June 12, 1946, on a farm 5 miles outside Teutopolis, part of the Diocese of Springfield. One of nine children, she spent her first three years of school in a one-room schoolhouse. Her teacher had also taught her mother.

By eighth grade, she knew she wanted to serve others, although she did not know what form that service might take. She considered volunteer work, the Peace Corps and missionary life.

Then a classmate mentioned a vocation day at the motherhouse of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ in Ruma. Sr. Anitawa went on a Saturday to look around. The next time she arrived, she was carrying a suitcase.

Her youngest brother was 2 weeks old. Her baby sister, who followed her through the family home as she completed chores, was barely a year old. Her parents asked whether she was certain. They told her she could return home if it did not work out and paid $30 each month for her room and board.

“I kind of grew into my vocation,” Sr. Anitawa said. “I wanted to be of service, and I didn’t exactly know what it would be. I just said, ‘Well, God, you are calling me. Show me the way.’”

She made her first profession July 1, 1966, in Ruma. This year, she is celebrating her 60-year jubilee as an Adorer of the Blood of Christ.

A bridge between worlds

While studying Spanish at Saint Louis University in 1968, Sr. Anitawa joined an exchange program in Colombia. She lived with a wealthy family that employed several maids and a chauffeur. She was discouraged from entering the kitchen or speaking freely with the household workers.

Her sociology studies took her into a poor neighborhood, where she saw a baby sleeping in a cardboard box.

Each day brought her between two realities: poverty severe enough to place a child in a box and a household where someone asked whether she wanted her tea in the dining room or her bedroom.

“From that experience, I knew that I wanted to be a bridge between cultures and social classes,” Sr. Anitawa said.

After graduating, she taught from 1969 to 1972 at Immaculate Conception School in Columbia in the Diocese of Belleville. She later taught at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory in the Caribbean.

Then she was asked whether she would consider Bolivia. She was not entirely sure where it was.

Sr. Anitawa requested six weeks to see whether she could contribute anything useful. Those six weeks grew into about 40 years.

Her ministries included 14 years of pastoral work at Nuestra Señora de Fátima Parish in La Paz, a high-altitude city in the Bolivian Andes. She spent five years with an Amazon riverboat team based in Riberalta in Bolivia’s tropical northern lowlands and six years in vocation ministry.

She also spent about a year and a half in Guatemala, a Central American country south of Mexico, working with Witness for Peace and accompanying communities threatened by political violence.

Bolivia, however, became the central geography of her life. People there began calling her Anitawa, adding an Aymara suffix to Anita. The name followed her home.

Where the road ended

In 2000, Sr. Anitawa founded Centro Salud Integral Sangre de Cristo in an impoverished area on the outskirts of La Paz. The center began on rented land with three principal areas of work: faith, natural medicine and support for people with disabilities.

The needs arrived faster than any formal plan.

One day, she saw young children searching through a garbage pile for food. Their mother worked for the city and had been abandoned by her husband.

“Your kids are eating in the garbage,” Sr. Anitawa recalled telling the woman. “If you want, we can at least give them a sandwich and offer some protection.”

She soon learned that many Indigenous families had moved from rural areas to La Paz in search of education and a better life, only to find few affordable childcare or social services. Single mothers were particularly vulnerable.

University students began volunteering as tutors. In 2001, about 80 children received academic support. A greenhouse supplied medicinal plants. A bakery created work opportunities for people who were deaf. The center brought in social workers, psychologists, doctors, therapists and other professionals.

Its programs eventually included childcare, nutrition, primary healthcare, physical therapy, special education, occupational therapy, faith formation and support for older adults. A rehabilitation center served about 44 children and 10 teenagers with disabilities.

Sr. Anitawa served as founder and general coordinator for 22 years.

The ministry also extended to Camata, a rural valley community in Muñecas Province. Reaching it from La Paz could require an eight-hour journey. Some of the surrounding villages could be reached only by walking another hour or two after the road ended.

The area included about 12 villages where many residents spoke Quechua and some spoke Aymara. Several communities had schools that ended after third grade, and there was no local high school.

When a bishop asked Sr. Anitawa to assume greater responsibility for the work, she initially declined. She and the other sisters were already busy, and Camata was far away and in another diocese.

Then she visited again and saw the needs.

“I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what we can do,’” Sr. Anitawa recalled.

She agreed to involve the multidisciplinary team from Salud Integral. They worked with teachers and schools, supported food production and nutrition, trained catechists and helped students obtain scholarships.

Today, Sr. Anitawa said, the region has three high schools. Some students have gone to universities, and two former scholarship recipients have returned as teachers.

“The people didn’t have a lot of material things to rely on,” she said. “They had to trust God. They taught me a lot. It was such a privilege to walk with them.”

Weaving, writing and walking

Sr. Anitawa learned to weave through a program for older adults in Bolivia. Older people were often neglected, she said, but once gathered, the group developed a life of its own.

Some participants already knew traditional weaving techniques but wanted to learn more. Sr. Anitawa invited an instructor from Catholic Charities to teach them, then sat down and took the classes herself.

The absence of a pattern does not mean the absence of discipline. Weaving requires selecting colors, building large shapes, adding small details and sometimes pulling apart work that has gone wrong.

Her autobiography, “Tejer, Escribir, Caminar,” or “Weaving, Writing, Walking,” organizes her life through those three repetitive acts: a thread passing through a loom, one word following another and one foot moving in front of the other.

Sr. Anita Irose, her companion in religious life for about 40 years, wrote in the book’s introduction that Sr. Anitawa reveals not only the bright colors of her tapestry, but also “the broken threads” that sometimes seemed capable of damaging the whole work.

A poem by Sr. Clare Boehmer describes the rhythm as “weaving the planned and unplanned hour” into “a life fully lived and loved.”

Walking became another form of prayer.

In 2017, at age 70, Sr. Anitawa completed 332 miles of the Camino de Santiago in 32 days. The Camino is a network of medieval Christian pilgrimage routes through Spain leading to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia in northwestern Spain.

She prepared for a year, planned her stops and kept a travel diary. Along the way, she slept in inexpensive pilgrim hostels, walked through cold rain and learned to dry soaked boots by stuffing them with newspaper.

Near the end, pain in her lower left leg became impossible to ignore. She reached Santiago de Compostela limping rather than leaping, but she reached it.

Cancer and surrender

Her first cancer diagnosis came in Bolivia in 2021. Doctors were unable to complete a colonoscopy because of the tumors. Surgery was postponed because the hospital did not have the necessary blood or surgical staples.

One night, a hump in the hospital mattress caused so much pain that Sr. Anitawa asked whether another mattress was available.

“Sister, they’re all the same,” a hospital worker told her.

She considered sleeping on the wooden floor instead.

Sr. Anitawa survived the operation, although she was too weak to travel immediately. She weighed about 100 pounds when she eventually returned to the United States and later underwent chemotherapy.

Cancer returned after she moved to Belleville.

During the second illness, she said, her understanding of her relationship with God changed. She had spent much of her life thinking about what she could do for God and other people. Cancer forced her to consider whether she could accept being loved when she was unable to be productive.

“I felt like I was God’s beloved,” Sr. Anitawa said. “I got to know God. I said, ‘This is what life is all about.’”

She does not know what future medical scans will show. She does know that she does not want to spend the time between them waiting for bad news.

“I don’t think I’m afraid to die now,” Sr. Anitawa said. “I’ve really enjoyed life.”

The next thread

Returning to Southern Illinois after four decades abroad brought its own culture shock. For a time, Sr. Anitawa lived in Waterloo.

The number of choices in American grocery stores overwhelmed her. She had to learn to use GPS and become comfortable with an iPhone. She sometimes felt like a foreigner in the country where she had been born.

She found her footing by returning to what she knew: accompanying people.

She has volunteered with Hospice of Southern Illinois, participated in outreach to immigrant and Latino families and remained involved with the weekly Spanish Mass at the Shrine Church. She has also befriended a young woman with autism, drawing on her years of experience accompanying children and adults with disabilities.

Sr. Anitawa tends to describe these acts as though they barely count. Then she mentions the person she visited, the family she accompanied, the food she delivered or the young woman who needed a friend.

At 80, she speaks of her jubilee less as a personal accomplishment than as gratitude for the people who allowed her to walk beside them.

“All I can give back to God is what God has given to me,” Sr. Anitawa said. “It’s been such a privilege to have been able to minister. I’ve learned so much from walking with the people.”

For a young person considering religious life, she offers no promise of certainty or comfort.

“You have to have a lot of trust in God, courage and a spirit of adventure,” Sr. Anitawa said. “There is so much uncertainty, but if you feel God is calling you, God will give you what it takes.”

The vision board remains on her wall. The rooster is still taking shape on the loom. There is no printed pattern showing her where the next strand should go.

There never has been.

There is only the thread in her hands, the unfinished life before her and the practiced willingness to begin again.