of my broken depression,
given after a long hard slog,
through wild forests, wet jungles and barren deserts,
picking up the scythe again,
hacking and ducking through potential mental mines,
slowly advancing to the green meadows of contentment,
hard earned rest in the sunshine of tomorrow,
but forever mindful of
the moon of yesteryear,
and only later will the
harvest of mind
let you realize what really almost happened.
This post isn’t supporting breaking COVID protocols, please adhere to the rules!
Okay I don’t usually agree with my boyfriend’s Dad, but for this topic I’m seeing things more from his perspective. The topic is getting back to normal safely or as G puts it “why am I continually being punished for being healthy.” He does have point, even though it’s little backwards he being very valid. Aren’t you fed up with “14 days to flatten the curve” that was nearly a freaking year ago! I know that Sam will have different perspective because she like in third or fourth lockdown! If you look a Saskatchewan’s numbers we soared in November/ December which I was looking forward to a lockdown but atlas there was just restrictions which seem to me are doing diddling squat. We have year that none of us can get back and the majority of us are just fed up with the lack acknowledgement that restrictions aren’t working, so why can’t we go back to normal?!
There’s no denying that 2020 sucked, we all missed opportunities, ceremonies, travelling etc. However I’m starting to feel that restrictions that both our federal and provincial government have come up with it’s to help stop the spread of COVID but to restrict us the people! Even when the new restrictions were set in place our number still rose but when business or people broke the rules they got tiny slap on hand. What’s the point of having fines when you aren’t going to act on them!! It’s really whose benefiting from this? If you look at any small business they are literally hanging by a thread and on the brink of foreclosure in a lot cases. It’s hard to fathom that ‘small business joe’ whose following all the rules is on the brink of extinction where as big box store are basically running like business as usual?! How about the homeless who are ready seen a brink of society, how are they managing during this uncertain times, especially when we lockdown where could they reach out then?! Who was there to care for the teachers when they had to set up classrooms to new protocols who encouraged them that it’s okay about teaching during this difficult period. See this living but not really living is getting to us all.
Let’s talk about mental health which is on the rise by the way. Shocking, not really when you consider we have been socially distant meaning to some socially alienated for a year!! Yes, I said alienation because we have lost that sense of community, physical connecting with one another. We are slowly loosing each other because suicide is becoming the big silent killer and we are going to loose a lot more people to this than COVID. Sure there’s zoom, FaceTime, but for a lot of people that’s not really connecting they need physical interaction. Our elderly are suffering, our youth are suffering, so when is enough, enough.
Am not supporting in breaking the rules however I feel that restrictions have to start lifting more, so we can get back to normal. We all have to get back to living normally because we are all being affected and we are slowly turning on each other. So yes as healthy person I feel that I am being punished-punished for trying to live. Cause honestly isn’t that what we are striving for? Perhaps as the vaccines roll out while help us get back to the life we use to know. However, a lot of us won’t see the vaccines because either we aren’t essential or have health problems, so we are still going to feel that we are living insolation.
Yes, our numbers are going down. Hopefully it won’t take another year before we can visit family, friends, etc. Until then it will feel that G and I are being punished for wanting normalcy, we’ll just have to overcome this hurdle by putting one foot in front of the other. Learn to embrace each day for it will all be worth going a very tough year.
I spent the last year of my MA depressed. I didn’t even recognize I was. Hell, most of my friends and family didn’t even notice. Only one person did, and frankly, she is the reason I made it out the other side. Her and her wife would invite (actually, it was more like summoned) me to their Stockholm flat for dinner, a movie and lots of alcohol once a month or so. I forced myself to go (it wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them, rather, I dreaded leaving the house and facing the train and T-Centralen) every time, and every time I was glad in that moment to have gone. But then, I’d have to go home, and I dreaded the journey, the lateness of the hour…once I got home, I was glad to be home but sad to be gone from their company. Rinse and repeat. Those dinners saved me. Literally, they’d be the only human interaction I’d have (not counting grocery clerks who’d never say a word to me) for days, even weeks, at a time.
It was at the end of my MA, and I was house-bound writing up my thesis. At this point, I had started hating Sweden, missing the English language, hating the coldness of Swedes (they are lovely people once you break into their circle, but breaking in is sometimes near damn impossible), over the pack mentality of my cohorts, tired of fighting to finish my thesis (that’s a whole ‘nother story, let me tell you). I was done with it all. So, I holed up in my flat talking to people occasionally on FaceTime and texting just as occasionally. There was sometimes up to three, four, five days when I talked to no one. I had drawn into myself, nursing the dream of when I could move from Sweden, nursing the pale light of finishing my degree. I definitely was not eating healthy; there was a lot of microwave meals and warm-up-on-the-stove soups alongside copious amounts of sugary treats. I spent so much time on writing and editing the thesis, that frankly, was not healthy. Literally eight to ten hours every, single day. I didn’t even take a break on the weekends. I went to bed early (like eight p.m. some nights) because I was tired of the day, I woke up early (6 a.m. to 7 a.m.) ate breakfast as I worked on my thesis and didn’t stop until I went to bed. The perpetual darkness of Sweden in the winter (Uppsala where I lived did have a few hours of light) did not help any.
The whole year felt like it was six years. Although now it’s starting to blur together into a haze of perpetual sadness, longing for home, and listlessness. The only thing I clearly remember from that year (aside from the warmth of my friend) is when I came back to Sweden after Christmas holidays. I didn’t want to go back to Sweden, I wanted to stay with my family. I cried the entirety of the three flights back to Sweden. When I landed on Swedish soil, I remember wanting viscerally to go home, not Sweden, but Canada. I also remember being so much unhappier once I got to Sweden (at home I was actually kind of happy). When I Facetime’d my grandparents for the first time after Christmas, I remember how right after Baba said ‘hello’ I started crying. Not like tears in the eye, but gut-wrenching sobs that came deep from my soul. I cried for like five minutes, and my grandparents were confused, worried and kept asking me what the problem was. I couldn’t tell them, I couldn’t verbalize, all I could do was cry. After a while I stopped crying, and said, I missed them. It wasn’t the whole, but I couldn’t verbalize the whole story. My tongue stopped, my eyes misted up. After I hung up with them, Baba texted my sweet friend of the summoning fame, saying they were really worried about me. Well a little while after that I got a text from her summoning me for dinner with her wife. I went. It saved me.
I finally felt less horrible when I put in my thesis for consideration. Yes, I still was withdrawn from nearly everyone, except one very insistent woman and her wife. Yes, I still hobbit-ed at home. But, I felt hope for the first time in eleven months. Then I did my viva (that was a whole thing) a month or so later, and finally I could move home for a few months before going onto my PhD in Britain (I sorted all that out after I put in my thesis). When I got back to Canada, it was like coming home, breathing again, and finding my way out of those horrible months.
I know that my cohort gave her perspective on the topic of children with post “the kid problem,” well here’s my perspective on the same topic. For my baby dilemma came when I was entering into my thirties and that question came right at me. I was little shocked but my response was quite funny, I was visiting my mom that summer and we went out to eat at a local restaurant. There was a local who was just elated for they were just first time grandparents, well she came over to our table (which was okay because this was long before COVID) showing us pictures of that little darling, then they replied “You know Allison your biological clock is ticking.” I was slightly distracted and replied “ As long as it ticking it doesn’t mean it’s dead.” Up until that point it had never occurred to me that body was somehow a ticking time bomb, or was I even considering motherhood at that time. I was just trying to live life, like most young single people do, then I got worried over something that wasn’t concerning me. Why do we do that? Why is society still so obsessed over motherhood and making it an ordeal for women? Let’s just stop.
Seriously we are living in the 21st century why are we sticking to ancient notions? Haven’t women championed the right to vote, to be allowed the pill, why is motherhood our Achilles heel?! Seriously our society is not going to crumble if some of us choose not to be mother’s! So why the unnecessary pressure on women’s uterus to breed or not. Why as society are we fine with putting that pressure on women? Our femininity shouldn’t be structured on whether or not we want to bear children, adopt, foster a child. We need to stop thinking that a women worth or validation is that of motherhood. We don’t try to make men be accountable on fatherhood to extent as we do women!
There are many reasons for allowing biological clocks to tick. Which is a woman’s right to do. Like my cohort described her issues on whether or not it’s right for her and her partner. Yes, like her I am in a committed relationship, and yes, we have talked about children. No, we are not “trying” for a baby, yes I know am nearing forty, I am fine! We have to also consider health perhaps there is health issues where many women have to suffer in silence, and when you put the pressure of fertility on her fragile state it might be the breaking point. Or maybe like myself, when I was addressed a few years ago, I was living life wasn’t even thinking motherhood because it wasn’t on her horizon. We should all be happy to live our life.
Yes, as a Christian I understand that I should “ Go forth and multiply” However if you were raised like a only child as I was entering a committed relationship is multiplying. So if I somehow get stripped from entering heaven because I didn’t necessarily go forth and multiply then that’s obviously a dilemma for Christ and I to address. However don’t shame a woman of faith because she hasn’t pursued motherhood. Sarah was elderly woman when Christ blessed her with Isaac, Hannah prayed and prayed for years before being blessed with Samuel. God prepares us when he know that we are ready to receive his blessing. Perhaps her blessing is to be Auntie or Sister figure rather than mother. The one thing am going state is she is NOT less in her faith because she hasn’t been blessed with a child!
We are not less of being a woman because we are undecided over motherhood. We not less of a women if we choose to have a career. We are not less of woman because we decide with our partner we don’t want a family. I am not shamming you, if you are a mother, I’m not shamming you if we’re or are teenage mother. What I’m trying to stress is choice! It’s okay if our choice is undecided!! The point I want to stress the most is motherhood should be a wanted affair. It’s not up to us the outsider to decide we should all be supportive on either decision.
that Anglophiles dream of,
with ‘proper’ accents,
Colin Firth,
Jane Austen,
low slung brick cottages in
densely green countrysides,
rolling gentle hills,
half the population of earth’s sheep,
the Sunday roast,
one of the world’s cities,
beautiful rugged coastline,
weather neither warm nor cold,
but with a rain. season,
dog-walking friendships,
football hooligans,
chavs,
an entire pub culture,
Brexit,
racism,
white on white racism
(whatever did the Poles do to you?)
sniffy arrogance towards the world,
shying away from their legacy of colonialism,
their colonialism,
still colonialism,
or at least so says a barbaric Canadian.
One of the most beautiful things about going home was finally being able to deal with the attic. Gotta understand that that attic held treasures that haven’t seen the light of day in 30 years, so it was nice to discover little memento and keepsakes. Most often than not it was just shaking of the head of why did she save that! It did for the most part make the process fun because who knew what was up there.
Cleaning the attic wasn’t an easy task and I knew that going in, but it needed to happen because the house had sold. It wasn’t as much of a rollercoaster as I was expecting, it was more relief. Probably because there wasn’t so much emotional attachment to the stuff as their was downstairs. So the process was actually a lot faster than I expected so it was good that my time wasn’t going to be bogged down with dealing all that stuff.
It’s surprising how much you can pack away and forget you have it until you need to. That was basically how the attic was, it was like treasure cove for hoarders… you gotta understand if I had known how bad it had gotten I would have dealt with it more when I went home in the summers. However I didn’t know and she didn’t say, I couldn’t tell she was hoarding because it was out of sight! If you are fan of hoarders there is a whole world that they don’t want you to know about and for my mom it was the attic!
I’m not ashamed of my moms hoarding for it was her coping mechanism like it is for most hoarders. I wish I saw the sign so I could get the help she needed then maybe the attic wouldn’t have held such junk as it did. However one junk is another’s headache and mine was the upstairs. It dint hurt hauling the stuff to transfer station because it didn’t mean anything to me and I kept as much as I could for family mementos. But it was all the junk for the most part that held her from living her life and for me that was the sad part.
The attic got done but it was no easy feat because there was a lot of memories because upstairs was my play room. However it became her hiding whole of what junk meant something to her. Having a hoarder is not bad they are crying out for help but you have to understand that cry, I unfortunately didn’t understand her cry for help. Therefore I had to deal with an attic of crap. It was fun, frustrating but am so thankful that it’s over.
for several years,
a north-erly land,
filled with Vikings,
tall lean Nordic people,
lilting accents in English,
a land filled with towering trees, probably years and years old,
filled with water in the south,
archipelagos stretching, stretching many islands
connecting to a sweet-icing city of pinks, oranges, blues
fading into elegant buildings shining in the sun,
a bustling place,
full of people going places,
even the young ‘uns,
full of fika, good cheese, bakery items, liquorice, lingenberry, warm beer,
outside patios,
a lovely place,
that is hard for outsiders too penetrate,
nice but not overtly welcoming into friend groups,
a place pretending utopia,
but careful to avoid critique,
a place of laggom but nothing else,
a place that is hard for the
daughter of the prairies to touch.
This February marked the 80th birthday for Buffy Sainte-Marie. She is well known for her her protest songs and her social activism. She is a badass woman and I say that with the deepest respect. How many more indigenous badass women are there? They are there because like Buffy they have been social in their activism, so I know they are not silent. The mistake I feel is that we’re are not learning about them in our Canadian education etc. Which is unfortunate because 13 years ago there was a call for reconciliation, which was about establishing and maintaining mutual respect relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people of Canada. So if we want to continue on this road of reconciliation and understanding we need to learn who these women are. So that their stories and learn from the past to make the future for our children a better place.
Just because reconciliation got dissolved in 2015 doesn’t mean that we cannot still strive towards healing. The ugly past of residential schools, the 1960’s scoop, broken treaties etc that will always haunt Canadian history which it should. However even though that’s our dark past we can always strive for better by acknowledging it but learn who these badass women and men are because their fight should be our fight. If we want to make Canada great we need to listen to our indigenous people because the respect has to be given in order to move forward. Buffy has been a beautiful blend for this country but she is definitely not the only one voicing out their concern. How many women can you name? See we need to change that narrative because they are out there because if Canada is a place for all people we need to acknowledge ALL people. The reconciliation can not be a one sided affair but a joint effort.
So thank you Buffy for being that person that we can look up too and to those indigenous women may we soon learn who you are that your voices won’t go unheard. Just because Prime Minister Harper apologized back in the summer of 2008 doesn’t mean that apology landed on deaf ears, if you are a young person reading this be the change you need to be in this world. So that mutual respect that was forage years ago can continue make this world a better place. Learn from our broken past and help with the future a future for all people.
An annoying (at least I find it) trend in writing women is the trope of ‘not like other girls.’
Often characterized by a girl/woman who eschews all the ‘traditional’ tropes of femininity to adopt the traits of ‘coolness’ that would make a man like the woman more. These are the women who either dress completely dowdy (but not really fashionably) or silkily sexy with long legs and half-undressed buxom. These women, for the most part, can’t get along with other women, or when they do the relationships seem shallow, bitchy and have a lot of mean one-liners. And if by chance, they do have a good relationship with a women, god-darn-it they don’t listen to advice or even accept interventions; it’s a friendship on a one-tonal avenue with no growth, calling-out or even closeness. Even more irritating to me is that ‘not like other girls’ are also wounded or strong-but-brittle. You probably know the fictional women I’m talking about, there are plenty of examples out in the fictional world. There is the detective (either private or police) whose career is stunted/re-starting because of a major incident, but she also drinks beer out of the bottle, can fix her own car, a sharpshooter. There is the heroine who is floundering in life (dang-it she just can’t be pleasant and frilly-feminine) but she is tapped for saving the world because of some hidden (but not for long) aspect of her background (missing dad/relative, criminal past, rape etc.). There are other iterations of the same trope, but I think you get what I mean: a (sometimes unlikeable) woman that seems one-dimensional. Sigh, many authors (and not only men, alas) seem to believe that it would make the woman more interesting, less ‘cookie cutter,’ essentially worthy of making them a protagonist.
Why does a woman need to be less traditionally feminine, strong but about to break apart at any moment to be worthy of telling their story? Where is the representation of the women who have both traditional characteristics like loving frilly dresses and untraditional characteristics like drinking beer from a bottle? Wheree are all the women who are untraditional but who are bad-ass, strong and not about to fall apart at the slightest provocation because of some past shadow? Why can’t women have a traumatic past, a monumental blunder and not be brittle or turn into an alcoholic? Where is the therapy for these women? Why do they have to be resistant to therapy? Where are the beautiful women friendships? Where is the love for fashionable but not over-the-top sexy dressers? Why are all the cops wearing high heels!
The result of this narrow view of which women are worthy of being a protagonist is a loss of the richness of diversity, an unspoken censoring about other types of women, and teaching their readers unhealthy stereotypes about women.
Thankfully, fictional women are starting to become more diverse, but alas they often stay in their little genre niches.
All is still tonight, there is no sound nor forwarding glances. Just a stillness nothing can be aware of her presence nor her departure. The trees want to sway with her and spirit but though she is free, they cannot move. She moves along. Quiet is the pond with nothing moving except for breaths that are silent, she can move quickly with her steps and not make a sound.
The world is hush now, her hand glazes by animals it shivers as she touches it. Scared to move but she must and leaves don’t crunch under her feet. While she is here time and space move to her rhythm because she brings what few has and what few want to have. She turns and smiles and like that she is gone and the earth can move again.
Until the stillness comes present again, we will morn that she is gone, the calming of storm she dances alone in the moonlight with the stars as her friends.
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