5296 and counting

It was so much easier when the number was 215, it was sad but manageable number. However since the Kamloops Indian Residential School was chosen for search for unmarked graves because a rib bone and tooth had previously been found in the area. It came conscious of our Canadian history where there was effort to erase Indigenous culture and forcibly assimilate Indigenous, Métis and Inuit children. Ever since they have found forensic evidence many have called for decolonization but what does that mean for Canada? It comes up when discussing the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in regards to the call of truth and reconciliation. If we as Canadians want to reconcile with our horrible past we must acknowledge what has happened to our indigenous peoples. We must read the truth and reconciliation act which has approximately 94 calls to action, the Missing and Murder Indigenous Women and Girls which has also roughly 231 calls to action. Also need to look and under the U.N.D.R.I.P which is the undeclaration on the rights on the Indigenous people’s outlined the minimum standards of survival, dignity, well beings of Indigenous people of the world. So we can familiarize ourselves with their plight. We can then push our elected officials to do more at both level of government ( Federal and Provincial). We can also ask that both Catholic and Protestant churches acknowledge their involvement with residential schools and ask for apologies for indigenous people. As well from the British Crown to acknowledge their undermining work of placing up these schools throughout Canada and ask for apology from the Queen on this regard as well.

Is apologizing the antidote not most likely but it’s a start in the acknowledgment of our dark past. residential schools started in 1880’s and the last one didn’t close down until 1996! That roughly 150,000 children who were mistreated, degraded, and abused for being who they are. That has effected 7 generations of indigenous people over 150 years! An apology from the churches would be huge step towards peace. If Pope Francis won’t apologize then it should come Canada’s archbishop Thomas Christopher Collins. I’m not asking for the Prime Minister of Canada to apologize simply for the fact that back in June of 2008 former Prime Minister Stephen Harper did that, however I believe that prime minister Trudeau should push for apologies from respect other parties who had involvement with this. Along with seeking to answer the calls of action that our First Nations People are asking for. If we want better Canada and better relationship with both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people action need to start now!

It was a little easier when the number was 215 but since starting the post the number currently rose to 6509 and counting! That means we have 6509 voices that need to be heard and acknowledged. So that they can pass over into the next life with peace that they deserve. This has given us 6509 reasons to demand more action from our government to do more for Indigenous, Métis and Inuit People. Also given us more reason to learn from our past and heal as a nation, so that we can move forward with understanding and commitment to do better. This isn’t going be fixed overnight or even in a year but if we don’t start doing more our relationship might not be able to repair itself and who knows what that may lead to.

The Texas Abortion Ban & Report Line: A Response

I’m not American or Texan but what is happening recently in Texas is so outrageous that internet yelling has attracted my attention. You may or may not know but Texas recently banned abortions, even for those pregnancies resulting from sexual assault or incest, and at the same time they have instituted a phone line where people can report women, they know who are thinking about getting an abortion. 

Holy hell, it’s gets me so angry on behalf of the Texan women who are going to suffer from this. 

See, this abortion ban is not about the babies lives they are saying. If it was, we’d be talking about the circumstances that led to women wanting abortions like poverty, sexual assault, sexual education and so on. But, of course, it’s not about anything like that so we are not having any of these conversations on a governmental level. Rather, it is about power over women’s bodies, about punishing us for having the ability to procreate, about putting us in our “proper places.” 

For too long (and way to much of the twentieth century) women were deemed to not know anything about our bodies, to not be able to judge correctly whether or not we know if bringing a child into the world is the right thing for us at that moment, for being too stupid to know the ramifications for getting an abortion,  for being insane or crazy or cuckoo if we step out of the social line and declare something different than what is accepted about our bodies. We have been silenced and disregarded about our bodies and at the same time our own power is thrown out for too long. 

And now, when finally we make some progress where abortion is starting to be more widely accepted in the world—or at least the right for women to make their own choices about it—there are pockets that are taking a giant step backwards. 

None of these women in Texas will be protected by the abortion ban. Desperate women will do back-alley abortions…and potentially die. Women who need a medically necessary abortion could die or their baby could die or end up forever disabled or or or. Women who do not have the capacity to take care of themselves will be stuck with a baby who may not get the proper care or love. Teenage women will be stuck paying for the decision two people made. And it goes on in the various ways that women will continue to pay for the abortion ban with their lives, quality of what life they live, and their babies will also pay. Some babies will be born to women who can’t love them, or born with disabilities that cause resentment or extreme hardship that breaks down a family, or or or. 

Furthermore, this hideousness doesn’t stop. Texas even instituted a call line to report women who are even just thinking about getting an abortion. This is beyond the pale, even for people who are already beyond it. These women not just have to live with the option of abortion being yanked from them, now they can’t even utter the thought about wanting to have an abortion in fear that this police state will find out and punish them. It’s about getting these women to fall into line both in action and in thoughts. It’s about stripping them even of the privacy of freaking out about their situation and trying to figure out what to do (something that is human and totally understandable). It’s about saying women are mentally deficient and can’t even think the “right” way. It’s about women having to live to a very small “acceptable” role and if they decide it’s not for them to punish them. It’s about ripping apart family and friends (would you talk ever again to someone who did that to you?). It’s about stripping women of normal human emotions because damnit, when you find our your pregnant it’s not always “yippee!!” 

Ultimately what Texas is doing is making women as secondary to men (you know, since they are largely in the government that made this decision). 

dear postcard: a poem

Jane doe

11512 remote ave sw

anywhere, world

12J F8JF

dear Jane,

what do you think of the picture on the other side?

I think you’ll like the quirkiness of a popular spot we went to interposed with a joke.

I know you’ll probably never go there,

but I wanted to share a bit of it with you, my dear friend,

with love and jokes,

John Doe.

Strength the unimaginable burden I didn’t want

A friend the other day posted this on her Facebook page and I couldn’t resonate with her more. “ I dream of never being called resilient again in my life. I’m exhausted by strength. I want support. I want softness. I want ease. I want to be among kin. Not patted on the back for how well I take a hit. Or for how many.” For me strength is the burden I never wanted to bear but I have. It’s the journey I never wanted to go on. Being strong is something I didn’t want but because of situations and circumstances that I could not control in my life, strength became my weapon and and my shield until that armoury cut me like a knife. Do not allow my past define me or what I had to endure that’s the old me did what she had to do to survive! Strength was my survival mode and weapon until I didn’t know how navigate without it.

Probably the second most disliked phrase I detest is “you are so strong for going through what you are.” I shouldn’t have to feel strong all the time, I shouldn’t have to feel that strength is my only option or concern. I should be allowed to feel weak, saddened, overwhelmed those are not wrong! However being made to feel strong and resilient all time put weight on you like you don’t understand. I’m not saying that being strong or resilient is wrong but it shouldn’t define how I persevered through situations because mostly I didn’t have choice or didn’t realize I did. Strength was the unimaginable burden I didn’t realize I was carrying around until I was told to put my armour down! I became blinded to the fact I had armed myself with it until someone told me to unload and I felt the weight being lifted off my shoulders, the weight I got accustomed to.

My walk in this life hasn’t always been easy but I wish, just wish that someone…anyone would have said “ you are doing so well navigating a hard situation.” Which is a mantra my friend has taken accustom to saying because you don’t get the physically and mentality that someone goes through. She is right we are superheroes, everyone who everyday manages to put one foot in front of another. The person who attempts to overcome their situation or circumstances daily, is a superhero. Do not define us by the survival mode and shield we equipped for we are much more than that! I didn’t want to be on all the time for just once I would have like to be known it’s okay to shut down that it’s fine choice too. I have navigated my journey the best way I knew how and I know much more now how to better handle things. Strength isn’t a curse until you are made to feel like it was only option, there is beauty in strength but not always.

The Problem with Westerners Response to the Taliban’s Takeover of Kabul

I, like probably a lot of you, have been watching on the news the situation over in Afghanistan. Western news and people in the west have been talking about this pretty much non-stop. However, I have a slight problem with how they are framing this and the narrative that they are concerned with. 

It sums up to this: western imperialists. 

First off, Afghanistan is its own country with its own government with its own culture and popular expectations. Second, the U.S. and its associated people (U.K., and Canada etc.) promised to leave back in 2011. Third, the Taliban has been slowly re-gaining whatever lands and people they lost in the last five years. Fourth, the U.S. and other countries have aided in creating terrorists (by saying that so-and-so is a terrorist when they aren’t and then radicalizing them into becoming one and the like). Fifth, the people left behind in Afghanistan—especially those with will be considered ‘traitors’ because they helped the U.S. and associated armies—need aid in being spirited to safety (if they so wish). 

With these points in mind, it is infuriating to listen to fellow westerners go on like how it is the most surprising thing ever that the Taliban has taken over and that the invading armies have departed right quickly. It’s further infuriating to listen to these cockwombles go on about how and when their respective countries should have left Kabul…especially when they are the exact same people who have been demanding for ages that we leave Afghanistan altogether! It’s also infuriating to listen to these moving m0uths about how their countries should have stopped it from happening…with I guess some magic wand that works in a foreign country. I mean, I guess they are asking for military action…when for the last ten years they’ve been at their government’s throats for having military in Afghanistan! It’s infuriating that we are barely talking about refugees and helping others gain freedom and at the same time we all refuse to harbour these refugees and other immigrants. 

Frankly, all these words are focussed on westerners and western countries and our sensibilities. No one that is loudly talking is concerned with the very people of Afghanistan. All everyone wants to do is talk about their ideas of what we should do, not talk, and find out what Afghani’s of all stripes need. All everyone wants to do is press how our ideas and sensibilities are right and everyone (read: not heterosexual white westerners) else’s is wrong. All everyone wants to do is yell into the ether showing woke performativism while not caring about the actual people on the ground. All of this originates in our belief—not usually conscious—that west is best, west is superior, west is the imperialistic masters of the rest of the world. But the thing is we are not. Afghanistan is a separate country undergoing convulsions of change, and what we should be doing is asking those on the ground—the Afghani’s themselves—what we as an international community can do to help and then bloody do it. We shouldn’t be yelling about Afghanistan when it’s really all about us; we shouldn’t be criticizing our governments for doing something our governments shouldn’t and can’t do; we shouldn’t be ignoring the cries of people who want, who need to get out; we shouldn’t be pressing our ideas of what is right and what is the perfect idea of government on another country and their culture; we shouldn’t ignore the history that is behind what is happening there; we shouldn’t ignore our role in it. For while we are too concerned with ourselves and our stories pertaining to Afghanistan, untold amounts of people are living their nightmares without a specter of aid. 

Finally! A 15 month journey to employment

Finally after about 15 months I’ve found employment. Finally the weight of unemployment has been lifted off my shoulders. It has not been a easy process and it’s a road I do not want to travel again. However the roughest part was actually going on unemployment. Popular to the belief not All of us want assistance. It was the most gut-wrenching thing that I had to do. Why? Because even though my mother struggled at the best of times in raising me she never used assistance as a crutch and that’s what others made me feel. Like I wanted use the system, I think not! Filing for unemployment benefits felt like a kick in the teeth but I had coasted so long on my savings that it was basically spent so I had no other alternative. I had to continually remind myself that it’s temporary and only until I find work, not my new way of getting income. So not only did I have to overcome the trials of unemployment, I also at times had to overcome the prejudice of misunderstanding of needing assistance and not having that define who I am.

This has been a long journey to employment. Especially during the pandemic where you’re competing against thousand others because during this time many found they were in need of a change. It was like entering a unknown battleground and not knowing the outcome. Finding a job is difficult at the earliest of times but add on this pandemic it’s made more tough as companies had to reimagine their hiring process. So it is hasn’t been business as usual when going for interviews etc. Did I get frustrated and doubt myself absolutely I did. Sometimes I wonder if my resume was up to pare or if years of retail had warp me in the hiring process, doubt was always there. The uncertainty started to get to my self esteem and conscious and there was many times I would take a loss out on myself both mentally and physically. I also had to get other people’s negative opinions out of my head which was a lot harder when you feel down on your luck. Some of it was constructive criticism which is true for the most part but sometimes I internalize the information instead. So I also had to remember is that constructive criticism wasn’t harmful criticism!

Another thing I had to overcome and probably benefit me in the long run was coming back from burnout. That self care and taking time for self was essential for me to be a good employee. I had allowed my other job define my social life by almost making it non existent! They wanted me to work overtime, I did. They wanted to change schedule half way through, I allowed it. Not sure of my task at hand because I wasn’t necessary trained for, I did the work. But not always allowing myself to break away, not allowing relaxation to come and always saying yes. Wasn’t me being a good employee it was me losing myself in my job which in the long run wouldn’t care about me! That hit me like a brick wall, I was giving up my time for what?! Being constantly stressed, worried to say no I have plans…a life, being available is fine but don’t let mess with your social and personal life as I did. Learning to let go of that control would be the self care I needed. For I didn’t need the sense of failure and doubt when given a task I didn’t understand, feeling of trapped..man they got me good on that one, if I didn’t work the overtime what about my rent/ bills!! I was feeling a loss of motivation even hanging with friends didn’t bring me joy as it should. the list goes on the trouble was I was overly stressed and didn’t understand why, sad and pathetic isn’t it. That I didn’t get that it was my job making me less than myself until the day I quit. When I was able to acknowledge and address the signs, if I jumped into another job just like that I still wouldn’t be a good employee because I had all mentally going on. However it has been a while, I’ve learned to say no again, to relax, how important me time and now I can be a good employee again because I overcome what had burden me down.

This has been a long journey to employment a lot longer than I anticipated for but I have found work again. I am thankful for the unemployment assistance program and that not everyone on that is using it as a crutch so please be nice to those who are. This set back did not define who I was but going through it has made me wiser about many things but also allowed me to grow as a person. I started to learn things but also to let go but mostly I learned to trust the process. Unemployment sucks the journey did at times take a toll on me but am thankful to overcome it and move on.