Kristin Craig Lai - Life coach for queer parents

Talking about the man woman thing

2012-02-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

As of December 28th I have become the proud mom to a mind bogglingly awesome 5-year-old. One of the things I’ve noticed lately is that it’s easier to discuss difficult topics with her. I listen to a lot of CBC (Canada’s public radio) and as a result I find myself often trying to answer the question, “What are they talking about?” Sometimes it’s easier than others.

Recently various CBC shows and news reports have lead to discussions about gender stereotypes. I believe it started when she heard me muttering expletives under my breath at a show dedicated to the “hardwired” differences between how men and women shop. Not having been exposed to much TV or mass media Mae had so far been blissfully unaware of prevailing attitudes about boys and girls. So when she asked me why I changed the station I decided to buckle down and explain it before she got it from somewhere else.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Well some people think that men and women or girls and boys are different from each other, like they like different things and they’re good at different things but that’s just silly because boys can like anything and girls can like anything.

Mae: That is silly.

Me: For example, some people think that only boys like to build with blocks.

Mae: (jaw drops) But I like to build with blocks, that’s just silly.

Me: I know, and some people think that boys don’t like to do crafts!

Mae: Whaaat?! That’s silly, everyone likes crafts.

And so on and so on.

Well now Mae is fascinated. She keeps asking to talk about “the man woman thing” and is constantly amazed by how silly it is that people think they know about a person just because of their gender.

More recently there has been a high profile trial of a father who, along with his son and his wife, was just convicted of deliberately murdering his daughters and his first wife for bringing dishonour to the family. After watching me turn down the volume or change the channel a dozen times Mae started asking why, so once again I sat down to have a talk with her. I told her that some men think that they should be able to control the women and girls in their life and that in this case a father did a very bad thing and killed his wife and daughters because they wouldn’t do what he wanted. I told her that a long time ago there were a lot of things that women weren’t allowed to do, like vote or go to medical school and that in some places this was still true. She listened and responded with the usual incredulity and with every word I said felt like I was being punched in the gut. I don’t want her know about violence against women, I don’t want to bring this darkness into her world. But I also know that these are realities that she’s going to have understand and that part of my job is to prepare her for the scary stuff before she gets blindsided by it. So when she asks me a question I try to find the best way to answer her honestly in a setting where we have the time to sit together and really talk. And if it gets too intense or confusing for her she just says, “let’s talk about feathers.” Why feathers you ask? Because they’re light of course.

Dan talks to DJ around 10:20

So what about you, how do you broach the tough stuff with your kids?

A father is as a father does

2012-01-31T11:58:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I was in a local bake shop when a man in his sixties came in to buy cupcakes to take home to his wife and daughters. I stood there watching him carefully select flavours with each person in mind and I found myself envisioning the return of this father bearing sweet treats for his daughters and the tears started to push at the back of my eyes. This happens every once in a while. Some witnessed father-daughter moment brings my grief over losing my own father into sharp relief and leaves me fighting to maintain my composure. For a long time I’ve felt two distinct kinds of grief: the loss of my father and the loss of a father. I find myself crying, not because he is not in my life but because I don’t know what having a dad feels like.

Recently I’ve started to question this. What defines a father? What makes that relationship unique? And what is it that I think I’m missing? Would I feel this way if I’d had two moms and no dad? In asking these questions I’ve realized that this thing over which I feel so much loss is based on some conventional North American image of “father” that I’ve been fed through thousands of hours of television and films. I have no way of knowing to what extent my father would have even fit within those parameters. So what is it that I think I’m missing? Do I think that there is some innate need for this very specific notion of fathering? No. My mother is nothing like the conventional image of “mother”, does that mean that I don’t know what it feels like to have a mother? No, it means that I have no idea what it feels like to have that kind of mother, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So many of our sorrows are based on the meanings we attach to things. I find that in the absence of my own father – or any sense of having truly known him – I have constructed meaning around some abstract concept of father and attached undue meaning to it. It is no different from the sorrow I felt at not having a constant and cohesive “gang” a la Saved By the Bell throughout high school. As a child and a preteen I developed a particular vision of what adolescence was meant to look like, when mine came nowhere near it I felt duped and miserable. There were a lot of real struggles in my high school years, but not having Tootie, Blair and the gang to hang out with was not one of them.

This realization only reinforces my decision to limit Mae’s exposure to TV. I know first hand how deeply a child can internalize these normalized representations of life – and how it hurts when you feel your own life doesn’t measure up.

On the weekend I was visiting my parents and my step-father and I got into one of our predictable fights. They always start in more or less the same way and they always take the same trajectory. It’s a repeating pattern that we both recognize and yet can’t seem to cut out. In the aftermath of this particular spat – as I was crying to my mother – I had an epiphany, I shook my head and I said to her, “And I say I don’t know what it’s like to have a father.”

So maybe my relationship with him doesn’t look like any father-daughter relationship I’ve seen, but it’s not because he’s not my dad, it’s because he’s not like anyone else I’ve ever known. Rest assured, if he were my bio-dad I would still have no idea what it’s like to have a sit-com dad, Cliff Huxtable he is not. What I do know is that he loves me deeply and cares deeply about my happiness and well-being. I know that we’ve been having what feels like the same fight for the last twenty years and yet we somehow can’t seem to stop. I know that if I go into his office to ask a question about the weather I could easily wind up in there for two hours talking about everything from politics to depression to my daughters latest chuckle inducing antics. I know that I can always depend on him and that he truly respects and loves me for who I am. As far as I can tell, that’s all anyone can ask of a parent, sweater vests be damned.

Lost: thousands of brain cells - last seen about 11 years ago

2012-01-11T11:05:00.000-05:00

For those of you still interested in my blog I’m sorry that I’ve been a very bad blogger for the past several months. I’m trying to get back on it but I can’t make any promises since I’ve had to cut down to only two days of childcare a week. I long for September when she starts grade one and I get five blessed days a week to work for free. That being said, it will be sad when she doesn’t get to spend all this time with her beloved babysitter every week.

So why have I been MIA? I’ve been taking a break from work for the last months or so. Before that I was starting to unravel a little, all of those old demons cropping up and whispering in my ear again. It’s incredibly humbling for me to realize just how messed up my brain chemistry is. I increased my dose – back to pre-weaning levels – and took some time to focus on my kid and Holiday preparations. Now, a month later, I feel like myself again. Things have shifted back into perspective and I feel like maybe I can focus on work again.

As I think about my work and what I want to accomplish I sometimes feel like the ideas and inspiration are tumbling down on my like a waterfall but all I have is a teacup to catch them and make them happen. I now have two 6 hour days a week in which to work on writing my booklet/paper/whatever-the-hell-I-decide-it-is-when-it’s-done, develop a presentation based on said thingamabob, create a group coaching program, find a way to fill that program, keep up with both of my blogs, keep up with Twitter, possibly create and promote an online hub for queer and gender neutral parenting…..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sorry, did I pass out on the keyboard there?

Also, if anyone has found my mental focus, please give it back. I think I may have left it in on the second floor of the University Centre in Guelph in 2001.

And this is how I spent my holidays

How Jack Black (almost) ruined my kid’s birthday

2011-12-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Mae loves the Muppets. I have the Muppets CD and one season of the show on DVD so she knows a bunch of the songs but mostly she loves them because of their Bohemian Rhapsody video on Youtube. Animal, of course, is her favourite. So it was a no-brainer that we would take her to the new Muppet Movie. The plan was that we would take her on her birthday, which is smack between Christmas and New Years, and thus a pain in the ass to make special. But then last weekend she went to a schoolmate’s birthday party at the Cineplex. The movie was going to be Happy Feet 2 and I had no desire to endure it so I decided it was Howard’s turn to take her to the party while I stayed home and cleaned house for the next day’s family dinner.

At about 3:30 I got a call from Howard, “The theatre changed the movie and now their going to see the Muppet Movie. If I leave right now I can come and get you since I know you want to see it.” Obviously I dropped everything and waited eagerly by the door to get whisked to the theatre to enjoy this gem with my family and a bunch of six-year-olds, if you think I’m being sarcastic you grossly underestimate my love of all things Henson.

Before you take your small child to this movie, especially if yours is sensitive like mine, remember that this is not targeted specifically at kids and so the trailers are slightly terrifying – also, they’re very very loud. Mae spent the coming attractions with her hands clamped over her earmuffs and her face buried in my arm. Suffice it to say that by the time the movie started she was already off to a bad start.

What I had neglected to tell Mae was that Muppet movies are not just a long version of the show. She was not expecting real people and she was not expecting any long form narrative structure. I spent the first thirty minutes of the film repeatedly answering the question “Is this really the muppet movie??” One time even when Kermit was staring her in the face.

Around the thirty-minute mark we reached Jack Black’s cameo [spoiler alert]. Having weathered a rather large explosion set by Gonzo (“mommy why did they blow that up?”) Mae was keeping the faith that this was, in fact, the Muppet movie when Jack Black cold cocked Jason Segal. This was immediately followed by a wail of terror and sorrow and sobbing demands of “I want to gooooo!” Not watching TV, Mae has had very little exposure to violence. What little she has seen has involved puppets and cartoons. This sudden act of violence of one real person against another was terrifying and incredibly upsetting for her. I spent the next half hour consoling her in the lobby of the theatre.

As I sat there rocking her and watching her tear damp face paint smear all over my chest I looked at Howard and said, “Well thank God we didn’t do this on her birthday!”

And this is why I don’t understand why sex is censored so much more heavily than violence. A sex scene I can explain to my kid. It might be uncomfortable but it is a natural and healthy part of human existence. But this? How do I explain to my kid that sometimes it’s funny when people hurt each other? Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally going to go see it on my own but I truly wish someone would explain to me why we seem to be so much more comfortable exposing our kids to violence than to sex. To the people at the movie theatre I ask, what on Earth makes you think that the Muppet Movie is a logical substitution for a bunch of five and six-year-olds expecting to see a cartoon about dancing penguins?

In the mean-time what the hell are we going to do on her birthday now?

Peeks out from under rock

2011-11-14T14:57:00.000-05:00

So, yeah. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve posted. Rest assured I have been using my limited time resources on a different kind of writing project. For the last several weeks I have been holed up in my office (yay for having my very own home office!) researching gender as it relates to children and parenting. The end result of all of this database spelunking and long hours curled up on the couch with a high-lighter will be an….e-book? Article? Essay? On the why’s and wherefores (not to mention the hows) of gender neutral/gender diverse parenting. It might be a long slog as I’m following multiple trails of research with each article directing me to another five that I absolutely must read. In the mean time, I’ll try to get to some blogging on the weekends or in the evenings, wish me luck!

And now, gratuitous cuteness in the form of Mae as “Super Dark” her self-created superhero:

Pierced ears and pink nails not required

2011-10-18T15:04:00.001-04:00

I don’t know if you follow Jennifer Carr’s blog, Today you are you but you should. She is the loving mother of a little girl who lived her first four years as a boy until she told her parents one day that she was a girl inside. Since then Jennifer has written the much lauded children’s book “Be you who are”, launched her blog and, most recently, launched the website Gender Conversations as a place for people to openly and respectfully talk about gender identity and expression.

Today on Gender Conversations Jennifer re-posted from the archives of her home blog her thoughts about someone asking if she was going to pierce her six-year-old’s ears.

My knee jerk reaction was that this person thought that getting earrings could help my daughter “pass”. Then I considered that perhaps they thought I had fewer parental restrictions, like “she accepts her child is trans but can’t let her have holes in her ears?” type of thing. Or maybe they were just making conversation?

My first thought upon reading this was that this is the kind of question so often asked of the parents of girls. All children are expected to behave certain ways and like certain things based on their gender. We try to put them into these neat little boxes, not allowing them to explore the beautiful messiness of the in between spaces. It has always stunned me the degree to which so many people are entrenched in their assumptions about boys and girls. I have never fit into what a girl “should” be but I have also always felt very at home in my female body. One need only to rub shoulders with some butch dykes to understand that gender identity and gender expression are two very distinct things.

So when someone asks Jennifer about piercing her daughter’s ears she hears that in the context of her daughter’s gender non-conformity, the kind of gender policing with which she is most familiar. If someone asked me that, I would hear it as an expression of someone’s assumption that all little girls are into jewellery and adornment. I would ask myself, “Would they ask that if she were a boy?”

So often when we hear about gender non-conforming kids we hear about children who were born with the body of a boy but have declared a love of pretty dresses and sparkly shoes. Does this mean that the child is really a girl? Not necessarily, I know at least one mother with a son who loves to wear pretty pink dresses but has expressed no interest in being a girl. On the other hand, is it necessary to love pretty pink things to be a girl? Certainly not, but our notions of what a girl is make us blind to the complexities of gender. It would never occur to us to think that a little boy who wears pants and loves soccer is truly a girl.

Gender is not one thing. It is multifaceted and complicated and sometimes messy. Just because one identifies as a boy (gender identity) doesn’t mean that one will present in traditionally masculine ways (gender expression) or subscribe to expectations of how a boy should behave (gender role). With young children we tend to lean much more heavily on external, superficial cues. We put the girls in pink and the boys in blue; give the girls dolls and the boys trucks. This not only serves to reinforce the primacy of gender in how they understand the world, it also serves to conflate the various elements of gender.

Just because a natal boy “feels like a girl inside” doesn’t mean that she has to be a “princess boy”. And just because a girl was not born with a girl’s body does not mean that she’s any less vulnerable to the perils of being raised in the tiny little box of girlhood.

So here’s where I take what my seem like a leap – but trust me, it isn’t. Violence against women – and this includes sexual violence – is the ugliest side of a society defined by an imbalance of power between women and men. It is a many sided beast and one of the sides that we are so reluctant to question is the way in which we raise our children. From infancy we teach them that gender is the most important element of their identity. We then proceed to teach them that there is a right way and a wrong way to be a boy or a girl. Girls should be pretty, attractive, nice, friendly, accommodating, nurturing, peacemakers. Boys should be strong, active, competitive, adventurous, bold, aggressive, risk-takers. And then there’s the other messaging to which we, as a society, refuse to own up: girls should be sexy – but not too sexy, available – but not too available, and focused on the needs of others, particularly male others.

What we don’t want to see when we look at these little princesses is that we are also making them that much more vulnerable to abuse. We teach them how to give boys what they want, but we don’t teach them how to know what they want. We teach them to be nice and friendly but we don’t teach them how to say “back the hell off”. We teach them to take care of others, but we don’t teach them how to take care of themselves. We teach them that they need a man, any man, to make them complete. After all, what would Snow White be without her prince?

So what about the princess boys?

Trans women are significantly more likely to be the victims of violence, sexual and otherwise, than cis-women. And yet we tell trans women and girls that in order to “pass” they must subscribe to all of the most harmful assumptions about what it means to be a woman. We owe it to all of our children, especially those who don’t fit in the boxes, to raise them with the whole range of options of how to be. Not how to be a boy or how to be a girl, but how to be whole.

When people in the mainstream media talk about gender neutral parenting they treat it either with condescending disdain or outright contempt, more often than not it’s some combination of the two. From [http://equalitymatters.org/blog/201109260010]Fox News hauling out their hack shrink to the [http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Baby+Storm+mother+speaks+gender+parenting+media/4857577/story.html]gross misrepresentations of Kathy Wittericks’ words and actions, the media loves to dismiss gender neutral parenting as some kind of misguided, 1970’s holdover doomed to failure. But there is nothing fatuous about the decision to eschew the gendering of childhood. When I get upset about princess worship or 5-year-olds in bikinis it is not because I hate all things femme. It is because I see the big picture. I know what it means to take abuse from boys because you don’t think you’re allowed to speak up. For many girls the message is that you must “go along to get along”, whether this means accepting sexual harassment, remaining silent when another girl is being victimized or staying with an abusive boyfriend, the outcome is the same. We are raising our girls to be broken.

What I want to see is all girls, cis and trans, raised to know the breadth of options available to them without the pressure to go one way or the other. Regardless of whether a girl’s gender identity aligns with her body at birth, she needs to know that her gender is not dependent on her fitting into that tiny pink box.

Come out come out wherever you are...

2011-10-11T13:29:00.000-04:00

So today is National Coming Out Day, and it’s got me thinking about coming out stories. Mine is not even worth telling, the responses I got were along the lines of a mild shrug. It was so underwhelming, in fact, that I forgot to come out to my step-father. One day in the car I made a passing reference, which led to an exchange something like this:

Him: “You’re bi?”
Me: “You knew that.”
Him: “No I didn’t, you never told me.”
Me: “Yes I did.”
Him: “No you didn’t.”
Me: “I’m sure I did, I must have…didn’t I?”
Him: “you definitely did not.”
Me: “Huh…well, I’m bi.”

Needless to say I didn’t have the kind of parents you worry too much about. Plus, of course, there was the fact that my sister was already out to them. My friends weren’t an issue, since my best friend was gay and I hung out with a bunch of lefty freaks. No, my coming out story was decidedly uninteresting.

My friends, on the other hand, not so much.

My best friend in high-school came out with a bang. In a small town of 6,500 he decided to save time by making a shirt that said, “Here stands a queer” AND writing “fag” on the ass of his jean shorts. Did I mention it was 1990? To this day I still don’t know how he escaped being full-on bashed. That’s not to say things were easy for him. When he came out to his guidance counselor he was advised to drop-out of school, not long after he did just that.

One year, and several live-in boyfriends later, we were sharing an apartment in St. C_ with his boyfriend. We went for a visit to the old stomping grounds and went to a dance where we boldly slow danced in same-sex pairs, the entire dance floor cleared as people stared at us in stunned silence. The rest of the night was spent rounding up a cadre of mullet headed bouncers to escort us safely from the dance.

When we got back to his mom’s house and he excitedly said to her, “Mom, you won’t believe it we danced!” she replied hopefully, “Wow that’s great, you danced with a girl?”

His face dropped and he said, “No with each other, me and my boyfriend.”
“Oh” she said, “I thought you meant with a girl.”

It was heartbreaking. For a split second we thought that finally she’d come around, finally he’d be able to share his life and his joys with her. To see his eyes light up when she first sounded so happy, and then to see them go so dark when she showed her disappointment, heartbreaking.

I’ve had friends kicked out of the house, beaten up by their fathers, and made to feel invisible. Some dropped out of school, some turned to prostitution, some spent too much time in emotionally, and sometimes physically, abusive relationships.

All because people assumed that they were something that they weren’t.
All because people didn’t give them the freedom and space to beand know who they were without fear.
All because people were threatened by the truth of who they really were.

Coming out shouldn’t be hard, it shouldn’t be dangerous, it shouldn’t be necessary.

In celebration of National Coming Out Day, I invite you to raise your kids so that they never have to come out, because they have the freedom to know and be who they are from the beginning. And because they know in their hearts and their minds that you will always love all of who they are.

More equal than thou (or why do we let Catholic school boards hold all the cards?)

2011-09-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

So there’s a provincial election coming up and one of the issues I don’t expect any of the parties to address is the ongoing refusal of the publicly funded catholic school boards to allow GSAs in their schools. They claim that they don’t tolerate any kind of bullying and, as such, there is no need to have a club specifically focused on homophobic bullying. But events over the last several months belie that benevolent reasoning. So let’s do a little inventory shall we?

Image from: Quick dish

A Mississauga school banned the open display of rainbows at a student run anti-homophobia event (the kids got around it by hiding them inside cupcakes). These students were also forbidden to donate their proceeds to any charity that served LGBT youth. – Rainbows banned at Mississauga Catholic school
Lesbian comedian Dawn Whitwell was pulled from an anti-bullying event at Bishop Marrocco-Thomas Merton Catholic School in Toronto at the last minute. She was the only queer speaker at the event, which included topics like “gender issues in partner dancing” and the pastoral care guidelines on same-sex orientation. – Toronto Catholic board blocks lesbian comedian from anti-bullying event
Alice Anne LeMay, chair of the Halton Catholic School Board, compared GSAs to nazi groups when she defended the ban saying, “We don’t have Nazi groups either.” – Halton Catholic schools ban gay-straight alliance groups

While they say that they don’t allow any kind of bullying, their actions tell another story. Over and over again the Catholic school boards are telling queer kids that who they are is intolerable. More than that, they are telling straight kids that queer kids are fair game. By openly refusing to reach out to potentially queer kids and provide them a safe space, the school boards are complicit in creating a toxic environment.

But that’s not really what I want to write about. That has been said many times by many people.

I’m also not going to talk about the problems with the very existence of publicly funded Catholic schools.

No, what I want to do is ask one simple question: why is it that the freedom of religion is consistently seen as a trump card, even when to do so means violating the human rights of others?

Religion is a matter of choice, a matter of faith and association. While it is a fundamental part of life and identity for many people it is still a matter of choice. So why is it that we consistently allow the right to hold a set of beliefs to overrule the right to be who you are free of harassment?

It is one thing to say that I have the right to belief whatever I choose and to worship accordingly. It is another thing altogether to say that I then have the right to act out those beliefs in a way that harms others. It's bad enough when we allow this to happen within the walls of the church, but when we allow it to happen in a public school it is unconscionable. These schools are publicly funded and are, as such, subject to the governance of the provincial government - a government which has mandated all public schools provide support groups for LGBT youth.

This is not about the right to worship.

Because they are publicly funded there are many students attending these schools, not for religious or ideological reasons, but because their parents believe that, for any number of reasons, their kids will get a better education. In my neighbourhood the local public school has a terrible reputation. For this reason many of the neighbourhood kids attend the nearby Catholic school. So given that not all of the families availing themselves of the Catholic schools are, in fact, Catholic is it reasonable to say that these schools are not required to provide adequate support and protection to queer kids because it is inconsistent with the teachings of the church? Moreover, even for those families that are Catholic, the students are not usually there by their own choice, but rather by the will of their parents. Is it then fair to deny them the opportunity to support each other in whatever way they see fit?

While I object to the Catholic churches stance on many things, homosexuality being among them, this isn’t about that. You cannot benefit from the public purse while refusing to follow the policies set by the provincial government. The fact that our politicians refuse to tackle this issue in any meaningful way is a clear indication that the original purpose of the separate school system – to serve a marginalized and persecuted community - no longer applies. If it did, they wouldn’t all be so damn scared.

An open letter to a friend (and to all survivors)

2011-09-21T13:56:00.000-04:00

I wrote this letter for my friend. Although the word friend doesn’t seem to adequately capture our relationship. I was going to email it to him but I realized that there’s a lot in here that I’d like to send out to all of the survivors out there. So here it is, this one’s for Ex-skittles

I want you to know how strong you are. Since I’ve known you, you have been fighting. For equality, for peace and for yourself. Whenever more shit has come down the pipeline you have done whatever you could to keep going. Sometimes we can get caught up in that feeling that we’ve quit so many things or we haven’t been able to settle or focus on one path but the truth is that you and I have both been focused. We have focused on being better. We have shown so much strength and commitment to making our lives, our hearts and our minds better.

From the outside it may look like we’ve jumped around from city to city, from job to job, from path to path. But we know, deep down we know, that despite the haranguing of those depression induced self-doubts, we have fought - and will continue to fight - with unwavering conviction, for our own wellness. The strength and focus that this takes is invisible to the outside world, and often even we forget just how much it takes to keep fighting.

We are a contradiction. On one hand we are unusually open about our past histories and struggles, on the other hand we have erected our own walls to keep out the hurt, to hide our vulnerability. When it gets really bad we start to forget the difference between who we are and the depression with which we are afflicted.

Always remember, I know you. I know who you really are, and you are beautiful. You stand out from the crowd with a heart full of hope and love and unending compassion. You are strong and brave and funny as hell. I knew all of this when you were sixteen and I know it now. I will always be by your side and I will never lose my faith in you and your ability to keep fighting.

Forty years from now we’ll still be sipping our Assam, eating grilled cheese with apple and pumping our fists to P!nk.

When in doubt, raise your glass for me, and know that you are f*ing perfect.

“Mommy, why are you so sad?” – Talking depression with my kid.

2011-08-17T12:07:00.000-04:00

I was really hoping Mae would never have to see me depressed. Last week when I had my relapse she was stuck with a mom who was unable to fully engage, and barely able to leave the house. I hate that. So the question I had to face was, how do I explain this to her?

Every parent with mental health issues has to face this question at some point. If you don’t say anything, they’ll be left wondering why mommy or daddy is acting so strange. The most likely answer for a child, of course, is that it’s somehow their fault. I never want Mae to think that she’s the reason that mummy feels so bad. So, I talked to her. I told her that mommy has depression and that it’s a sickness that sometimes makes me really sad, even when there’s nothing to be sad about. This seemed to make some sense to her and she was very compassionate with me. She gave me extra cuddles and tried to get me laughing and she asked me frequently if I was happy yet.

I love seeing that empathy and caring come through, but I also worry about her taking on the responsibility of making me feel better. It’s a very thin line. On one hand, I want her to be compassionate and caring, and I don’t want her to feel helpless in the face of a sad mum. On the other hand, she identifies so closely with me that I can see her taking it on too much and blaming herself if she can’t make me all better.

As I’m writing these words I’m reminded of a moment 31 years ago. I was about a year younger than Mae is now and it was the day that my father died. My father was a farmer and he was killed in an accident out in the field. When they came to tell my mother she threw me on her shoulders and walked out to the field. I remember her crying and screaming and little three-year-old me trying to comfort her. I don’t have a lot of memories from that time, but that one is burned in my memory. That memory has been an integral part of my understanding of myself as an empathetic and caring person. It has also been part of a bigger picture in which my mother and I have always had an incredibly close relationship. I remember being glad that I could offer her comfort when she needed it and how much it has meant to me when she talked to me about how she was feeling.

So, I guess I just keep talking with Mae honestly and doing my best to appreciate how she takes care of me without making it her job.

Like so many other parenting quandaries, my answers come down to honest communication and empathy. Most of which is achieved by a cuddle and talk on the couch.

Once more out of the fog my friends – more tales of depression and redemption

2011-08-14T12:55:00.001-04:00

Hey, remember a couple weeks ago when I wrote about depression and how it’s like addiction. And remember how I gave that great little list of things I do to pull myself out of it when the sad comes knocking? Well, as it turns out, that little crying episode that inspired my wonderful insight was the launch of a full-fledged relapse.

A while ago, when I wrote my series on depression I finished up by talking about my plans to wean off of my meds. Well, I saw the shrink and I started decreasing my dose a few months ago. Things were going well, I had a few bad nights here and there, but I was always better the next day so I didn’t worry too much. Then summer came.

Have I mentioned that me and the heat don’t get along so well? Well let me tell you, this body was not designed for heat waves. Sweat in moderation helps your body cool through evaporation. Sweat in the amounts that I produce just makes you feel like you’ve got an insulating layer of sweat and sunscreen keeping you hotter than a basted turkey. Add to that all of the body image issues that arise when I’m forced to choose cool(er), less flattering, less “me” clothes. Then throw in a dash of “Holy crap she’s not in school I can’t afford the kind of childcare I need how am I ever going get through this with my bank account intact” anxiety. With all of that in the mix I found that I was constantly clenching my fists and my jaw and the tension headaches were becoming more frequent.

Then my birthday started peaking around the corner. I love my birthday. In the abstract, “yay it’s my birthday” kind of way. But it’s an August birthday and I don’t have a huge circle of friends so I also kind of dread my birthday. I want so badly for it to be special and yet I know from experience that it’s near impossible to get much of a showing. I know it’s not personal, people are busy in the summer, but it hurts nonetheless. And this is where my serotonin took a holiday.

I’m not going to go into all the details of my relapse. Suffice it to say that I was crying frequently, often a few times a day. I felt like I was in a thick gluey fog and all of my old pernicious insecurities started rearing their ugly heads. I’d say one of the worst things about having cycled in and out of depression over so many years is that you reach the point where you can’t bring yourself to make your friends and family listen to those insecurities one more time. I mean seriously, they must be sick of hearing the same shit over and over again right?

Perhaps trying to wean off of my meds in the summer was a bad idea.

About a week in I decided I had to put my dose back up. I wasn’t sure how long it would take but I knew it had to be done. Over the next few days I was crying a little less but I was still feeling pretty raw. Then I had a day with no tears. I felt noticeably less miserable than I had, but I still didn’t feel quite right. It’s hard to explain but it’s like this fuzzy fog that makes you feel just a little bit apart from all the people around you. To have all of those normal daily interactions with baristas and bus drivers takes a tremendous amount of energy. And oh how you hope nobody asks you if you’re okay. After a couple of hours I was exhausted.

The thing is that because I wasn’t thinking horrible thoughts or bursting into tears I felt like maybe I didn’t have the right to say I was still depressed.

The next day, my meds fully kicked in. It was like a switch was flipped and suddenly I was me again. I was laughing, I had energy, the last patch of fog had been burned away by those little pink pills.

It wasn’t until I became me again that I fully appreciated the degree to which that previous day had been defined by depression. And that’s when I realized that all of those times when I was younger and un-medicated and “not in a depression” I was. I thought that because I had come out of the pit of despair I was not depressed anymore, but in reality I was just less depressed. I was going to school and doing my homework and hanging with my friends, but it was bloody exhausting. I remember once when I was sixteen I realized that I hadn’t felt happy for three years. I had forgotten what happy was.

So here’s my metaphor. Someone who doesn’t suffer from depression floats along, just above the water. Sometimes they dip down, sometimes they even dip below the water for a second, and sometimes they fly a little higher above the water. But mostly they’re just bobbing along on the surface, taking in the view.

An untreated depressive, on the other hand, alternates between desperately treading water and hovering below the surface gasping for air. Just like a person who’s really drowning, the very reality of drowning makes it nearly impossible to cry out for help or do anything to help yourself. If you’re lucky you’ll float back up to surface long enough to get some air so you can start treading water again for a little while before the next time.

A few days ago I was treading water. Now, I’m floating above the surface, and I can see the sun again.

So, you may ask, does this mean I’ve given up on going off my meds? No. It means that I realize that now is the wrong time. I’ve decided to wait a few years until Mae is in full days at school and my business is more established. Also, next time I’ll start in the fall.

Stay tuned, my next post I’ll be getting back to parenting when I share how I talk to my kid about depression.

And now, I'd like to leave you with a little pick me up:

I’ll take a catastrophic thought with a self-flagellation chaser (or why depression is like an addiction)

2011-07-31T12:55:00.000-04:00

So here I go with another post about depression. The other night I had another crying spell. It happens once in a while but not so much that I’m worried about a relapse. While sitting on the couch at 1:30 in the morning, contemplating all of the reasons I’ve been clenching my fists lately I had a bit of an insight.

Now this might be hard to understand for those of you that have never suffered from depression but here we go.

Depression is kind of like an addiction. Except that instead of being addicted to some substance you become perversely addicted to abject misery. I know, you’re thinking, “What the hell are you talking about? Nobody wants to be sad.” Well, ask any addict and they’ll tell you just because they need the next fix doesn’t mean they want it.

Depression is not just about a chemical imbalance. Drugs may be effective but they are not the most effective treatment. No, the most effective long-term treatments for depression are cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT). Next in line we have exercise and time spent in nature. The first two are about learning how to recognize when you’re thinking like a depressed person so that you can short the circuit and the last two are about getting out of your head all together and being more connected with your physical reality.

So, you ask, how does a depressed person think? Well, let me tell you. It all starts with the question “Why do I feel so crappy?” In my case I was reading a self-help book about emotional eating and it got me thinking, why have I been so tense lately? What’s the underlying anxiety? It didn’t take long to come up with a few answers but of course a depressive is never satisfied with “Well, I’m anxious because we’re short on money and I can’t afford the childcare to get any work done during summer vac”, no. The depressive is then compelled to contemplate how this reflects on her worth, her character flaws, the hopelessness of her life. She enters an altered state of self-flagellation.

The best thing you can do at this point, before you get too deep in of course, is to call someone that you trust to be supportive. Just talking with another human being, about anything, can bring you back to earth at least for a little while.

So, tip #1 for recovering depressives: Never start thinking about why you feel crappy when it’s too late to call anyone for support.

Of course, I never have a breakdown when Howard’s home and awake and if he’s asleep I either avoid bed altogether or I crawl into bed and weep silently into my pillow. Not because I’m a martyr but because this amazing man has been with me for sixteen years and has witnessed one of my worst depressions ever. He has heard every single one of my most persistent insecurities ad nauseum and I have reached the point where I can’t bring myself to make him listen to them one more time. Same goes for my mother, my sister and my closest friends. So even if it’s the middle of the day, I still don’t want to make the call but I do it. Because I know that they would want me to. I know that no one wants me to be miserable and they will listen to me as long as I need them to.

But to call them in the middle of the night? No, I won’t do that. Maybe what I need is a sponsor.

So this is where I get to test-drive my self-reliance. Can I pull myself out of this on my own?

First order of business: music. Not the music that reflects your despondent state, something that reflects your feelings but has a sense of hope or something that tells you what you need to hear.*

Second, take a step back. Make some hot milk – or something else that breaks the rumination while also soothing you – and think about all the reasons your doom and gloom thoughts are wrong. Because trust me, they are. I find that thinking of the depression as something apart from yourself helps. So when those thoughts start to push their way in you can remind yourself that that's the depression talking.

Finally, if possible, find something to make you laugh or at least smile. It might be a memory, a photograph or a Youtube clip (I highly recommend Tim Conway’s elephant sketch).

Now, to quote a popular book, go the f*** to sleep.

“But wait,” you ask, “I still don’t get why depression is like addiction.” Well let me tell you in a nice bullet point list:

No matter how long it’s been since your last depressive episode, you know that you’re never totally free. There might still be another drop-kick around the corner. It’s a state of constant vigilance. Every time you feel down you wonder, “Is this it? Is this going to be the time it gets me?”
When you’ve been living in the fog of depression for a good chunk of your life, happiness can be terrifying. Just like sobriety. It’s so unfamiliar, how do I live like that? And if I do “get better” I’m going to have to make something of myself. What if I can’t? What if I really am as useless as I always thought I was?
Conversely, that black abyss is perversely seductive. You know it’s the road to Hell but in it’s own twisted way there’s a dark comfort in just curling up in a ball and hiding from life. When you are fighting so hard all the time to stay well, that 2 am call to give up doesn’t always sound so bad.
You get depressed because you’re afraid of being depressed. Just like you take a drink and then feel full of shame and take another drink. When you start to think you might be headed for another depression it feeds the sense of panic and impending doom and you get that much closer to falling over the edge.
The only way to stay well – especially if, like me, you’re trying to wean off of the meds (God help me) – is to take it one day at a time and to know your own limits.
You know that you will always be “in recovery” and never “recovered”.

*"Go to" songs:

Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush
I Don’t Wanna Be by Gavin DeGraw
Long Way to Happy by Pink
Nobody Knows by Pink (okay that one is a pity party but it’s the only one)
Whether You Fall by Tracy Bonham
18 Wheeler by Pink
Conversations with my 13-year-old Self by Pink (what can I say, her lyrics speak to me)

Book recommendations:

Learned Optimism - Martin Seligman
Authentic Happiness - Martin Seligman
The Mindful Way Through Depression - Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn
I'm the One That I Want - Margaret Cho
Inside Out - Evelyn Lau

So, what do you think? Does anyone else have some “go to” songs? Can you think of other similarities between depression and addiction? Is this true for other mental illnesses?

Sore muscles and a happy Hillside

2011-07-27T14:28:00.000-04:00

I was planning to write a blog post all about our weekend at Hillside but then I realized that it hurts to type. Turns out that the muscles you use to lift picnic tables and hand bomb cinderblocks are instrumental in typing, who knew. So for now, here are a few pictures.

Striking a pose in any mirror she can find.

You'd be amazed at how many kids can squeeze on here.

What, me tired? Never!

And yes, these were all taken on the same day. What can I say, we favour experiencing the festival over commemorating it.

I'll write more once my poor sore arms are better.

Children should be seen – but not in here!

2011-07-20T12:08:00.000-04:00

A little while ago there was some kerfuffle about restaurants banning children under 6. Emma Waverman blogged about it over at Embrace the Chaos and even got interviewed on Q by Jian Ghomeshi. So I’m not going to make this about restaurants or the unfairness of banning an entire group of people from an establishment. No, this is about a larger issue that has been on my mind.

Restaurants are not the only place where parents are made to feel unwelcome. The tension is palpable on a bus when a baby or child starts crying or whining. More than once I’ve had someone tell me that I shouldn’t bring my stroller on the bus in rush hour, one even comparing my stroller and child to his bicycle (to which I responded, “Yes but I can’t ride my kid to work”). I’m not going to argue that a stroller is a pain in the ass but not everyone can use a carrier all the time, not everyone has a car and everyone has the right to go about the city at whatever time they choose. I was left wondering how these men expected parents to get their kids home from daycare.

So let me get back to the point. Despite what some may say, our culture is not bending over backwards to accommodate parents. Whether it’s restaurant bans, surly transit riders or employers who disapprove of employees taking care of sick children, parents are constantly coming up against people who see our children as a nuisance.

Somewhere along the way we have forgotten that children are a basic and fundamental part of life, without them we cease to exist. For every time someone rolls their eyes because a child is crying or misbehaving, there is a parent who is tired and stressed and desperate to calm that kid down. Between those two people, which one do you think is more affected by that kid's noise? If you think my stroller is a pain in your ass, imagine what it’s like for me trying to get around the city with the thing.

Kids are people and they are part of our society. If you want them to grow up to be sociable, contributing members of society then you have to accept that they will be part of public life.

So tell me, what do you do when you’re faced with these attitudes?

The e-book is done! (and I think you'll like it)

2011-07-13T13:02:00.002-04:00

It’s finally here! After writing and editing and editing and editing some more I have finally completed my e-book.

One of the things that inspired me to coach parents (queer or otherwise) was the overload of information and advice that’s out there. I found it overwhelming and flat out confounding at times trying to navigate the expert opinions and advice. Through talking to friends and working with clients it became evident that what parents really needed was a way to sift through all of the advice and find the parenting solutions that made the most sense for them.

As I sat down to write my e-book I started by brainstorming all of the questions I would ask a client who was trying to choose a solution to a parenting problem. As I sorted through all of these questions and organized them into categories I realized that what I had was the following 10 steps:

1)    Assess the problem
2)    Clarify your values
3)    Know your limits and your strengths
4)    Identify barriers
5)    Consider the alternatives
6)    Consider other factors
7)    Set your criteria for success
8)    Set a time-frame
9)    Create a contingency plan
10)    Consider the emotional impact

The goal of this e-book is to provide parents with tools to parent confidently according to what makes sense for them as people and for their family as a whole. As a coach and a parent I strongly believe that the best parenting always comes from a combination of self-awareness, self-care and pragmatism.

So please, download the free e-book and let me know what you think, if you like it feel free to share it with your friends.

Enjoy!

So far so queer - adventures in gender diverse parenting

2011-06-29T13:10:00.000-04:00

Queer 1. adj. strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.

Of all of the terms that have been used to describe us LGBT folk, queer is the one that makes the most sense to me. It is the most accurate and the most inclusive. Inclusive because all it means is different, different from the conventional viewpoint. In my estimation, queer includes anyone whose sexual and/or gender identity or expression is at odds with what is expected of them by mainstream society.

Throughout my own childhood I was always different. It wasn’t until recently that I realized to what extent my queerness was a part of that. When I came out to myself as bi it was such a relief. It was like I knew I belonged in the queer community but I didn’t know why until I came out. But it’s not just my sexuality that makes me queer. It’s also my gender expression.

I’m not femme but I’m not butch. I didn’t fit in with the other girls but I was never a tomboy. While my gender identity falls within the binary, my gender expression does not. My queerness has always been as much a matter of my queer understanding of gender as it has been of my sexual attractions. So as I raise my daughter the issues of gender and gender expression play a significant role in how I shape and understand the world in which she lives.

With that in mind I bring you this post.

***********************

I’ve blogged [here and here] before about the ways in which I practice gender diverse parenting. Today I’m going to focus on my kid. While reading “Pink Brain Blue Brain” I found myself thinking about Mae and comparing her to the gender typical behaviour that has been documented over the years. I did this largely to figure out how much I should employ Eliot’s suggestions for narrowing the gender gap. I also, however, was interested in the ways in which she doesn’t fit the gendered expectations of our culture. Basically I wanted to know, how queer is my kid?

So here’s my summary of the bits that stuck out for me:

1 - Girls tend to have better fine motor control at a younger age.
Eliot attributes this to the kind of play girls usually engage in, drawing, dressing small dolls etc. This is absolutely true of Mae, her fine motor control is excellent for her age, due in no small part to the countless hours she has spent drawing and playing with playmobil sets.

2 - Girls develop language sooner and are better able to express themselves with words. They also speak more clearly.
Although girls, on average, start speaking a month earlier than boys this is not enough to account for the big differences in language skills observed as they get older. Eliot discusses research that found that around the age of two (right when language starts to pick up) parents tend to talk to girls significantly more than they talk to boys. Other research has found that the best thing for language development is being immersed in language.

Mae has definitely been immersed in language. People used to think I was talking to them as I walked down the street talking to the baby in the stroller. While Mae’s language development has been very good, - she’s got quite the vocabulary and a pretty firm grasp of syntax and grammar - her speech is not as clear as that of many kids her age. Her L’s sound like W’s or Y’s and her R’s all sound like W’s. She’s improved since last summer when her S’s all sounded like D’s but I still have to translate for people fairly often and back in the fall her teacher discussed the possibility of speech therapy with me. So as far as this “gendered trait” I’d say it’s a little yes and a little no.

3 – Girls have less developed visuo-spatial skills such as spatial rotation, and pattern recognition.
Eliot makes a good argument for the role played by physical activity levels and sports in this sex difference. There are well-documented differences in activity levels between boys and girls, this has been found to be associated with prenatal androgens and therefore one of the few inborn differences. The interesting part is how this heightened activity, and how we respond to it, can result in other sex differences that are given so much press.

Eliot makes the point that many of the physical activities in which boys engage (running, jumping, throwing, aiming) train their brains to have a better understanding of how objects move through space. In other words, better visuo-spatial skills. The reason these visuo-spatial skills are so important is that they are very clearly tied to math and science skills (physics in particular).

Another type of activity that develops these skills is building with blocks and putting together puzzles. This is where Mae comes in. She is not unusually active compared to other girls. While she does love to run and jump and climb she’s actually unusual in her ability to sit still and focus on drawing or listening to music. She does, however love to play with building blocks and lego and she’s also quite good at puzzles and mazes.

4 – Girls are more attracted to babies and nurture play.
Well, yes and no. Eliot points out that up until the age of two or three, boys and girls are equally attracted to real babies and in the first year or so they both like dolls equally. So while there is a difference, there’s little evidence that it’s “hardwired” from birth.

Mae has occasionally picked up a baby doll when she was around 3 but has always spent more time building and drawing and never asked to have one at home. Her response to real babies has always been a mixture of indifference and concern over the safety of her toys. Overall, this is a feminine behaviour that has not manifested in my lovely one.

5 – Between the ages of 3 and 5 boys and girls become fixated on gender. They start identifying clearly that “this is for boys and that is for girls” and they take it very seriously.
The common wisdom is that around this age kids still haven’t fully grasped that their sex is fixed. That is, they still believe that their “boyness” or “girlness” is defined by their clothes or toys – and thus subject to change - rather than by their genitals. For this reason they become the most vocal gender police and fixate on asserting their gender – and monitoring that of others – much more so than at any other time of life.

Mae is four and a half and she still does not think in terms of boy/girl. She never says “that’s just for girls” or “I don’t like boys”. She likes boys and girls equally well in her class and she’s often the only girl in her class invited to a boy’s birthday party. A lot of this, I think, can be attributed to the fact that she doesn’t watch TV or Disney movies. There is also, of course, the fact of who her parents are. While I may be the one who talks about feelings and does all the cooking, Howard is the one who bathes her and puts her to bed at night. And while Howard does a lot of running and active play with her, I’m the one who gets into all the horseplay.

Queering the family tree

As I look over these points I can’t help but think what a bad job I’ve done of describing Mae’s queerness. So let me instead give you some brief anecdotes.

The other morning she put on her Wolverine T-shirt (she’s really into superheroes right now) and came downstairs growling and baring her teeth. Next thing I know she’s playing with her purse only to start sword fighting with her dad.

When she plays games with a mommy and a daddy they are never about the relationship between the two, only about how the parents play with the kid.

Her current career goals are bus driver, lifeguard, singer in a punk band and mommy, all at the same time.

Her first career goal was construction worker.

She has never once talked about marriage or weddings except for the one time when she played a game in which she got married to two of her stuffed animals in a polygamist bisexual ceremony. Did I mention she was a king in a dress for that wedding? That might be the queerest wedding ever!

All of these sex differences outlined by Eliot are based on averages. There is far more variability within the sexes than there is between them. While it may be true that the average girl has better fine motor control than the average boy that tells you nothing about any individual boy or girl because they could lie anywhere on the curve. That being said, I do see some noticeable differences between Mae and many of the girls on the playground. It is clear that she paints outside the lines and if I’m going to be the best parent I can be I need to recognize her “queerness” and nurture her in all of her interests and quirks.

Source: Eliot, Lise. Pink Brain Blue Brain, p. 12

So why did I write this post? I guess I wanted to share something of my experience with gender diverse parenting and a somewhat gender independent kid.

I know that she may face challenges. I know that she may get bullied for being “weird”. But I also know that she will survive all of that. And I know that she will be equipped with a wide range of skills and strengths that will take her wherever she wants to go in life. My job is to give her the foundation of support and confidence that she will need to face whatever challenges may come her way.

Resources:
Gender Independent play group
Gender Independent Children & Family Support Survey (519 community centre, Toronto)
10 Myths about gender neutral parenting (Raising my boychick)
Gender Spectrum

So tell me, what are your experiences with gender diverse parenting or gender independent kids?

Of building blocks and baby dolls

2011-06-23T11:59:00.000-04:00

Recently I finished reading Pink Brain Blue Brain by Lise Eliot. Eliot says she originally set out to explain the neurological basis of the well-documented differences between boys and girls, men and women. As she examined the research, however, she found that most of the differences that exist are not, in fact, biologically based. Rather, there are some small differences at birth and those slight differences are widened into ever-growing gaps as a result of socialization.

The most important take home from this book was that brain differences are very often not genetic differences. Our brains are shaped by our experiences so when boys are encouraged to be active and discouraged from sharing their feelings their brains develop in a different way than girls who are steeped in a world of words and relationships. As Eliot so rightly points out, recognizing the ways in which these well publicized sex differences develop empowers us to change how we raise our kids in order to maximize their potential in all directions.

Spider Mae in her party dress

So girls could benefit from more physical play, especially things that involve throwing, kicking and aiming. These activities help to develop visuo-spatial skills – a key ingredient in fields such as math, physics and engineering – as well as their gross-motor skills.

Boys, on the other hand, need more opportunities to engage in nurturing play, and more emphasis on recreational reading. To name but two of Eliot’s suggestions.

What it comes down to is this: All children need to be provided exposure to, and opportunities to engage in, the full spectrum of play and learning, regardless of sex or assigned gender. Building blocks and baby dolls, story books and soccer balls. You’ll never know what your kid is capable of if you don’t give them the chance to explore it all, gender be damned.

[For a more detailed summary of her book watch this video of Lise Eliot presenting her findings]

Father's day post: remembering my dad

2011-06-19T10:45:00.000-04:00

Father’s day is bittersweet for me. My father died when I was three years old and every father’s day inevitably shines a little light in the hole in my heart. Losing a parent is hard no matter how old you are when it happens. It’s not easier or harder for anyone, the scars just look different. I’ve written about this before so I won’t repeat myself here.

I will, however tell you something about my dad.

When he was a kid he they didn’t have money for frivolous things like books so he would steal books and kick them home so that he could claim to have found them.

Once, when he was in elementary school, my Nana noticed that he was coming home hungry every day. When she asked him why he was so hungry he told her about a kid at school who never had a lunch. My father had been splitting his sandwich with this kid every day and that was why he was coming home hungry. Nana’s response was to start packing two sandwiches for him each day.

Between dropping out of high school and going to University Daddy went on his own Kerouac-esque road trip down to Mexico, and spent some time working with a buddy on the freight trains. There’s a story from that time involving a fire and my dad naked but for his boots, but I can’t remember the details.

Daddy’s explanation of Easter went something like this: “You know who Jesus was right? Well he was crucified and they but his body in this cave and then he came out……but then he saw his shadow so he went back in again.”

I’ve spent my life gathering these kinds of stories from my mother, my Nana and anyone else who could remember. So I feel like I have a sense of him, but I know that the image I have is not him. It is, at best, a rose coloured collage of his best traits. And as much as I hold onto these stories like so much found gold, they can’t give me what I really want, the experience of having a father.

When I was eight my mom married my step-father. Ed and I have a very close and sometimes fraught relationship. He is a friend, a confidante and a role model but he very wisely chose not to take the role of father (to have done so would have created untold conflict in our home). So while I am infinitely grateful to have him in my life, I still don’t know what it feels like to have a dad.

Now, though, I have a chance to learn something about the father-daughter relationship. Watching Howard with Mae is a beautiful thing. The way he jumps right into her imaginary games – being the princess, the dragon or the bad guy – without blinking an eye makes me smile every time. These little glimpses into fatherhood help to fill in that hole in my heart, at least a little bit, and for that I am so grateful.

I am also grateful for all the ways in which he makes it easier for me to be a mom. He has always jumped right into parenting and done whatever he can to be an equal partner. He gets up with her in the morning and puts her down at night. From the moment he gets home he goes “on duty” and I can take a step back. Every Saturday and Sunday morning he takes her out so that I can have some time to myself. Most importantly, he has never made me feel judged as a mother, he has never made me feel guilty about the parenting choices I make, and he has always been the gold standard of support and partnership as a partner and a co-parent.

So I guess this is my way of saying happy Father’s Day Howard, I couldn’t do this without you.

Now that's one good lookin' dad

Night of the living frat boys (or “So I threw the rock!"*)

2011-05-11T13:03:00.000-04:00

I’m running a little behind on things this week because I’ve been sick since Saturday (happy Mother’s day to me!). Slowly but surely I’m on the mend and now I finally have the energy to write about my run in with the “frat boys” on Friday night.

Portrait of me at age 17

Just to be clear before I get started I hate confrontation. My hands shake, my heart races and my whole body goes on alert. That being said, I have gained a reputation for being mouthy. On that note….

Last weekend was the wrap-up for the Hot Docs, documentary film festival for which Howard and I volunteer every year. Of course, since we had Mae we do fewer shifts and watch fewer films but it’s still something we love to do. This year I was able to see one film, and as luck would have it my mom was in town so we were able to go together. The film was “Who Took the Bomp”, a concert film following Le Tigre on their last tour. Great film, great band and great to spend an hour and a half in a theatre full of feminists and queers.

As we exited the theatre – handily located in the dreaded ‘club district’ – and walked towards the streetcar stop we passed a large group of tall, white, twenty-something men. Given my history I am never comfortable with that particular kind of posse but I was too busy chatting about the film to pay much attention until I heard, “Hey Chinaman, where’s (insert crappy nightclub name here)?” (full disclosure, my hands are shaking just writing about this and did I mention that Howard is Chinese?).

Howard didn’t really hear the first part but I did so I looked at the guy and said, “Are you kidding me? What did you call him?” to which he replied, “you heard me.”

Various expletives were tossed back and forth to the delight of his friends and ending, inevitably, in him calling me a lesbian. So goes the script for every confrontation between an outspoken woman and some moronic straight boy (except for those precious moments when they call you a bitch or a slut instead).

Since I had Mae I don’t have a lot of these run-ins anymore because I’m not usually in those places around those people. If I do have a conflict it’s because someone is being an ass towards children or parents. As we walked away the tears began to flow, I hate that I have to do that, I hate even more that my daughter will one day be faced with the same ignorance and forced to learn how to pick her battles.

As Howard and I started to debrief he talked to me about how he’s changed since he became a father. Now that he’s a dad he’s much less inclined to mouth off to people because he has to think about Mae and having her dad get beat up is not in her best interests. I agree with him and admire that he has had that insight and I do pick my battles more carefully now. In that situation I wouldn’t have wanted him to speak up because they would be far more likely to get violent with him on a public street than with me. All they have to do to save face when I get uppity is berate my sexuality, but if a man calls them out, “them’s are fightin’ words”.

When Howard told me “it’s not worth it” to call them out I asked him, “How many times have you had something like that happen to you?” and he said “Not many”

It’s been hundreds for me.

The simple fact is, that despite what some may believe, I don’t speak up every time. Sometimes I don’t have the energy and sometimes it really isn’t worth it. But when you spend your life confronted with that kind of behaviour you either speak up or shut down. When I tell people about these incidents they say, “Why bother? You’re not going to change their minds” and my answer is always the same. I may not change their minds, but someone has to let them know that it’s not acceptable to treat people like that. If enough people call them out on their public displays of hate then maybe they’ll be the ones deciding it’s “not worth it”.

When people are allowed to be loud and public with that kind of hatred and ignorance we are all complicit in creating a climate of fear for those who are the target of that hate. When I was at a subway station one day and some guys were yelling about “them damn n-----s” I told them to keep their racism to themselves. It’s not going to change their minds and it likely won’t keep them from doing it again but at least everyone else on that platform heard someone say, “this is not okay”. As important as it is for me to stand up when people aim their figurative guns at me or my family it is that much more important for me to speak up when they aim them at others. It should not be on the shoulders of the object of hate to speak up against it. I know what bystander apathy feels like and so I refuse to be a bystander.

Now that I’m a parent it is that much more relevant because as much as I don’t want my kid to be bullied, it is equally important that she not be a bully or a bystander. While I may hate those confrontations I know I would feel worse if I said nothing. As a parent I believe it is my job to raise a daughter who can do the same. If I don’t do it myself, how will I ever teach it to her?

*Reference to "Night of the Living Rednecks" by Jello Biafra

Score 1 for queer parenting - the power of children's books

2011-05-04T23:49:00.000-04:00

Recently I borrowed some books from a PFLAG mom I know. One of them was King and King and Family (about a couple of married kings who adopt a child) and another was Mom and Mum are Getting Married (self evident). I also had a little talk with Mae a few weeks back on “Think Pink” day about sexuality and told her that mommy likes boys and girls,to which she replied, “me too!” (she’s not really clear on the whole romantic love thing yet).

I wasn’t sure how much had sunk in until today. We were walking to the park and ran into another mom from the school. Her kid is in a different class so Mae doesn’t know her very well. We walked along and chatted with her until she reached her house and went inside. The following is a loose transcription of the ensuing conversation.

Mae: Where are her kids?
Me: At home maybe?
Mae: But who’s taking care of them?
Me: I don’t know, maybe their daddy?
Mae: Yeah, it must be their daddy.
(thoughtful pause)
Mae: Or their mommy, it could be their mommy too.
Me: Right because some kids have two mommies right?
Mae: Yeah.
Me: [heart swells with pride]

The lesson? Never underestimate the power of a good book.

Resources;
http://booksforkidsingayfamilies.blogspot.com/
http://glbtrt.ala.org/rainbowbooks/rainbow-books-lists
http://www.myprincessboy.com/index.asp

It’s not just the girls that are mean, sexual harassment is bullying, period

2011-05-02T15:18:00.000-04:00

Something always troubles me when I read stories about the differences between how girls and boys bully. The general characterization is that boys are openly
aggressive and violent while girls are sneaky manipulative gossips. Let’s put aside for a minute the fact that rumours couldn’t spread like wildfire if boys didn’t also do their part, and as for girls being more prone to cyber bullying we’d be remiss to forget that it was a male student that posted the video that led to Tyler Clementi’s suicide. Conversely, boys do not have a monopoly on violence and overt aggression, have we forgotten Reena Virk already? Not to mention the two teenage girls who just beat a trans-woman in a McDonalds. No, I take that back, let’s not put that aside.
I don’t dispute that there are some general differences in the ways boys and girls tend to bully, of course they do, they’re raised differently. The articles, books and pundits however can’t seem to help themselves from reducing everything to gender, boys are like this and girls are like that. The first and most obvious flaw in this is that there is far more variation within each gender than there is between them, do you think no boys are complicit in the mean girl tactics we hear so much about, or that no girls use the threat of violence to cow their victims? Second, and equally problematic, is that gender just isn’t that simple, even if you’re cis-gendered you may not identify with traditional masculinity/femininity. You’d do better to compare conventionally feminine people with conventionally masculine people and even that leaves out all those who are neither or both.

But the most troubling element for me in all of this is the most obvious oversight. Boys don’t just bully boys and girls don’t just bully girls. How someone is bullied has at least as much to do with why they are bullied as it does with who is bullying them. I have written before about my history of being bullied (here and here and here) in school, some of it here but most of it on my other blog because that is where I let myself get angry. I once made the point that many mean girl tactics don’t work on girls that don’t want to fit in or be part of the popular crowd. If you don’t want to hang with those girls you won’t go to that ambush sleepover and if your friends tell you they’ve voted you out of the group (as happened to me) you just decide they’re idiots and walk away. One of my greatest assets growing up was that I cared more about liking and respecting myself than I did about being liked by others.

My worst bullies were mostly boys. There were lots of girls that wouldn’t talk to me but since I didn’t particularly like them it didn’t matter so much. The boys on the other hand were relentless in their hateful language, sexual harassment and, even threats of violence. And rumours, wildly conflicting and always nasty rumours, about what I had or hadn’t done with my ex-boyfriend. Girls hardly entered into it and those that did were usually threatening to beat the hell out of me.

Part of a poem written when I was fifteen, Skin Deep

I am not the only girl who was (or is) sexually harassed in high school, most girls are so used to it that they don’t even recognize it for what it is. If you’ve ever seen a group of boys interrogating a girl about her virginity you know what I’m talking about. There’s no winning; if you say you are then you’re a prude if you say you’re not then you’re a slut and if you say nothing you get treated to twenty minutes of salacious supposition and character assassination. By the time it’s over you feel like less than nothing. This climate of harassment warps girls (and boys) beliefs about what is acceptable. You lose perspective, no longer able to trust your own judgment. When I transferred to a new school, one thankfully less hostile, I took this warped perspective with me so when a male “friend” grabbed my breast out of the blue in the school hallway I honestly didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tell him off, slap him across the face, but I felt like I couldn’t safely acknowledge that it wasn’t okay, I wound up putting him in a headlock but laughing through gritted teeth.

Through my experiences at my first high school I learned one thing: in order to survive in a climate of constant sexual harassment you have to treat it all as a joke. This belief made me complicit in my own harassment. A few weeks later I was standing at my locker in a very bad mood when the same “friend” came up behind me and started putting his hands all over me, sadly this was his standard greeting to me.

I told him to stop, I wasn’t in the mood.
He wouldn’t stop.
I said “not now” several times.
He called me a PMS bitch.

I turned around and slapped him. He threw me to the ground,
two or three times.

If another friend (thank you Ryan, wherever you are) hadn’t stepped in I don’t know how far that would have gone.

I didn’t intend to tell so much of my story in this post but I think it’s important that we as parents and educators know that bullies don’t always fall into the neat categories of mean girls and violent boys and that they don’t just stick to their own gender. To quote Hena Zuberi “sexual harassment is a type of sexual assault, and victims of severe or chronic sexual harassment can suffer the same psychological effects as rape victims.”*

Sexual harassment is a very real part of many girls’ high school experience and if we don’t acknowledge and address this in our anti-bullying strategies we are failing our children, regardless of their gender.

*Sex & the Ummah | Sexual Harassment: A Muslim Problem?
http://muslimmatters.org/2011/04/25/sexual-harrassment-a-muslim-problem/

Resources and further reading:

Cruel’s Not Cool (Annie Fox’s anti-bullying program)

Sexual harassment common in high schools, study finds (Toronto Star)

Report on sexual harassment among youth

The Make it Better Project

Sexual bullying resource list (Doc)

New contest for queer parents!

2011-04-18T14:31:00.001-04:00

Anyone who’s been paying attention to this blog, Twitter, Facebook or my website may have noticed a few changes recently. Those who follow me won’t be surprised to hear that I have decided to narrow my niche and focus my coaching on parents in the queer community.

To quote my website:

“As a queer parent it can feel as though you're charting new territory. While many more people from the LGBT community are becoming parents it can still feel like a lonely uphill battle to be the kind of parent you want to be in the face of all of the additional challenges thrown in your path. As a coach and as a parent I believe that the bumpy unworn paths take us to the best places. Sometimes we just need a little support to stay the course.”

So I guess this is my way of saying:

I am proud to announce the official launch of Kristin Craig Lai, Life coach for queer parents!

In the spirit of my new direction I would like to offer 25% off of full-time coaching* for the first month to the first 3 people who answer the following questions:

Who was the first queer fictional character that you remember from TV or film?
What inspiring or empowering song do you wish you had known when you were a teenager? (Doesn’t matter if the song wasn’t around at the time)
Which fictional (TV, film or books) parent did you most wish was yours growing up?

All coaching is done over the phone or Skype so you don’t have to be in Toronto to enter the contest.

*Weekly 50-minute sessions at $350 (plus applicable taxes) per month. With the discount the first month would be $262.50

“Dance monkey dance!” Meditations on the personhood of children

2011-04-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

There is something that has always perplexed me. I knew when I got pregnant that I could expect people to touch my belly, I didn’t like it but I expected it. I joked about making a shirt like those Buddha shirts that say “Rub my belly for good luck” except that mine would have said, “Rub my belly for a kick in the head” or something equally blunt. I don’t take issue with people who know me asking, I do take issue with strangers touching or anyone touching without asking. But as I said, I knew what to expect.

No, what surprised me was that after I had my baby people felt so entitled to touch her. Some moms don’t like this because they’re worried about germs, and I get that, especially with an infant; I didn’t spend half my day sterilizing the breast pump so that you could get your grubby little fingers all over my newborn. That being said, I don’t think germs were what really bugged me. For me it was something more abstract, something to do with entitlement but at the time I couldn’t quite explain it.

Another shirt I wish I'd made

As she got older and more aware of her surroundings she became much clearer in what she wanted and didn’t want so it wasn’t unusual for her to pull away when someone tried to reach into the stroller and touch her. That was irritating enough but what really irked me was that people would either keep pushing it or act offended, as though they had some inalienable right to touch the dolly. And that is when I figured it out, people don’t think of babies, or toddlers or even small kids as people. They see them as dolls or toys or dancing monkeys, “Come on give me a smile! Show me that smile, come on!” it feels as though these people are a second away from saying, “Smile dammit! What the hell is wrong with your kid?”

This isn’t just about touching or talking either. I remember several occasions when I was pushing the stroller and talking to my kid and some passing stranger would stop and say, “pardon me?” and I would say, “I was talking to my kid”. I found it odd that they thought it was more likely that I was addressing them than that I was addressing the human being who was with me. If I had had an adult with me they surely wouldn’t have thought I was speaking to them.

Now that she’s four, people still expect her to follow the cute performing kid script and that can be frustrating but what bugs me most is what they do when she’s in the way. Last week we were in a bakery and she was ogling the cakes when a woman wanted to look at the same part of the display case. Rather than saying “excuse me” like you would normally do she put her hands on my kid and tried to physically move her. What is that about? She’s not a suitcase or a shopping cart, she’s a person; when a person is in your way you say excuse me. Nobody ever says excuse me to my kid. They perform acrobatics to get around her they nudge her aside, they trip over her but they never just talk to her like the little person that she is. I can sort of get why they did this when she was 2, although even then I didn’t get why they didn’t at least address me, but she’s school age now, there’s simply no good reason to assume she doesn’t understand the words ‘excuse me’.

Kids, even babies, are people, not people in the making, just people. They have the right to set their own boundaries and personal comfort zones, they are able to listen to and interact with adults and even if they don’t yet have words they do have an advocate with them to whom you can address yourself. My kid and I do not owe you a show. It is not her job to brighten your day, and the irony is that if you give her space she’ll probably brighten it of her own volition and on her own terms. Sometimes, however, all I want to say is, “Back the hell off!”

What about you? How do you feel about this?

Letter to my mother

2011-04-13T19:56:00.000-04:00

Guest post by Ex-skittles

*Editor’s note: For the purpose of anonymity family names have been changed to initials. For clarity I have put a legend at the end of the post outlining the relationships of each person within the family.

I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how to say what I'm feeling, without being made to feel like you're putting words in my mouth, and think that I'm saying that I think you're a horrible mother. I don't think this, I don't think this at all, and I need to make that clear.

That being said, yes, I am damaged, I am depressed, and I don't know what to do to work through that. A lot of that has to do with B_ and R_. I need to talk about this, but feel shut down constantly. I understand you were in abusive situations with both of them, but so was I.

I have never felt welcome in my own home growing up, my friends weren't welcome to come over, my hobbies and interests were not taken seriously. I always felt that I played second string to C_. Even to CM_ and D_ as well actually.   As far as CS_ goes, well she just shut everyone out, and didn't seem to have any hobbies outside of being in her room

The way I saw it - there were always resources available for Hockey and Baseball. Sports were encouraged. When I tried to do sports, for instance, the one year I played Soccer, I thought that maybe I'd get some sort of that attention myself. But no, I was yelled and screamed at after every game and practice, I didn't try hard enough, I wasn't good enough. So I gave up; I lost my shin guard on purpose, so you'd take me out of it. But I actually did enjoy doing it, but quickly learned to dread all of the activity because I got yelled at every time.

Then there were the skating lessons, I really enjoyed them as well. I was actually doing something that I finally got some sort of encouragement on. The last time I remember going to a lesson I was yelled at because some parent came up to you all mad because I kept bumping into their child. You didn't take the time to listen to what I had to say, I didn't get a chance to defend myself. When the actual reason I was having trouble and bumping into her, was because I had a lot of trouble stopping, and it wasn't just her, there were others I bumped into as well.   So once again, I got in trouble because I wasn't good enough.

I also remember asking for dance lessons as a kid, I remember my cousins talking to me about their lessons, and I wanted to try it. But I wasn't taken seriously, and once again there was money and time for C_ for Hockey and Baseball, but not for me, and not for what I wanted.

Every time I tried something and failed, I wasn't encouraged to try again, I wasn't encouraged to try other things. I constantly felt that I had to fight for what I wanted, if I wanted something I was going to have to do it myself. Take the Piano lessons - dad took me out of them to piss you off - I get that now, but I never understood then why something I actually liked, something I was actually somewhat decent at, was taken away from me.   And I see C_, C_ gets to have hockey and baseball, something he likes, but I don't get to do what I like.

Then in school they tested me for the enriched program, only to be told that I wasn't smart enough after that test I took in grade five. I needed a 98 percent on that test to pass, I got a 96 percent, I remember crying for days because of this.

So all thoughout my childhood, I never felt I was good enough to deserve attention, never felt that things that were important to me were taken seriously. This was cemented for me when I started finding things that I did like to do. When I found music in grade 7.

I loved to play the trumpet - and I was pretty good at it too. And I worked really hard at it, but was yelled at when I practiced at home. This actually started to wear on me, when I actually ended pretty much giving it up in grade 10. Then there was the acting - and the theatre. I was in plays and worked back stage on a couple of things - just not at school but in the community. I had to fight for vocal lessons, to help me with my singing. I discovered something I really wanted to do, I wanted to act. I'm not sure if I was any good at it, but I got some pretty decent feed back that I was. But I was constantly not taken seriously, it was just a playful hobby and it wasn't really that important. Slowly but surely, I gave up on that as well. Feeling like nothing I could ever do, nothing that I actually liked to do, would ever be taken seriously enough by those around me.

I got yelled and screamed at for some really stupid things. I remember B_ screaming at me because I was meditating. I remember being hit and screamed at by R_ because I didn't fill up a hole I dug at a beach, a hole that he didn't actually ask me to fill, or I didn't hear him when he did. I remember B_ hitting and yelling at me because I wasn't doing something properly in the garden.

Then I started getting this sort of dismissive behaviour from C_. I only ever saw him stand up for me once in high school, whether or not he did it more then that, I don't know. But I didn't see it. But C_ and I had to go to the mall once after school, I can't remember why, I think we had shopping to do for Christmas. But we went, and on our way out a bunch of guys from school, who bullied me constantly, started booing me, something they always did when I walked by. I asked C_ not to engage and just ignore them, like I always did when I walked by them in the halls. But he didn't listen to me, and he went up to them. When he came back he was mad at me! Because apparently they told him that I was always insulting them, and that's why they booed me, that's why they threw things at me. That's why they spit at me. Apparently I was always insulting them, and this gave a group of ten of my peers the excuse to harass me every day. Insults that never happened, because I was too afraid most of the time to engage them, to stand up for myself.

So once again, I'm made to feel that what I have to say isn't important, and that no one will ever take my side.

Then I came out. I came out and people had to start listening to me, because I made them uncomfortable. For the first time in my life I felt empowered. Not that people didn't try to take that away from me as well, because a lot did, but for the first time in my life, I wouldn't allow them to do so. So often in my life I was deflated by people in positions of authority, and now, now I wouldn't let them.

So in the end, the only thing I have ever really succeeded at in my life is being gay. I am trying right now to get things back on track, to get myself a career, to heal myself so that I can start to succeed and not be afraid of it. I need to learn how to be happy, and being constantly told that I am not putting other people as a priority seems odd to me, right now I have to be my highest priority, I understand right now you're sick, and I will do all I can to support you in that. But I need to take care of me right now as well, so I can learn to succeed. I appreciate the help you're giving me in this, but I need you to know that it's a process and I am trying my hardest to complete it. It's really just not that easy for me.

I need to you know that I love you, I need you to know that if you ever read this, that although I am angry at you for some of what happened, I understand. I understand that you were trying to raise two young boys pretty much by yourself, and you thought a father figure was needed. I understand that getting out of a cycle of abuse is hard and difficult. You were scared and frightened, and you tried your best. I want us to move forward as much as you want to, but we can’t do it all on your terms.

I think you’re one of the strongest and bravest people I know, and I love you with all of my heart. But now more then ever, I need you to try and understand me, and with your help we can let go of the past and move on to the future. I need you to understand that even though it might not look like I’m trying in your eyes, I am trying, and part of that is re-teaching myself how to do just that.

Legend
B=Step father
R= Biological father
C=Brother
CM=Step brother
CS=Step sister
D=Step brother

Why I'm glad I got fat (again)

2011-04-04T11:42:00.000-04:00

Trigger warning: This post talks about weight and dieting, it may trigger those who have struggled with eating disorders.

I have not always been fat. It wasn’t until the end of high-school that I started to gain weight. Not having a history of worrying about weight I didn’t care too much about the weight gain until I started having problems finding clothes and my belly got bigger than I liked. I was raised with a healthy dose of scepticism about diets and the weight loss industry so I made various attempts at getting more exercise, or changing my eating without ever really going on a real diet.

2001

By the time I finished University I was over 200 lbs. I am glad to say that I did not try to lose weight for my wedding, despite the pain and humiliation of SWF (shopping while fat). I had more than one sales person condescend to me and even flat out laugh at my request. Here’s a tip, they don’t keep plus size wedding dresses on the floor, you are expected to order a dress on faith without any way of seeing how the style looks on you, and spend upwards of a grand for the privilege. In case you’re interested I found the perfect dress in a consignment shop in my size and on budget and damn if I didn’t look gorgeous come the day.

Fast-forward six months and one hell of a depression later and I was at my wit’s end with the fat. So I did what hundreds of thousands of women (and a few men) do and joined Weight Watchers. I jumped right into the points system and worked it for all it was worth – a year and a half later I had lost 85 lbs and was ready to go into ‘maintenance’ which is the WW way of saying, “you’ll be counting points for the rest of your Goddamn life b***!”

2003

Needless to say I wasn’t too thrilled with that proposition.

I thought about it and decided that I knew enough about points that I didn’t need to count them to manage my proportions, I’m sure you can all guess how realistic that was. So I slowly put the weight back on and by the time I was approaching the 200 mark again I started to panic. I knew that my bigger problem was with compulsive/binge eating, I had always known this.

If you don’t understand what it means to have compulsive eating disorder (and my case was mild compared to most who have it) picture this: I went through weeks at a time where I was never hungry. I would chew gum to trick my stomach into thinking it was hungry so I could feel comfortable eating more food. I wasn’t just not hungry, I was stuffed, there was no room. Sometimes I wanted to make myself puke just to make room for more food, I never did because that would be crossing a line I didn’t want to cross. I would sit on the couch, so full I felt like I might burst and all I could think about was the popcorn in the cupboard. I had to eat it just to shut up the agonizing argument that was playing out in my head. There were other periods where I couldn’t bring myself to do anything to prepare or get a meal into me. At these times I would just eat iceberg lettuce and saltines to keep the hunger pangs at bay, I just didn’t have the energy to care about feeding myself (come to think of it that probably had more to do with depression and loneliness).

Now that we’ve got that little explanation out of the way, where were we? Oh yes, I was pushing 200 lbs (again) and my dreams of a non-fat pregnancy were not looking good. I knew that I had to deal with my compulsive eating but I also wanted to get that weight off. I thought about joining WW again but I knew that would do nothing to address the underlying problem. At the same time a good friend was coming to terms with her alcoholism (talk about kismet) so we trundled off to the psychology book store to find some guidance. While I flipped through some books on compulsive eating I found the book that changed everything for me, Overcoming Overeating (OO) by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol h. Munter. In their book and their program they break down the connections between dieting and dysfunction, the more you diet the more firmly entrenched your self-loathing and compulsive eating. It was this book that finally converted me to being anti-diet. I had only ever been on one diet and as I worked through the steps of OO I realized just how damaged my relationship with food and my body had become. Dieting tells you that your body is the enemy, food is the enemy; there is no way that can be good for you.

2010

Over the last few years I have focused not on eating less, or restricting calories, instead I have chosen to focus on increasing the nutritive value of my food. I minimize processed foods, try to pay attention to my hunger and satiation signals and take guilt and shame out of the equation. I exercise not to lose weight but to be able to enjoy life in this body more fully, at any size. I haven’t lost a pound, but I do feel lighter. The other day I ran along side my kid and she looked at me with glee, “you can run!” she proclaimed. The joy in her voice when she sees that I can run with her now is infinitely better than any drop on the scale could be.

If I hadn’t gained that weight back I wouldn’t have learned these most valuable lessons. I wouldn’t love my body the way I do now, at any size. If you can’t love yourself fat you can’t truly love yourself thin, because you will always know that the love is conditional and self-love should never be conditional.

Weight is an issue that comes up for many new mothers as they try to adjust to or simply adjust their new momma bodies. Please always remember this, that body you’re so quick to berate gave life, that belly and those stretchmarks are not a source of shame, they are a source of pride and gratitude. Next time you look at them and start to cut yourself down, take a step back and see how it feels to love them for what they signify.

Take a deep breath and feel the love.

**********************************************

Book recommendations:

Cho, Margaret. I’m the One that I Want. New York: Ballantyne, 2001.
Hirschmann, Jane R., and Munter, Carol. Overcoming Overeating: At last! A book to help you break out of the diet/binge cycle. New York: Random House, 1988.
Hirschmann, Jane R., and Munter, Carol. When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing yourself from food and weight obsession. New York: Random House, 1995.
Matz, Judith, and Frankel, Ellen. The Diet Survivors Handbook: 60 lessons in eating, acceptance and self-care. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2006.
Shankar, Wendy. The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.

Web recommendations:
http://www.axisoffat.com/
http://blog.twowholecakes.com/ (formerly Fatshionista.com)
http://www.bigfatblog.com/

Of Boo Radley and Timbits

2011-03-21T13:29:00.001-04:00

Last week was March Break in these parts and I promptly hauled the kid up to my parents place in the country. On the way we up we stopped at Tim Horton’s, as usual, for a tea and pee break. When we took our seats I looked at Mae and she had her trademark look of worry on her face. Something was clearly upsetting her and when I followed her gaze I saw an older man, quite thin with stringy long hair and slightly saggy features, sitting at one of the banquette tables. At first I thought she was upset because she wanted to sit there but then I did the obvious thing and asked her. As she sat on my lap, unable to take her eyes off of the man, she asked me, “Mommy, what is he?” and that’s when I realized that she thought he was a monster, or at the very least a “bad guy”. I looked right into her eyes and said, “Oh sweety he’s a person just like you and me. He just looks a little bit different but he’s just a person.”

This is one of those moments where I can actually hear the voices of other hypothetical parents in my head, they say things like, “Don’t stare, that’s rude!” or they get all embarrassed and rush their child off to another table where they can’t see the “scary man”. I chose to do neither. We stayed at that table, I let her sit on my lap and ask me questions. It went a little something like this:

“Mommy, I don’t know what he can do.”
“He doesn’t have any magic or special powers, he’s just a person like you and me.”

“Mommy, why does he look like that?”
“Well everybody looks different and when you get older your hair turns white or grey and sometimes your face gets lines and that’s okay, everybody looks different.”

It’s times like this that I remind myself that she’s four-years-old; she still lives in a world where monsters might be real. She was so dismayed when she was told that super-powers weren’t real and clearly there’s a part of her that still doesn’t believe it. So when she’s afraid of someone who looks unusual it’s not that she’s rude or intolerant, it’s that she doesn’t truly know that we’re all just people. She also believes that the Disney Princess in the bad wig that she met at a birthday party really was the little mermaid which, by the way, I find much more disturbing.

So, I put myself in her shoes and try to explain to her as kindly and calmly as I can that that “funny looking” person is really just a person like everyone else. With any luck it won’t take anything nearly as dramatic as the Boo Radley rescue in To Kill a Mockingbird to convince her.

The bigger picture here and in my last post is that I don’t want to teach my kid that we turn around and run every time something scares us or upsets us. I can honour her feelings and take care of her without leaving the situation. If there is no real danger there is no need to run and if we do run, how will she know that there is no real danger?

Fear is a natural part of life and childhood, without it we could not survive, but it can also be debilitating if we don’t learn to separate real risk from perceived risk. Without that understanding fear becomes anxiety, or to paraphrase Lenore Skenazy, “risk" becomes "RISK".

So I’ll wrap up by sharing this great Canadian kids’ movie about childhood and fear:

Hmmm, I wonder if this is on DVD...

Wolves at the door and chickens up a tree

2011-03-17T13:16:00.000-04:00

This week Mae, my friend Dave, and I have been visiting my parents in the country. It’s been so good for so many reasons.

I went for a solo hike in the woods, crunching through the snow beside the river and finally laying down beneath the trees (God bless adult snow pants!) and staring up through the branches listening to the trees breathe and the river thaw.

I watched Mae and her uncle Dave play and cuddle and make up stories while I sat back with a good mystery.

I discovered one of those small town gems in an old mill converted to a used bookstore and café.

And I visited an off the grid farm with a brand new lamb.

And wolves.

Mae with 'uncle' Dave

Lately Mae has been starting to grapple with the idea that some animals eat other animals, in particular she has developed a fear of wolves. When we arrived at the farm today and got out of the car the Great Pyrenees puppy came bounding out of the trees and made a beeline for my kid who, by the way, is also afraid of dogs.

This is what the dog was thinking, “I wanna play, let’s play, I wanna play!!!!!”

Deer print in the snow

This is what my kid was thinking, “The wolf is going to eat meeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!”

Poor kid was absolutely terrified. I scooped her up and she just lost it, wailing “I want to go hoooooome!!!!!” but we stowed the dog in one of the cars and started making our way to the house. Unfortunately one of the owners of the farm tried to make her feel better by telling her that the dog kept the wolves away from the sheep. So let’s recap the 4-year-old’s mental process shall we?

The wolf is going to eat meeeeeeeeeee!!!!
Oooh, he’s not a wolf, he’s just a dog.
Oh my God there are wolves around here!!!!!

We spent a great deal of time reassuring her that the wolves stayed in the woods and they only came out at night and about an hour later, as we were leaving the farm she said, “Mommy, can I tell you something? Don’t go to the farm at night, I mean by yourself, you might be scared.” She then proceeded to give similar warnings to my mom and Dave.

I don’t know what got to me more, the thought of how scared she was of the dog or the thought of her worrying about the wolves getting us.

When I think about what she must have been feeling when that dog came at her my heart hurts but I know that staying was the right thing to do. Rather than turning around and leaving right away we addressed the fear by containing the dog and went inside to give her a chance to process it and get the cuddles and answers and silliness that she needed to move past the bad feeling and get comfortable and even happy in this new place. If I hadn’t done that she would have never wanted to go back there, as it is she’s already talking about the next time.

By the time she went to bed she was dancing around the house naked telling tales of dragon farms and chickens that climb trees.

Shake it 'til you make it - bridging the mind/body gap

2011-03-10T18:54:00.000-05:00

So here is where I tie together my recent post about exercise with my last post about kids and body image. When I decided to start working out five days a week it was not because I’m trying to lose weight. That may or may not happen, and I’m not pretending I wouldn’t appreciate being able to find more clothes that fit, but it’s not the goal. If I don’t lose weight that’s fine. If I do I’ll go shopping.

No, my commitment to exercise is motivated by two things, preventing depression and being able to keep up with my kid. More than that, I want to move my body without having to think about it. Since I’ve been exercising I already have much less back and hip pain. I can sprint up one flight of stairs and I can run across the road. In short, I want to stop feeling like my body is working against me. I want to be at home in this here temple.

When we focus on how our bodies look rather than what they can do it doesn’t take long before we start to see our body as the enemy. When you go on a diet you are waging war against yourself. This level of abstraction where we look at ourselves from the outside in and pass judgment or make comparisons only serves to create a false divide between body and mind (and soul if you’re spiritual or religious).

Recently a fellow feminist asked me to think about the body/mind divide and how it relates to feminism. I don’t have a complete answer, or at least not one I can yet put into words, but I will say this: When we teach our girls to focus on their appearance they become less and less at home in their own bodies. They don’t just feel like crap and put their bodies through the wringer in pursuit of ‘the skinny’. They also get separated from their bodies’ real needs and wants. To quote Peggy Orenstein they “struggle with the expectation to look sexy but not feel sexual. To provoke desire in others without experiencing it themselves.” (Cinderella Ate My Daughter, p. 123). How can a girl be empowered to make wise choices about sex if she is completely disconnected from her body and, as such, her sexuality.

This applies equally to men and boys. We want boys to learn to make responsible decisions about sex and relationships but when they learn that sex is a purely physical act and talk about their penises as thought they are separate entities it’s hardly surprising if they wind up abdicating responsibility for their sexual mishaps. It’s not just “boys will be boys” it’s “dicks will be dicks”.

So what am I trying to say? Kids need to feel at home in their bodies, they need to see themselves from the inside out. This applies to all kids, not just girls. What can you do as a parent? Start with yourself, if your kids see that you are comfortable in your own skin they’ve got a solid foundation. Beyond that, give your kids more chances to do things that connect them with their bodies. Play outside, engage in sports just for fun, dance, build something, knit something. Let them learn for themselves what they’re body is capable of, give them the joy of teaching it new tricks. Let them fall down.

Talk to them about how they’re body feels, what does nervous feel like? What does happy feel like? Most emotions have some kind of physical sensation connected to them; being connected to your body helps you to be connected to your feelings. If your kids understand this they will be better able to make decisions that honour those feelings.

Parenting is always hard but when you put in some extra work in the early years to build that strong foundation it pays off tenfold down the road.

Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t always “get it right”. Nobody’s perfect. When it comes to being a good parent it’s all in the trying.

Shake it 'til you make it - kicking body shame to the curb

2011-03-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

Last month Cecily Kellogg wrote a post on She Knows Parenting with tips on not passing body shame on to your daughter. Everything she said was bang on to my mind but it got me thinking about how I talk about my body with Mae.

I think it’s vital that we not say negative things about our bodies in front of our kids (or, you know, ever) and equally important that we don’t talk a lot about appearances good or bad. With Mae, though, I find I take it a step further. I want her to see that not only do I not hate my body, I love it – jiggles and all.

Sometimes when we’re on the couch together I lift my shirt a little and make jokes about how much fun it is to jiggle my belly, as far as she’s concerned mamas belly is way more fun than daddy’s. She knows that it’s easier to do her flips with me because my body has more surface area on which to plant her feet.

Yesterday we were showing each other our bum dances.

See, I don’t think it’s just about not shaming myself, I want her to see that I am comfortable in my body, more than that, that I can love my big bum and my squishy belly.

The other day she asked me about my stretch marks. I told her that when she was growing in my belly it stretched out really big and left these lines on my belly. I also told her that I like them because they’re my mommy lines and then showed her the cool pattern they make around my piercing scar. Seriously, it’s like a sunburst, it’s awesome.

I think her favourite part is that my belly button is so deep I can hold a marble in it, I mean seriously what kid wouldn’t like that.

This is what it comes down to, I don’t think it’s enough to not talk about our fat or our imperfections. If we never acknowledge them then isn’t there still some hidden message of shame? But when we talk about it in a matter a fact way, and even highlight something positive or fun about it? That is when we’re showing our kids what positive body-image looks like, and who knows, maybe we’ll start to believe it too.

Name that tune!

2011-03-08T14:36:00.000-05:00

Okay so here we go with my first contest. The first person who leaves a comment identifying these four songs gets 4 FREE life coaching session with yours truly. Coaching is done over the phone or Skype so you don't have to be local to me to enter.

To win you need the artist and either the song name or album name.

1) I was locked
into being my mother's daughter
I was just eating bread and water
thinking
nothing ever changes

2) Everywhere that I go
There's someone waitin' to chain me
Everything that I say
There's someone tryin' to short-change me
I am only this way
Because of what you have made me
And I'm not gonna break!

3)Dare you to do what you want
Dare you to be who you will
Dare you to cry right out loud

4)Some mommies are ranchers, or poetry makers
Or doctors or teachers, or cleaners or bakers
Some mommies drive taxis, or sing on TV
Yeah, mommies can be almost anything they want to be

This is not about Charlie Sheen

2011-03-03T15:06:00.000-05:00

It’s times like this that make you think about why you’re on Twitter. I don’t watch much TV and when I do I never watch ‘entertainment news’ or even regular news. So I had no idea why everyone suddenly couldn’t shut up about Charlie Sheen a week or so ago. .

This post is not about Charlie Sheen. It’s also not about Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears or Michael Jackson. Hell it’s not even about Mel Gibson.

So let’s start with this: it is not fun or funny to watch someone descend into addiction, eating disorders or mental illness. Ever. Not when it’s your parent, not when it’s your kid, not even when it’s some shiny bigger than life pop star.

I was going to write about what’s wrong with the way we bully celebs but I think Ellen said it well in her interview with Perez Hilton, and to his credit Perez seems to, for the most part, be keeping his promise to change his bullying ways.

I’ve never liked they way celebrities get talked about, it’s cruel and it creates an atmosphere that fosters unkindness on a much larger scale, but when they’re struggling with mental health and addictions it’s so much worse. So many people are affected by these issues and yet so many people are so quick to jump on the ‘opportunity’ to, as Craig Ferguson put it, put their penny in to laugh at the lunatics. It was cruel in the 18th century and it’s cruel now.

It’s funny when you think about it. When you’re homeless and you’re “crazy” or addicted it’s easy for people to distance themselves by dehumanizing you and mocking you and the same is true when you’re a celebrity. People have always been adept at othering mental illness and addiction, when you partner it with extreme wealth/fame or extreme poverty it’s a double whammy.

But when it comes down to it mean is mean, no matter who you aim it at. If we really want our kids to grow up in a kinder, more compassionate world we need to take responsibility for our words and start to be the change we want to see in the world.

Why not start by signing on to the Charter for Compassion.

Behavioural modification with stickers (or how I got off my ass and got moving)

2011-02-28T20:53:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in my last post I’ve been working on getting up to working out 5 days a week. So I would now like to say, drum roll please…….I’ve made it to 4 weeks in a row of getting up at 6am Monday to Friday to bust my ass!

*bow* Thankyou!

I know, I know you’re all wondering, “Kristin how did you manage this amazing feat??!” Or maybe not. I realize that this would not be amazing for everyone but I’m not worried about everyone, for me this is huge. Why? Because I have been planning and hoping to get to this point for years and then about four months ago I had a good long think about what I needed to do differently, what was really getting in my way. I like exercising, I have the equipment I need, and I like doing it first thing in the morning so what was holding me back? For a long time I thought that it was because I just couldn’t seem to get to bed early enough but I finally decided that that was beside the point. I clearly needed a new approach to making change so I applied my coach-brain to the problem and this is what I came up with.

Several years ago I went on Weight Watchers and lost 85 pounds. Now before you get all, “way to go!” let me tell you two important facts; first, I gained it all back within two years and second, it took all of my existing dysfunctions around food and cranked them up to eleven. My goals now are not about weight loss they are about health and I trust that if I am eating well and exercising well that my weight will be whatever it needs to be and I’m okay with that. More specifically, I want to be able to keep up with my kid. I want to run with her in the park and chase a soccer ball around without getting winded. I want to be able to get up down from the picnic blanket without it being a production. I want to run and jump and dance with her without even thinking about it.

Of course my other major motivator is that regular exercise has such a good track record as an effective way to help prevent depression so if I truly want to give this whole med-free treatment thing a chance I need to have a fitness routine in place.

So, now that I’ve got that explanation out of the way, here’s how I came up with ‘the plan’. While I was trying to figure out if I should take it slow or dive right in I started to think about why I was so able to just jump into Weight Watchers and why I was able to stick with it for almost two years. Once I figured that out I applied it to exercise. The key differences here are that I’m not relying on a group for support and accountability and, unlike counting points, exercise is a habit that is sustainable through life.

The Plan:

Take it slow but have a clear time-frame for progress

For me this meant doing twice a week for four weeks then another four weeks at three times a week and finally graduating to five days a week.

Create some kind of symbolic reward system that helps me track my progress and hold onto that sense of accomplishment

I got a day-timer to use as my exercise log and marked off each day I worked out with what I did and then put in a star sticker for each workout. I also made a chart on bristol board dividing up each ‘stage’ of the plan with a square for each week. When I successfully completed a weeks allotted workouts I got a Dr. Seuss sticker and when I completed a stage I got a big fat sticker.

At the end of three months once I’ve established a strong routine I get some kind of a tangible reward.

I’m still deciding what that will be but I will be sure not to let this slide because I think I deserve it.

And most importantly: I don’t beat up on myself or feel bad if something (like my stepfather sleeping in my basement/gym) gets in the way of me exercising. The big picture is that I'm doing it, a missed workout here or there does not take away from the major goal.

Now that I’m here I can already feel such a difference, I’m having a lot less back and hip pain, I move more easily and I can sprint up a the stairs without getting winded. When spring comes I’ll be moving it outdoors and getting on the bike and I’m hoping to find someone to teach me tennis and play with me regularly so that I can have another recreational exercise.

The hardest part is getting started but now, I’m just so damn proud of myself.

I can’t wait to see how I feel in another three months.

Depression Part 7: Letting go of the meds

2011-02-23T20:14:00.002-05:00

*I know I know, it's been like a month since I posted part 6 but what can I say I've been living in a fog of code as I got my website ready for all the eager beavers who will be flocking to register for my free group coaching.

So this is the post where I tie it all up in a pretty bow and talk about treating depression without the drugs. I’ve been on this antidepressant for a few years now and it’s helped me get to where I needed to be but I’ll be damned if I’ll be on meds for the rest of my life. Plus, no one can convince me that it’s good for my brain to have its chemistry perpetually altered. So I started thinking about what I would need to do in order to do this right and this is what I've come up with...

A two pronged approach to self administered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Optimism: Not the “everything’s cheery I see no wrong in the world” brand of optimism but the optimism outlined by Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism. Over many years of research Seligman developed a theory and approach to depression based on learning how to recognize and change the way in which you explain positive and negative events. People with depression tend to have a pessimistic explanatory style which leads them to feel perpetually helpless in the face of adversity whereas those with an optimistic explanatory style seem to be much less prone to depression. In his book Seligman outlines his research and describes in detail how you can re-train yourself to adopt a more adaptive approach. If you’re a parent you may want to look at The Optimistic Child as well.

Mindfulness: Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has been found to be as effective in preventing remission as antidepressants. I could pay $900 to go through the 8 week program but that would mean living on fumes for a couple of months so I’ll be content with following the program outlined in The Mindful Way Through Depression.

Feeding the feedback loop (mind-body/body-mind)

Exercise: Several studies have found that regular exercise is an effective treatment for depression (for example: https://www.cebp.nl/media/m1121.pdf). There are various theories as to why but honestly I don’t care why I just care that I can get healthy physically and mentally at the same time. To that end I have been putting into practice my own strategy to get up to exercising five days a week.

Supplements: My stepfather has an obsessive personality and in the last few years his obsession has been finding out everything he can about alternative health including learning all about every possible nutritional supplement and what it’s good for. He has advised me that fish oil, B Complex, D3 and Magnesium are the most important supplements in helping with depression so that’s what I’m taking^[1]. There are also theories about enzymes but for that you have to get tested by a naturopath and that just ain’t in the budget.

So that, in a nutshell, is the plan. Much of it is already in place so the next step is talking to my doctor about weaning off the meds. I’m not gonna lie, it’s kinda scary but I have confidence that I can do this and I will do it in a safe and well-managed way. Maybe I’ll even give you all some updates along the way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] References for supplements

Fish oil
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2003/08/20/fishoil_030820.html
http://www.mental-health-matters.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1034
http://www.webmd.com/depression/features/fish-oil-to-treat-depression

Vitamin D
http://www.improve-mental-health.com/vitamin-D-and-depression.html

B complex:
http://depression.about.com/cs/diet/a/vitamin.htm
http://www.depression-guide.com/b-depression-vitamin.htm

Magnesium:
http://www.real-depression-help.com/magnesium-for-depression.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4907207_treat-depression-magnesium.html

General diet:
http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/diet-recovery

Part1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

New group coaching for moms with special needs kids!

2011-02-19T11:36:00.001-05:00

I know I haven't posted in a while and I still have my final installment of my depression series in the works but I've been busy getting ready for my first foray into group coaching so on that note....

Announcing FREE group coaching for moms with special needs kids

*For the purposes of this group coaching session special needs is defined as having behavioural, psychological or neurological differences.

On April fourth I will be launching the group coaching part of my practice. Because this program is still in Beta, as it were, I will be offering this inaugural session for free in exchange for honest and meaningful feedback to help me hone my group coaching skills.

There is room for 4-8 people and the registration deadline is March 28th and you can sign up online here

What is group coaching you ask?

In group coaching I work with a group of people with shared interests or goals for several weeks. In each sixty-minute call we focus on one topic by creating a safe space in which group members may share and support each other. As the coach I will maintain a safe space, keep things on track and guide the group using thoughtful feedback and powerful questions.

Advantages of Group Coaching:

Group coaching is a more cost effective approach for those who are unable to pay the full fees for individual coaching.
It’s a great way to connect with others who face similar challenges and hear different perspectives.
Perfect for those who would like to get a taste of coaching or a feel for my approach before committing to one on one coaching.

Depression, Part 6: Coming out the other side

2011-01-23T22:32:00.001-05:00

After a short-lived remission, in which I managed to get some more training and still find no decent work, I dropped right back into the pit. I was a complete mess, I knew I needed to find help but I didn’t know where to turn. Finding mental health care is never easy, not just because of its scarcity or the expense, but because doing anything that requires initiative is so damn hard when you most need that help. So Howard, in his matter of fact way, helped me in the best way that he could. Each day he helped me set one achievable goal.

So I figured out that if I was going to find affordable help I would need to find either a GP psychologist or a GP psychotherapist*. A shrink was never really an option because I’ve never trusted them to go much beyond medication and there’s a massive waiting list to get in to see one. In the end I got a referral from a friend of a friend and I started seeing Dr. B__.

What a jackass.

Before I go into this let me tell you about the last few months of my last depression. Dr. B__ did, in fact, put me on antidepressants but they take about six weeks to kick in and let me tell you that was one hell of a six weeks. I was working a temp retail job for the holidays and I got sent home more than once because I broke down in tears in the break room and couldn’t get my shit together.

Those public tears were the worst because when someone sees you crying they do one of two things: ignore you or ask you what’s wrong. So over and over again I had to say, “I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression, I’ve started meds but they haven’t kicked in yet.” I realize that I didn’t have to “out” myself in this manner but I’m not so big on the lying and what the hell was I supposed to say? Also, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t believe in shame. There’s also a certain freedom in being able to say that. Not just because it challenges the stigma but because it means I don’t have to start examining my life and myself for all the “good reasons” I might have for feeling like I’d been crushed by an emotional anvil.

Things not to say when your friend tells you she’s suffering from depression and has started on meds:

“Aren’t you worried that you won’t be you anymore?” – Well if you mean I won’t be a miserable wreck white knuckling my way through life? No, I’m not worried at all. I am looking forward to finding out who I am when I’m not depressed though.

“I don’t know, those drugs sound scary” – You know what’s scarier? Worrying that everyone you love will eventually get sick of you and your issues and you will be left alone with this bone crushing misery.

“If you would just accept Jesus into your heart you wouldn’t need those drugs” – Wow, thanks for your evangelical condescension, why don’t you come back to me when you know how to engage with me as a person rather than as a “lost soul.”

Remember when I said good mental healthcare is hard to find? I spent close to a year with Dr. B__ and I can honestly say I would have been better off talking to my cat. First he tried to put me on drugs for adult ADD because obviously being weird or unusual is a symptom and not just who I am. Then he kept telling me every other session that there was a ‘voice’ in my head dedicated to sabotaging me but he never actually said anything about how to deal with that ‘voice.’ I’m pretty sure that just telling it to shut up won’t do the trick so where the hell is the therapy here??!! Finally, when I told him that I felt like we hadn’t gone into anything in depth and that I wanted to deal with the patterns of thinking that I had developed over a lifetime of depression, he said I was having “obsessive thinking” and tried to put me on an anti-psychotic.

Seriously.

I walked out of there feeling lost. I had wasted so much time with that jackass. If he had read any of the research on treating depression he would have known exactly what I meant about the depressive thinking but he didn’t. He didn’t know shit. Needless to say that was my last session with Dr. B__.

Eventually I did find a good therapist but it wasn’t easy. I knew what I was looking for and I went through the listings on the Ontario Society of Psychotherapists, ranked them by location, specialization and approach. I started calling people and asking two questions: Are you taking patients? Do you do sliding scale?

No one was taking patients but many were willing to make suggestions or give me contact info for someone else. I followed up every suggestion, most of which resulted in further suggestions, until finally I found someone who was still doing her PhD and willing to take me on for next to nothing.**

Best. Therapist. Ever.

In about six months the change in me was obvious to everyone around me. I felt lighter. I had officially run out of “issues” to talk about with her.

So now, it’s been about 3 ½ years since I finished therapy and I finally know what happy is. I feel good about who I am and where I am in my life. Not that there isn’t room for improvement but where I’m at is good, and where I’m going is even better.

There’s just one little thing niggling at me: I don’t want to spend the rest of my life medicated.

*Fun fact: In Ontario any practitioner who is a licensed GP (medical degree) is covered by OHIP (medicare). This is a handy loophole for those of us who can’t afford $120 an hour for mental healthcare. There are, however, a scant few who actually fit the bill so there’s no guarantee you’ll find anyone in your community (There are only five GP psychotherapists accepting patients in all of Ontario right now).

**I was well medicated at this point and not in the midst of a depression. If this is what it takes to get some real help, how can anyone who’s actually in the throes of mental illness be expected to find any help at all?

Part1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 7

Depression, Part 5: If you're not going to kill yourself you're wasting my time

2011-01-20T16:17:00.002-05:00

In the summer of 2001 I graduated from University (with distinction, thank you very much), got married and moved to Toronto. I left the warm bosom of my much loved Uni for what seemed to me the cold concrete hell of the big city.

In the last semester of my undergraduate I felt the fog descending. I knew that this was it. I kept my grades up, got accepted into graduate school, and planned a wedding, all the while knowing that there were dark days ahead.

A week after my honeymoon I pulled a Britney Spears. I’d had my head shaved many times before and loved it – I still remember those days fondly – but this time was different. This was self-punishment. This was an act of despair. I started regretting it before I even finished but there was no turning back.

Before I go any further I should explain one thing. At some point in my depression addled adolescence I had formed the belief that I would not live past the age of twenty-five. It was totally irrational but there it was. It sat quietly somewhere in the bottom of my mind until the summer of 2001, when I turned twenty-five. That was the worst birthday ever. I was a royal bitch to my partner and two friends who were trying their hardest to make it good. The twisted thing is that I wasn’t afraid of some mysterious demise, no. I was terrified of the reality that I was going to live. The thought that I was, in fact, going to have to live another fifty or more years in this misery was soul-crushing.

Oh please God don’t make me live this broken life forever.

A month later I started my Masters. I woke up, went to school, and came home. I avoided going anywhere else. I developed a kind of social anxiety that I couldn’t properly explain. I got to a point where I could no longer control my tears. At any moment I could burst into tears with very little warning. If anyone asked me how I was doing I would cry. If anyone hugged me I would cry. I cried in the copy room, I cried in the bathroom, I cried in my office. I went to the on-campus counselling but didn’t stick with it. By halfway through the second term I knew I was done. I knew that I didn’t want to be an academic and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through the rest of the term.

Somewhere in there Howard got really worried. We talked about it and decided to go to the urgent care (or whatever they call it) at CAMH (Centre for Mental Health and Addiction). I spoke to a resident in the presence of his semi-conscious supervisor (seriously, I thought he was going to snore) and I finally got my official diagnosis: Recurring Situational Depression. He said that I should go on an antidepressant but he couldn’t write the prescription so he would call my doctor with the information.

He never called. By the time I realized that my doctor hadn’t heard from him he was no longer at the number I had been given.

It had taken me so long to build up the momentum to even reach out for that help and it just disappeared in a puff of smoke. The impression I got from the people I dealt with at CAMH was that if I wasn’t on the brink of killing myself helping me just wasn’t a priority.

Depression, Part 4: Round and round we go

2011-01-18T16:36:00.003-05:00

My first year in G__ I went through another depression. I was living in a basement apartment on welfare, with no job prospects in sight. The few friends that I had were all in school with active pre-existing social lives and I wound up holed up in that basement feeling completely isolated and alone. I lived on burritos, slept through the mornings and went for several days at a time with no human contact. I left only to go through the motions of job hunting and to keep appointments with my therapist. I think I went for weeks at a time with no physical contact. I could not imagine how I was ever going to be able to move forward with life. My ray of light came when a friend’s roommate moved out and she invited me to move in. I’m not going to say that my depression instantly lifted but slowly but surely I came out of it as I connected with my roommates and got back into the world.

Over the next five or so years I found some work, met my future husband and went to University. All things I thought would never happen. A lot of people say that University was the best time of their life but for me that was more true than for most because that was the longest stretch of non-depressed fully engaged life I had had since childhood. I got a taste of belonging and I got a taste of hope. I found things that truly excited me and was able to surround myself with people who made me feel accepted for who I was. I had some downturns but they were short-lived, and I certainly had my fair share of stress but it was a great time and I felt very much alive.

And yet….

I never had any illusions that it would last. I always knew that the next depression was just around some corner, waiting to blindside me. I knew I wasn’t “cured,” I was in temporary remission. Depression was my Sword of Damocles and I always felt it dangling over my head. I had hope, tempered by dread.

That is what it means to be “living with depression.” Even when you are not in the midst of a major depressive episode you are still living with depression, it is your constant bedfellow, it is the horse’s head you don’t want to find on your pillow. With every tear-soaked tissue you ask yourself, “Is this it? Am I going to the dark side again?”

So even when things were good, I felt broken. I feared a life lived in fear. Please God let me

Not.Be.Broken.

I can’t tell you why I didn’t talk to my doctor or go to the University provided counselling. I think maybe I didn’t think I should bother anyone with it if I wasn’t actually depressed. I think that that little saboteur in my head was telling me that I was just a drama queen. I think mostly I’d gotten used to the idea that I was on my own with this one. At that point I had gone through two youth support workers, one youth counsellor, two psychotherapists, two anti-depressants and several changes of scene. I had developed learned helplessness about my depression (If you’ve read Martin Seligman, you’ll see the irony here).

Depression, Part 3: Sassy magazine, diagnosing depression since 1992

2011-01-14T16:26:00.004-05:00

After my suicide attempt I felt this odd sense of calm but it came with the knowledge that it was temporary. I felt as though a pressure valve had been released but I knew that the pressure would build again pretty quickly, such is the nature of depression*. I spoke to my mother and we decided that it might be best for me to move back home to be with my parents. If I were her I would have been so damned relieved about that. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to think about sending me back to St. C__ knowing the state I was in.

So I went back and it was insane. One friend received death threats, another OD’d on painkillers, another went to emerg with toxic levels of booze and pot in her system and I got to take another friend to the cops in the middle of the night to (finally) report a rape that had happened a year ago. Why did I ever want to leave that place?

There aren’t a lot of options for mental health care in the Canadian boonies but my mom did manage to get me in with a counselor of some sort. She was nice but she didn’t seem to know how to go beyond the regular run of the mill teen stuff, you know, “How’s school? Do you have a boyfriend?” so I didn’t really get much out of it.

During this time I read an article in a teen magazine about clinical depression. There was a checklist of symptoms and I had pretty much all of them so I went to my family doctor and said, “I did this quiz about depression and I think I might be clinically depressed.” “Do you want an antidepressant?” she said, “There’s this new one called Prozac, here ya go. Remember you can’t OD on these! All they’ll do is make you really anxious if you do.”

That was how I got on Prozac at fifteen, pretty rigorous process right?

After that crazy semester I moved back to St. C__ and stuck with the Prozac, which seemed to be working alright, until I got sick of being so freakin’ edgy all the time. I went to see “Dr. Giggles” (totally forgettable ‘90s horror film) with a friend and I couldn’t get out of my seat for five minutes because I was shaking so badly.

After I switched from Prozac to Trazodone my pool game improved noticeably.

A few months later I decided – without consulting my doctor – that I was doing much better so I stopped taking my meds. Seriously, what the hell is going on when a teenager is on psychotropic drugs and no mental health professional is monitoring her well-being? My doc never even noticed that I wasn’t getting refills anymore.

Fortunately, to my best recollection, I managed well enough for the rest of highschool, even with all the craziness that went on. After graduation I moved back home and my mom got me into therapy with a friend of hers, once again, nice woman but it didn’t really get me anywhere.

I can’t believe how many times and ways I tried to deal with this shit before I was even an adult. It’s no wonder I felt like I would be forever broken.

It wasn’t until I left home again and moved to G__ that I had my next major – and I mean major – episode of depression.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Post script: When I was sixteen I was diagnosed with a second degree gastric ulcer. I’m pretty sure it’s from taking 30 painkillers in one shot. No one ever thinks about the consequences of an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Hell, no one even talks about all the kids who try to kill themselves. We only ever seem to talk about the ones who ‘succeed.’

Post post script: When they say don’t mix alcohol with antidepressants they’re not joking. The few times that I did get drunk I crashed hardcore, both times I wound up taking a handful of antidepressants. The first time it was Prozac and not even the doctor at the ER was concerned about it. The second time I was convinced by another party-goer to make myself puke, good thing because that was Trazodone which contains a powerful sedative. I’ve only just clued in that that could have killed me or at least put me in a coma, so thanks Dave D. I didn’t like you much but you may have saved my life, good on ya!

*Each episode of depression increases the likelihood of another episode by 16%.
Williams, Teasdale, Segal, and Kabat-Sinn. The mindful way through depression. (2007).

Depression, Part 2: Falling down the rabbit hole

2011-01-13T15:39:00.005-05:00

Strong Language: I usually don't swear on this blog but I'm making an exception for this series because sometimes there's no other word that works.

I’m going to back up a bit here because after reading over Part 1 I feel like I’ve glossed over a lot of grade nine and ten. I don’t want to fixate but I do want to talk honestly about how my depression played out. In the early stages of my first trip down the rabbit hole there were a few occasions where I stopped dead in my tracks and sat my ass down in the street. The ‘friends’ around me were gob-smacked, they had no idea what to do with me. I wouldn’t move, I wouldn’t speak, I just froze. I can’t tell you what was going through my head except that I was struck with a sort of emotional paralysis that rendered me unable to take one more step or say one more word. What the hell could I even say if someone asked me what was wrong? Nothing. I had no answers that would make any sense to anyone. Sometimes I felt like I was going crazy.

In grade ten I was at a coliseum dance (not at school so the only adults around were the cops on the look out for drunk minors) and I had what I can only call a dissociative episode. I was sitting on a table, back against the wall with my arms wrapped around my knees. On one level I still knew where I was and what was going on but on another level I had no fucking clue. I’m sure I started with that sense of misery and isolation that so often hit me at dances and parties. I was sitting alone, staring vacantly and falling deeper and deeper into that dark place when I hit seem deep existential confusion. I started rocking and muttering, “Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I?” I eventually went to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall and continued to clutch my knees to my chest, no longer able to speak at all – just numb.

When my friend, who was putting me up for the night, came in to get me I wouldn’t speak. She pounded on the door, she begged and pleaded but her ride was there and she eventually gave up. When the dance was over I got kicked out of the bathroom and the building. The dissociation was gone but I still couldn’t seem to open my mouth. I sat on the curb wondering where I was going to sleep that night. I didn’t want to knock on anyone’s door, I didn’t want to call home, I didn’t want to wake anyone up.

When my mom came to get me (because obviously my friend had called her) I still wouldn’t speak. It was the closest she ever came to putting me in the psych ward.

I’m writing about these episodes because I think they illustrate how profound the depression was for me. And more importantly, how shocking it is to me that nobody at that school ever asked me if I needed help. Not one invitation to the guidance councillor, not one busybody teacher. It never occurred to me that it wasn’t entirely up to me to figure it out and fix it. No fourteen-year-old should feel that way.

And that is why at the end of grade ten I told my mother I had to leave, and although it hurt her to let me leave home so early, she did what she had to do and helped me get out.

Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

The monkey on my back: Depression, part 1

2011-01-09T23:03:00.003-05:00

I’m going to depart from writing about parenting for a bit to share a bit of my story. There’s been a lot of talk lately on CBC and on Twitter about mental illness so I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell my story.

I’ve posted before about my depression (here and here) but I’ve been feeling a little ambivalent about going into it in any great detail. I worry that if I talk about it too much I am letting it define me, or worse, people will think that I’m whining (I know, I know you don’t have to say it, I shouldn’t be so hard on myself right?). But then I think about that person out there who might read it and feel a little less alone, or a little more understood or even, dare I say it, hopeful for the future (unlikely, I know since I’m pretty sure that most of my twelve readers have already known me for ten or more years).

So there I was waffling about writing about my own “history of mental illness.” When I finally figured out how I want to talk about it. What I don’t want to do is just write about how miserable I was. But what I do want to do is write about my journey, and everything I did along the way to try to get better. I’m not going to do this in one post, that would be too long, so I’ll break it up into parts. So here’s part one, please stick with me, I promise it gets better if you just stick it out.

**********************************************************
Part 1: Genesis

I’m not really sure when I started experiencing depression. When I think back to my preteen years I know I cried a lot but that’s only to be expected when the kids at school treat you like a leper. No, I don’t think I was depressed back then. I did, however, have some anxiety issues. When I was about ten I had a terrifying panic attack, complete with hallucinations. When I was eleven I was drawing symbols of protection all around my mattress to protect me from demons in the night. Even now I hesitate to write this. It’s heartbreaking for me to think of my eleven-year-old self so worried, so scared. And yet at the time, it didn’t seem strange. Those symbols, written in marker and indecipherable to anyone else, made me feel safe and that was good enough for me.

It wasn’t until I was thirteen and in grade nine that I really hit that wall of depression. It did not just come out of the blue. There was a clear precipitating factor and I guess if I’m going to be honest I will have to tell that story one day, but not yet, I just can’t go there right now. Suffice it to say that my first two boyfriends gave me a crash course in what not to date.

My depressions were what you would call functional depressions. I put on a good face, I joked with my friends (if I had any at the time), I did my homework and talked on the phone at all hours.

And yet,

I cried, alone in my room.
I felt like there was a physical weight pushing me into the ground.
I had what I affectionately referred to as “flip-outs” where I would fall to the ground sobbing, wailing and hyper-ventilating.
I wished I could just disappear.

By grade ten I was imagining the best way to commit suicide.

So here’s the part where I start fighting back, my first step towards getting better. I went to my mom and asked her to let me leave home. I was fifteen.

So I got away from the bullies and the vicious rumours and the ex-boyfriend but I left behind my loving parents and the best friend I’d ever had.

It wasn’t until I left behind my crappy circumstances that I realized that the sadness, the sheer misery that was my internal life, would follow me wherever I went. I had several sessions with a “youth support worker” but when she told me that my feelings were stupid and refused to talk about what I wanted to talk about I told her off and walked out.

That Christmas I tried to kill myself.

One of the last things I wrote in my journal before I downed a bottle of Naproxin was, “I don’t even have the balls to kill myself.”

Postscript: As I read this over there is this little voice in my head saying "You're such a drama queen, stop whining already, nobody wants to hear about this." I'm choosing to ignore that voice. I choose to assume that the voice is wrong because if I start listening to that voice, the depression gets the last word.

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Super Zebra vs. The Evil Television (or why my kid doesn't watch TV)

2011-01-04T15:55:00.000-05:00

I am definitely turning out to be the granola mom on the playground. Whether it’s the careful disbursement of Halloween candy, the homemade spelt muffins or the fact that *gasp* Mae doesn’t watch TV, I find myself frequently feeling as though I have to explain my parenting decisions in a way that is honest and yet doesn’t make others feel as though they are being judged. This is particularly true when it comes to the whole TV thing. So I’ve decided it’s about time that I post about why my kid doesn’t watch it and what I think she gets out of this.

Let me be clear, I am a recovering TV addict. This is a phrase tossed around by many people but when I say it, I mean it. My fondness for the tube has interfered with my life, it has been a crutch and a vice, it has hurt me, it has left me in tears because I couldn’t figure out how to get it under control. At this moment I have it in hand, but I’m not kidding when I say that it’s a day by day kind of thing. So when I decided to limit my kid's TV viewing, especially in the first 5 years, I did not make the decision lightly and I did not make it from some “intellectually elite” position.

So here we go. Reasons why my kid doesn’t watch TV:

Commercials. Advertising directly to small children is flat out unethical. The best way to give a kid a case of the gimme gimmes is by sitting them in front of an onslaught of toy and junk food ads.
Many children’s shows are glorified commercials for all the associated merchandise (I challenge you to go into Zellers and find something as simple as a kids chair that doesn’t have Dora, Diego or a Disney Princess plastered across it.
Time in front of the tube is time on her ass. If my kid is going to sit in one spot not moving for half an hour let it be because she’s drawing or doing crafts or creating some convoluted story with her Playmobil sets.
Time in front of the tube is time not engaging with the world, anything she learns from the TV is passive learning, it only goes so deep. She could learn about nature by watching Sid the Science Kid or she could go outside and examine a leaf herself.
Gender conditioning. Mae is in JK now, this means that she is now playing with kids who watch TV. I can’t tell you how many times another girl has asked her to play princess since she started school. I’ve posted before about my objections to the rampant princess-mania among the kindergarten set. But to summarize, I’d rather my girl see a whole world of options for who she can be rather than becoming focused on something which largely celebrates prettiness, fancy things and finding the right man. Between the shows themselves and the commercials throughout, kids watching TV are getting a steady feed of gender typing. Not my kid.
I could start siting research on the ill effects of TV on small children but my intention is not to lecture, it is to share MY reasons so I’ll leave it at this: You ask why not TV? I ask, why TV? I can’t think of any reason to put her in front of the TV.

Our little Triops

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that she’s never seen it. When she was smaller and less able to handle being without me for a few minutes I, like most parents, let her watch a little commercial free TV while I went to the bathroom or grabbed a quick shower. As she got older and more willing and able to play on her own there was less and less. So now we’ve got a little girl in JK who doesn’t watch TV and still, miraculously, doesn’t know who Dora is and I love that. So now let me tell you why I’m so glad of this. Here’s a sample of some of the games and personas she likes to play.

King Mae
Queen Mae
Super Zebra vs. the Bad guy
Triops (three eyed monster)
Tripod (three legged monster)
Jose (after I said “no way Jose”)
Dragon
Ghost
Fairy
Sword fighting
Rock show

She also spends twenty to sixty minutes a day drawing and/or doing crafts. For anyone interested, the Magnadoodle is the best toy she’s ever had. She started drawing on that when she was two and it still has pride of place in our living room.

When she was talking about what she wants to be when she grows up these were some of her ideas:

Construction worker
Mommy
Art gallery owner
Superhero

I’m just not convinced the list would be so varied and interesting if she was being “educated” by Treehouse.

So these are my reasons, or at least the ones that are coming to me right now. Everyone has to make their own decisions for their own reasons but the most important thing is that we know our reasons. It’s easy to slip into autopilot, in life and in parenting, so my challenge to you is to think about one parenting decision you’ve made and really think about why. What options did you consider? How did you make your decision? What values did you draw on? If you want, you can use this exercise or just write out a list. If you’re willing to share I’d love to see what you come up with, just leave it in the comments and we’ll see where it takes us.

And this is what a Daddy does

2010-12-22T20:11:00.002-05:00

Me and my Daddy

Before the school break started I had all these ambitions for making the best of these free days with Mae. I was going to take road trips and field trips and blah de blah blah. But then, when the time came, the very thought of it seemed exhausting. So instead we’ve been spending the mornings lazing around the house doing crafts, playing games, having dance parties – you know, the usual – and going wherever our merry little hearts take us in the afternoon.

Today we went to see “Horton Hears a Who”, her second movie ever, and she thought it was great. She couldn’t tell you what the hell it was about, but she loved it nonetheless.

When we left the theatre I mentioned that we might end up on the same bus home as Daddy since it was about that time of rush hour and she was very pleased with the idea. So picture this:

Mother and child disembark streetcar and start crossing the platform towards a sardine packed bus, child yells out “Daddy Daddy!” and mother sees her beloved spouse sitting in the back half of the bus. She waves. He waves and gets up with the intention of getting off the bus. He gets as far as the doors, only feet from his excited little girl, when the doors close and the bus pulls away. Mother looks down to find child distraught with tears streaming down her face.

That kid loves her dad.

So, I picked her up and walked over to the massive crowd waiting for the next bus while she wails and sobs and several women in the crowd look on with sympathy and try to comfort her (seriously, I do love this city). I’m standing there, holding my 36 pounder, arms about to give as I sway from side to side singing “Stand By Me” when I turn around to see Howard coming our way. That’s right, he rang the bell, got off at the next stop and walked back to the station, and that’s without even knowing that she was crying. That’s a great dad.

Needless to say she held on to him all the way home, at one point telling him, “hold my hand tight Daddy.”

I love that man, now more than ever. After sticking with me through all of my craziness, he has shown me time and again, in a million little ways, what a great father and partner looks like. He is not an emotionally expressive man but I know that Mae will never doubt his love for her.

So this post goes out to all of the fathers out there who really know what it means to be a father. I lost mine when I was about Mae’s age and let me tell you, when you are a truly involved father, that is the greatest gift you can give your child, your partner and yourself – but of course, you already knew that.

To all of the parents out there doing there best to bring the love, Merry Festivus, and a very Happy New Year!

Happy happy, joy joy

2010-12-20T21:05:00.000-05:00

I had planned for this post to be about something else but then I read the call from Aunt Becky over at Mommy Wants Vodka to post about what makes us smile or laugh. As far as laughter goes, it breaks down into a few basic categories: stuff my kid does, smart satire, irreverent goofy punk music and what I affectionately refer to as 12-year-old boy humour.

Today my kid had this really long, loud fart (or toot as she calls them), giggled and said, “excuse me.” Then she proceeded with this little bit of ‘dialogue’: bbbbbbbbbbbrt

Excuse me

Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbrt

Excuse me

Bbbbbbbbrt

I said excuse me toots

Bbbbbbbbbbbbrt

I said excuse me toots, stop tooting!

That kid cracks me up, here are a couple more quotes for ya.

“When I grow up I want to be a mommy who eats chocolate everyday, just like you.”

“I’m the king and today is the day that I have to get married, that’s why I’m wearing this dress.” When asked who she was marrying she grabbed two stuffed animals, named them after a boy and girl in her class and said, “I’m marrying them.”

So moving on from laughing to smiling. I smile when I see my partner getting really into some imaginary game with our daughter, he comes off all reserved to others but he spends his weekends and evenings being princess Humperdinck, Splat the Cat or anyone else she appoints him to be. My father died when I was around Mae’s age and watching her with her dad makes me feel like I can finally get a feel for what this whole Dad thing is like.

Thinking about my Nana. She’s no longer with us but she was so full of love, and piss and vinegar that my heart warms and laughs whenever I think about how grateful I am to have had her so much a part of my life. To quote my mother, “she loved fiercely.” And I can only hope to give to my daughter some of the fierce and funny love that I got from my Nan.

My sister. I love that she calls me from Newfoundland just to share the bliss after she’s discovered some astoundingly yummy recipe.

My mother. The biggest heart, the warmest smile and one hell of an interesting life. Did I mention she’s a storm chaser?

My best friend, Robyne. When she travels I go into withdrawal. I love that she calls me to debrief after encounters with mean and/or crazy people.

Also, I love good food. Every time I step into the local chocolate shop or cheese shop the world is made right again. That reminds me, there’s some salted chocolate with my name on it in the kitchen.

Tea. I’m not talking about Red Rose or Tetley here, I’m talking good loose leaf tea with names like “Butterfly Jasmine,” “Chocolate Chili Truffle” and “Assam Banaspatty.”

Driving on a country highway all by myself blasting loud, aggressive, obscenity strewn music takes me to my happy place.

Anything created by Joss Whedon

And of course, reading blogs like Mommy Wants Vodka that find the balance between emotional honesty, real compassion, and obscenity the likes of which us moms rarely get to engage in.

Childhood unplugged

2010-11-21T20:08:00.021-05:00

I'm in the midst of reading "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv and it's taking me back to my childhood in the Niagara Region countryside and summers at Go Home Bay. When I think about that time I am so grateful for the freedom I had to explore. Whether I was crossing the creek to pick apples, going for bike rides along the shore of Lake Ontario or finding clams with my feet at the cottage I was able to let my imagination run freely and form a strong connection to the natural world. My memories are tied to all of my senses: the smell of moss and red ants or concord grapes ready for the harvest; the feeling of a firm round clam shell under my feet; the taste of wild blueberries or fresh picked apples; the image of empty cicada husks stuck to trees; or the sound of the water hitting the rocks on a windy day. Now as an adult I find that when I'm feeling really stressed out or wound tight, just going for a 10 minute bike ride along the bike path or a tree lined street calms me down and takes me to my 'happy place.'

Now I live in Toronto and, for the most part, I'm very happy to be raising my daughter here. But I have to put a lot more thought into how I can give her some of that freedom and time in nature that was so much a fabric of my own childhood. We're lucky to be in a city that still has many beautiful natural spaces, one of which is a 15 minute bike ride away, but it's not the same as just walking out the door to find nature on your doorstep. And then of course there's the fact that when you live in the city your child has to wait longer to be able to go off on there own because there are so damn many cars.

Fortunately my parents still live out in the country and they have acres of space for my kid to wander as she grows up, so at the very least I know that she will have that whenever we get up there for a visit. It's easy, when you're living in a large city to despair of your kid ever feeling connected to nature but it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Walking in High Park, wandering around the Toronto Islands, going to pick-your-own farms, these are all ways that we get a little nature fix. Research even shows that some of the stress relieving benefits of nature are found just from looking out a window at trees or at a picture of the natural world.

Wherever you live, there are opportunities to foster that connection to nature and, to paraphrase Louv, save our kids from Nature Deficit Disorder. Whether it's the back yard, the local park or a community garden there's always someway to bring nature back into our families' lives. Me, I'm working up to family camping trips. I may never have a cottage like the one I grew up with but that's not going to stop me from taking my kid out to some lakeside spot to wander the weekend away.

And I thought it was hard the first time round

2010-11-06T01:19:00.000-04:00

Mae has been in Junior Kindergarten for two months now and she's absolutely loving it. She's been known to greet each classmate with a hug as they arrive and I've had several parents remark on how friendly and sweet she is. So far Mae has had no experience of rejection. Many kids seem to really like her, calling out her name when they see her coming. And yet....when I watch her on the playground so open to everyone I find myself flashing back to my school years. I remember being the weird kid. I remember spending my grade five lunch hours with kindergarten kids because my peers wouldn't play with me. I remember being the first kid to befriend any new kids and the frustration when they inevitably moved on to "cooler" friends.

All of this flashes before my eyes and I imagine the first time my daughter will come home in tears because someone didn't want to play with her. I know that some teasing is inevitable and I know that not everyone will want to be her friend. But I can't seem to silence these anxieties. There is nothing I can, or even should, do about the normal hurts and heartbreaks of childhood but what I fear is not the normal heartbreaks. I don't know anything about the normal heartbreaks. I only know about relentless social isolation. I know how I came through it but it hurt like hell and I don't want that for my little monster.

The question is not, "how do I stop it from happening to her?" The question is, "how do I stop myself from projecting my own anxieties onto her?" More importantly, how do I best prepare her to deal with all of the ups and downs of school life?

To the first question, I still have no answers. As for the second question, this is what I've come up with so far.

Talk to her and listen to her
Give her the space to be who she is rather than who I expect or hope for her to be
Let her know all the things that make her unique and special
Give her unconditional love
Let her take some risks but always be there for her in case they don't work out
Keep things in perspective
Let her fail and help her to take it in stride and learn from it.
Encourage her to have friends outside of school so that she's not completely dependent on school for her friendships.
Model good communication, respect and resiliency.

After that, it's up to her.

As for my anxieties, I guess I'll just keep looking for the right box to shove them into. In the mean time, I may need to start a tab at the local chocolate shop.

Research question for moms (and dads!)

2010-09-24T16:32:00.000-04:00

I'm currently working on my research paper so that I can finally graduate from my Life Coach training. The paper will examine the potential parallels between Life Coaching and parenting. As part of my research I would like to hear your thoughts on the below questions. Please leave your answers in the comments or if you like you can email me.

The question:
Think about what it means to you to be a good parent. When your child is 20 years old, how will you know that you've done a good job? Are there particular traits, skills or attitudes you want to foster in your children? What kind of person do you want your kid(s) to grow up to be?

Lifting the fog of depression, an ode to my bike

2010-06-17T13:09:00.000-04:00

For the last several days I've been struggling with an "emotional downturn." Because of my history of depression I'm very attuned to the depth and quality of my emotional ups and downs. For the most part I'm in a really good place. I have an amazing family, good friends and I can see the future unfolding for me with my business. And yet, every once in a while (admittedly fueled by the dreaded PMS on occasion) I find myself crying into the wee hours or walking around with my head in a grey fog. For me, the most important thing is being able to recognize the difference between how I experience my sadness now as compared to how I did when I was in the midst of severe depression.

Back in the day I would start crying and this would lead to me desperately trying to figure out why I felt so miserable. So I would come up with some explanation and that would make me feel worse so I'd come up with more "explanations" to justify the depth of my pain and this would send me further into it. This is the downward spiral of depression. This kind of thinking is called rumination and it's been found in research to be a major component in depression. In contrast, when I found myself crying uncontrollably on the couch this past week I quickly identified the specific cause and was able to leave it at that. I know what's wrong and I will do my best to find ways to address it.

So what's the difference between then and now? First, once I got an official diagnosis of depression I was able to explain my tears by simply saying, "I've got clinical depression, sometimes I cry without warning." Second, if I do recognize something that set me off I look for ways to deal with it rather than dwelling and feeling helpless and hopeless. Third, and most important, I know that when I get like that I need to let myself cry some of it out and then find a way to get out of my head. Often I just need to talk to someone. Not because I need them to help me fix things or tell me it will be okay, but because when I start talking to someone else it calms me down and I usually wind up laughing by the end of the conversation. If I don't talk to someone else I just go in circles in my head, the dialogue never moves forward and I just stay miserable.

Music helps too. When I was fully immersed in my depression I would listen to music that spoke my pain, NIN was a big favourite. Now I know better. Now I have songs that speak to the pain but also have some hope, "Long Way to Happy" by P!nk is a current favourite. When the crying's done but I'm still in a fog I need something heavy and hard. Something that's visceral but not miserable. Ministry, Tool, Rage Against the Machine are all good candidates. They help pull the frustration and anger out of my body and onto the dancefloor (or the dining room floor as the case may be).

My newest, and possibly best, strategy is my bike. If I'm feeling sad or numb or muddled or angry. If I just need to clear my head or get out of my head altogether (my stepfather would say I need to switch from my left brain to my right) I can just hop on my bike and go at whatever pace I feel like and let the wind and the movement wash it away. Last night I was feeling low and lonely so I got on my bike and rode aimlessly through the side streets of Roncesvalles (big trees and beautiful houses) for a good hour. When I got home I felt normal. The fog had lifted and I sealed the deal by spending the rest of the night playing board games with Howard.

For some people depression is a mystery. For others it is something they live through, recover and go on. And for others it is something akin to addiction or an eating disorder. No matter how well you're doing you can never take it for granted. The language of addiction recovery resonates with me. I'm not "all better" or "cured," I am in recovery and I am managing my illness to keep it at bay. Right now the anti-depressants are doing most of the heavy lifting but the skills and strategies I've been developing are vital because I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my whole life medicated. It's already been seven and a half years and I know there's too much going on in my life to make a change now. But someday I will wean off those meds and when I do, I want to have every possible trick up my sleeve. But for now I'll just keep on chanelling Freddy Mercury and sing, "I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike!"

Mommy wars shmommy wars, life's too short for all that judgment

2010-05-17T20:01:00.000-04:00

It's been three and a half years now that I've been in the trenches of these here mommy wars. The only problem is that in my real life I've yet to really meet any enemy combatants. I've read so much about the infamous "mommy wars." Working moms vs. Stay at home moms (I'm not clear where work at home moms are supposed to fit into this), Moms vs. Voluntarily childless women Attachment moms vs. Mainstream moms etc etc, blah blah blah. Honestly I've been meeting all sorts of moms and I've never really encountered the kind of judgment and defensiveness described by these so called wars. Now let me be clear, I am not saying that nobody else has experienced this and I have certainly seen a lot of judgment, self-righteousness and downright viciousness on the internet but in my real life interactions my experience has been of women coming together to talk about their experiences, share thoughts and perspectives while always respecting that everyone has their own approach.

I know this isn't everyone's experience but I do think that the "mommy wars" have been really overblown and played up by the media to the point that people are getting defensive because they assume that others are judging them. When I say "my daughter doesn't really watch TV" I'm not saying it to criticize parents who's kids do, I'm saying it as a statement of fact. Just like when I say I'm vegetarian I'm not saying "and you should be too you heartless cow killer." Based on my experiences over the last 18 years of being veggie I can tell you that a lot of people assume that I'm passing judgment on them if they eat meat.

So, as is so often the case with my posts, here is where I take a left turn onto a different but related topic. Just because I don't believe that a particular action is the best choice does not mean that I will pass judgment on you as a person for choosing that action. So yes, I do think kids are better off breast fed with no TV and lots of opportunities to engage with the world. However, I also think that every person must be able to make their own choices based on what makes sense for them. And just because I may not always agree with another person's choices does not mean that I think they're a bad person or a bad parent. I am not perfect, even by my own ideas of ideal parenting. But I don't judge myself and I don't judge others.

There are as many ways to be in the world as there are people. And as long as you love your kids and do the best you can it's not mine or anybody elses job to judge you and make you feel bad about yourself or your parenting. The sad part is that so much of the time we feel the pain of being judged by others not because others are actually judging us but because we believe that they are.

So here are my thoughts on what to do when you're feeling judged.

Assuming they really are passing judgment, who cares? Why does it matter what they think? If you're confident in your choices and trust that you are doing your best then that's all that really matters. If you're not happy with your choices, make different choices. Not because of the opinions of others but because you haven't yet found the right choice for you.

Assuming that nobody is judging you and you're just projecting your own feelings of guilt onto strangers, ease up on yourself!! If you're making decisions based on what you think others will think then you will never be confident in your decisions. You will always be hyper aware of the opinions of others (real or imagined) and you will never feel free to just be the kind of parent that you really want to be. If you're never sure that you're doing the right thing you will always feel guilty. But if you know what kind of parent you want to be and let that guide your choices then it won't matter, even if they are judging you the only person you need to please is you.

I know it's hard but when you're taking care of your kid(s) all that fear of judgment is only going to get in your way so next time you think someone is giving you the figurative stink eye repeat after me, "F%#* 'em"

From tears to giggles, shifting a sensitive kid

2010-05-08T11:39:00.000-04:00

Previously I've posted on dealing with a kid who cries to get her way. Lately I've been dealing less with that and more with the fact that my three year old is a very sensitive kid. I'm not surprised, I know I was pretty sensitive and I've always been very 'in touch' with my emotions (if by in touch you mean intimately familiar with my tear ducts). Nonetheless it's a real challenge getting through the days with a crier. As with the other post there's a balance I'm trying to strike. I definitely want to honour her feelings and not make her feel like she's not allowed to cry or that I don't care about her feelings. On the other hand I don't want her to see sadness as a way to get her way and I especially don't want her to get stuck in the sadness. Because I have my own history of depression I am very sensitive to the need to do everything I can to give her the emotional tools she'll need to avoid that particular fate.

So, this is the strategy I've been working on. This is not easy, it requires excessive patience and empathy. If you can find your empathy for how your kid's feeling it will be a lot easier to be patient with those emotions. It also takes some time to find your groove because you have to slowly become attuned to when your kid has transitioned into a place where they will be susceptible to humour. I don't know what works for others and I don't know if this approach would work for every parent or every kid. I just know that it seems to be working for me. So, with that disclaimer out of the way, here's my approach to dealing with my sensitive kid.

So here's a typical scenario. The other day we went to our local early years centre and they had brought in a kid's singer and a cake for mother's day with the cake to be served at the end of the show. Now Mae can be kind of touchy about group singing so I just sat with her in my lap and quietly watched. She was doing alright (meaning she wasn't crying but she would take no part in the singing and actions) until the singer started a dinosaur song and roared. As soon as I heard that I knew I was in trouble because Mae hates roaring, it's too loud and it scares her (I think she was traumatized by a grown man roaring in her face at pre-school). Sure enough she instantly starts crying and saying, "I want to go home now!!!!" A few months ago I would have grabbed my stuff and gone home but I don't want to encourage her to run home every time she gets a little upset by something. I convinced her to wait in the lobby with me until the show was over so we could go back in and have cake later.

Once in the lobby I sat with her on my lap and slowly rocked her. Usually I would sing but she was not interested in any singing after that show. So we just rocked and rocked until she was not so much crying as giving me her trademark sad faced puppy dog whimper (really, it's uncanny how much she sounds like a forlorn puppy dog). One thing I've learned is that this is generally a good time to start working the laughs. This is the point where she isn't really all that sad but she's not willing to let it go. So I say something to make her laugh, she cracks a smile and then catches herself and puts the frown back on with a vengeance (just a little mad that I got her to smile). At this stage I sometimes get into a sad off with her, making my own sad puppy dog face and whimpering dramatically to see who can make the saddest face. On this occasion I told her she sounded like a sad puppy and proceeded to make various sad animal sounds. Slowly but surely the smiles start to crack through and I cap it all off with something like an airplane ride or an upside down dangle to get her really laughing.

This process is not quick. It takes anywhere from five to thirty minutes and it requires empathy, patience and commitment. It also requires the willingness to drop any thing you were trying to get done or trying to get to. My experience is that I can spend twenty minutes in a head space of calm and love and patience or I can choose not to give her this emotional space and spend at least as much time (if not the rest of the day) feeling frustrated, stressed and intolerant.

As I said, I can't speak for how well this would work for anyone else but I would love to hear what you do when your faced with an emotionally sensitive kid. The more ideas we have the more options we have so please share!

Motherhood: it's all in your mind

2010-05-02T12:12:00.000-04:00

One of the most challenging things I have found about being a stay at home (and now work at home) mom is that I go through the whole day, and finish off bloody tired and I can't for the life of me think of anything I've "done." There are no accomplishments to point to, or at least too few to engender any real sense of pride or accomplishment. More than once I've seen or heard of a non-mom saying, "what do moms do all day anyway?" and while I'm mostly outraged there's sometimes this little voice in my head saying, "I wish I knew!"

Of course you can generate your usual list: laundry, dishes, tidying, diapers, feeding, playing, soothing...blah blah blah but somehow that doesn't really cover it. Often I hear moms say that they don't expect their partners to wake with the kid during the night because "he/she needs her sleep, he or she has to get up and work in the morning." and my question to them is, "don't you have to wake up and work too?" It's not surprising that we so easily fall into the trap of thinking of paid work as "real work", there's been a lot of feminist writing done on this point and it's definitely worth reading and taking to heart but there's something else going on here too.

So, back to that infuriating question: what does a mom do all day? And here's my answer. Motherhood (and often marriage) is 20% the tangible tasks of diaper changes, laundry and toddler chasing and 80% the mental and emotional work and energy that we do every waking hour. As moms we are constantly planning, organizing, forming and testing hypotheses (she's crying because she's hungry, nope. Maybe she's wet, nope. Maybe she's gassy, nope.....), researching, making decisions, evaluating and re-evaluating, managing the needs of many (including, on a good day, our own), managing our own emotions, managing everyone elses emotions, monitoring health and nutrition, budgeting....well you get the picture.

I found that once I acknowledged how much mental and emotional work I was engaged in I was much less hard on myself. I finally understood why I was so wrung out much of the time. It's easy as moms to undervalue or underestimate what we do. One of the more common tactics people turn to is to talk about what a mother would be worth if she were fairly paid for her work. While I think this argument has it's place, in as much as it speaks the common language of money=value, I also think it sometimes misses the point. For mom's it's not necessarily about questioning the value of what we do as moms, we know that caring for and raising kids is important work. The real issue is that we doubt our own individual worth as moms. We don't really see everything we're doing because so much of it is invisible.

So, for anyone who's interested in exploring it I offer to you some homework. After all the kids are in bed, take some time to write up a job description for what you do as a mom. Be thorough. Think about all the things you would require of someone who was applying to do your job your way. This isn't just a generic mom description, it's a job description for what you specifically do as a mom (and wife* if applicable). Once you've written it all out, look it over. Were there any surprises? Was there anything you weren't sure about adding? If you saw that job description posted, would you apply?

So that's my answer, what do you think?

*I intentionally use the word wife to evoke our cultural associations with what a wife is rather than the less loaded term, spouse.

Fat kids make the best scapegoats

2010-04-24T12:03:00.001-04:00

Last night I watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution for the first time. It's not that I'm not interested but I feel like I've already seen it having watched his School Dinners when he launched the same campaign in England. I think what he's doing is great as far as trying to get real food into kids mouths and educate families, educators and children about fresh food and cooking. Now I've been thinking about writing this post for awhile but after reading and commenting on Annie's post over at PhD in Parenting I decided it was time to get down to it.

Wherever you go you hear the alarm being raised "Childhood obesity is an epidemic!!" and every time I hear this I get angry. Because here's the thing, obesity is not a disease, it is a symptom and an aggravating factor and there is no such thing as an epidemic of a symptom.

So first lets touch on how it is a symptom. Obesity can be caused by a number of factors: genetics, poor nutrition, overeating, inactivity, imbalances in the body, drug side-effects, eating disorders, depression, pregnancy and I'm sure there are more. The increase in obesity however is caused by the poor quality of the Western diet, alarming portion sizes, a move from the yard to the couch/desk and an obsession with convenience. Fat, in itself isn't the cause of all the health problems people are facing, it's merely an outward indicator that something might be wrong (I say might because there are people who are 'fat' regardless of there healthy active lifestyles).

I'm not saying that health risks aren't often increased by too much excess weight, but the weight is just one contributing factor which is actually an indicator of some other underlying issue which may or may not be in the direct control of the individual. And let's not forget that there are also those people with high running metabolisms who can't get fat no matter what they do. Does this mean that they can live sedentary lives fueled by nachos and cheese fries? Of course not. So why do we insist on focusing on this symptom of bad habits rather than on the behaviours themselves?

The other day on CBC they were talking to an overweight teenager whose school has put up posters about fighting childhood obesity. The result of this for her has been that the kids in her school take it as license to shame and harass her. When she sits down for lunch her peers scrutinize and criticize everything she eats even when it's the same food that everyone else is eating. So rather than making students conscious of their own eating habits, this poster campaign has made them hyper aware of the eating habits of those students who are overweight.

The other end of this is that while we have an epidemic of low quality convenience food making up most of our diet, we also have an epidemic of fat-phobia and weight obsessed young girls. So what affect do you think these anti-obesity posters have on all those girls who are already terrified of gaining even one pound? If we could focus on healthy and fit kids and stop obsessing over the fat we'd all be better off.

The crux of the matter is that it's easy to get people to freak out over fat kids. Everyone's already so damned scared of 'the fat' that it's one of the easiest fears to tap into. I swear, every time I'm watching some prime-time crime drama, as soon as they bring in a fat character I groan. I know what's coming. Most often she's wracked with insecurity, desperate for love and affection and in the really 'good' ones she's been pushed so far by the mean people that she's gone on some kind of homicidal vengeance rampage. So rare are the depictions of strong, confident big women that we must remark every time we come across them (Cameron Manheim comes to mind).

So let's stop worrying about obesity and let's start worrying about how much crap is going into our kids bodies. Instead of buying your kid a new gaming system get them a skateboard or a bike, better a skinned knee now than heart disease later.

What has your guilt done for you lately?

2010-04-11T20:10:00.007-04:00

When was the last time you felt guilty? A week ago? Two days ago? Five minutes ago? Guilt has always been a big part of being a mom but these days there is so much information about what we should be doing that it feels like there are a million and one more things about which we're meant to feel guilty. Half the time the thing you're feeling guilty about doing this week is the same thing your mom told you to do last week. It seems like we're all just a Google search or parenting book away from the next major guilt trip. Whatever it is that you are doing there is someone that will say that you are doing it wrong. This would be a non issue if it weren't for the fact that with each new opinion or piece of advice there's another voice added to the guilt chorus singing in your head.

"Being a mom is the most important job in the world." This is a refrain we hear often and it is intended to make us feel valued and important as mothers. The flip-side of this is that uneasy feeling that "you'd better damn well get it right or your kid will wind up in therapy/jail/McDonald's (insert tragic fate here)." So let's deconstruct this mommy-guilt thing a little bit.

1. While you may be the most important person in that kids life (for now) you are not the only thing in their world. While it might seem a comfort at first to think that you have the ultimate power to determine the course of your child's life this is, in fact, a potentially debillitating belief to hold. If you have the power to make everything smooth and problem free for your kid then you also become responsible for every lapse of judgment or misfortune that may befall them. The reality is that there are many people and things that can influence your child's life, not the least of which is their natural inclinations. When we think we're "ultimately responsible" we start to blame ourselves for all manner of things. It's my fault he's depressed, it's my fault she's an addict, it's my fault she got cramps on her wedding day and walked down the aisle stoned on muscle relaxants (that's for the John Hughes fans out there). It's amazing the things we can feel guilty about when we secretly believe that we can and should control everything.

So, TIP #1: To let go of some guilt we must let go of some control (and the need for it).

2. Kid's are way more resilient than we often think. You learn this early on when you witness your kid get up time and time again after bonking his head or skinning her knee. Somehow we seem to think this only applies to bumps and scrapes but the reality is that with all of the imperfect (and sometimes downright alarming) approaches to parenting out there, most people turn out pretty well. Even people who have had undeniably terrible parents manage to become happy, healthy, successful adults. While this doesn't give you license to lock 'em in their room and raise them on jelly beans it does mean you can give yourself a break.

So, TIP #2: Rather than stressing about the long term effects of every decision you make,

Do your best to be the kind of parent you want to be
Be flexible: if the plan's not working, change the plan
Accept that you will occasionally screw up and when you do be willing to admit it. A little apology can go a long way and it never hurts to teach your kid that it's okay to make mistakes.
Focus on the big picture. If you make your kid feel loved and valued that will not be undone because you lose your temper once in a while.

3. The perfect life is over rated. There no such thing as a life free of suffering. As much as we may hate to hear it, our job as parents is not to protect our kids from all manner of suffering. Our job is to give them the tools and skills they need to navigate through that suffering and come out the other side. So while you may desperately want to hold their hands the whole way they will never learn to walk on their own if you do.

So, TIP #3: Before you jump in to save the day, take a breath and consider whether or not they really need to be rescued.

Are they really in danger?
What are the real risks?
Is it an acceptable risk?
What will they learn from you stepping in?
What will they learn if it 'goes wrong'?

4. What purpose does all that guilt serve? Does it motivate you and get you going or does it paralyze your decision making and undermine your ability to parent effectively? Imagine how it would feel to give up on guilt. Guilt, after-all is just another word for blame. So rather than constantly doubting yourself and feeling guilty, do your best and take responsibility for your decisions. If you feel like you screwed up, accept it, do what you can to make it better and move on.

So, TIP #4: When you start to feel guilty about something you have or haven't done, ask yourself,

What use is this guilt to me?
Have I really done anything wrong?
If the answer is yes, admit that you messed up, apologize if possible. If the answer is no, move on.
Is there anything I can reasonably do to make it better?
If the answer is yes, do it. If the answer is no, move on.

I'm not saying it's easy, and none of us is likely to lose the guilt completely but even if you can turn the volume down on it a little you're further ahead than you started out. And the best part is, the more people can start letting go of their own guilt, the less likely they are to to lay guilt on anyone else.

So tell me, what are some of the crazy things you feel guilty about?

Do these pants make me look straight?

2010-03-27T19:58:00.005-04:00

One of the unintended side-effects of marrying a man and having a kid is that, more than ever, people assume I am straight. In high-school I wore big boots, army pants and a shaved head while having a couple of gay roommates. In university I was very active in the queer club on campus. But since then, and especially since getting married and becoming a mom I have this uncomfortable knowledge that, whether I like it or not, I'm passing. Just to be clear, I have never hidden the fact that I'm bi from anyone. If it's relevant to a conversation I don't hesitate to bring it up, on the other hand I don't feel the need to announce it upon meeting a new person, "Hello, my name is Kristin and I swing both ways, how are you?" When people find out I'm bi there's usually an awkward pause followed by some fairly predictable questions:

"Does your husband know?" - Yes, of course he does, we even met at Pride.
"Is your husband okay with it?" - Would I be with him if he wasn't?
"Doesn't that mean that you have to always have both a man and a woman?" - No, it means that I have the capacity to be attracted to both. Some people are happy with just one person, some aren't this has nothing to do with the gender(s) to which you are attracted.

Fortunately I haven't ever been asked about threesomes.

So now that we've got that out of the way let me talk a bit more about "passing." If you don't know the term it was initially used back in the good old days of segregation when fair skinned black folk could "pass" for white. This enabled them to blend into privileged white society, if they so chose. In a queer context it means "passing" for straight. As a bi woman married to a man I seem to have no choice about passing. I am seen with my partner and my child and I am assumed to belong to the prevailing heterosexual culture. Well I don't and I never did. I don't like passing, I don't like it when people assume that I am part of a mainstream to which I have never sought admittance. I haven't gotten involved in the queer community here because I have never felt that it was accepting of bisexuality and I have no faith whatsoever that my marriage to a man would make it easy for me to be welcomed into the fold as it were.

So what does this have to do with parenting? Simple, I don't want to pass with my kid. I don't want her growing up thinking her mom is straight. Just like I wouldn't want her to grow up thinking that her dad was white (which he's not). The latter is easily taken care of, he couldn't pass if he wanted to, the former is another matter.

I'm not really one for "big talks." I like things to unfold naturally, finding the opportunities in the questions that she asks. When she asked about the cemetery I took it as an opportunity to talk about death and tell her that mommy's daddy was dead (another thing that it's important for her to know). She didn't totally get the dead bit but now she knows about Grandpa Ken. But I don't know how that natural unfolding will happen with this particular subject. I know it won't be any time soon, she's still trying to wrap her head around the idea of "romantic love," we've had more than one conversation about the difference between how I love her and how I love daddy. In the mean time I guess I'll just bide my time and keep my ears out for that magic question that opens the door to the "mommy likes boys and girls" talk.

If there's anyone with any thoughts or experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.

Announcing a new workshop series!

2010-03-22T21:58:00.002-04:00

Parenting is a state of constant decision making, “should I let him cry?”, “should I ground her?”, “should I stay home or return to work?”, “how do I stop these tantrums!?” and there are hundreds of experts, family members and even well-meaning strangers just waiting to tell you what to do. It’s no wonder so many parents feel like they can’t do anything right, after all there’s always someone out there to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

From May 20th to June 10th I will be running a four
part Authentic Parenting workshop series at Earthstones Art & Play for $150 + GST.

In this four-part workshop series you will:

Discover who/what influences your parenting decisions
Develop a more grounded sense of who you want to be as a parent
Become empowered to parent from who you are
Learn to embrace your imperfection and let go of others’ judgments
Connect with other parents and share resources

Let the children go!

2010-03-14T20:01:00.003-04:00

So I've just finished reading Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids and I gotta say, it was a breath of fresh air. I've been following her blog for a while now so I knew the gist of her message, with which I have great sympathy, but the book is definitely something I would recommend to any client or friend. In the book she talks clearly and honestly about the real and not-so-real risks our kids face and gives voice to the out of fashion sentiment that there are, in fact, acceptable risks. This matter of fact approach inspires readers to give themselves permission to let their kids explore life like we did growing up.

In addition to outlining, and often debunking, common fears and their sources she also provides several tips on moving towards a more free-range approach to parenting. All of this is done with sympathy and humour making the book not only informative and helpful, but entertaining to boot.

As I read the book I started thinking about all of the things I did as a child that children so rarely seem to do anymore. Below is a list of my free-range childhood activities:

When I was five, living in an urban housing co-op in Toronto, I used to walk two blocks to my friends house on a regular basis.
Starting at the age of seven my twelve year old sister and I walked half a mile to and from the country bus stop and frequently accepted rides home from neighbours.
By the time I was ten I was making stove top popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches and fried eggs all by myself.
Starting at seven I was going for bike rides on my own and walking a mile along a service road to get ice cream cones and timbits.
My public school took us on hikes in the woods and had a designated snowball zone.
At the age of seven my best friend and I were trick or treating unchaperoned through town.

These are just the first things that come to mind but I'm sure there's more. I'd love to hear about other people's free-range childhoods!

The father I wish I knew

2010-03-03T22:29:00.004-05:00

This spring it will be thirty years since my father died. I was three years old when he died suddenly and I've had a lifetime to hear what a loving, funny, mischievous, smart man he was. I feel like I know him in my heart but I will always feel deeply the lost opportunity to know him as a real person. When you lose a parent so young you grow up desperate for any tidbit or story that might help you "know" them. They begin to become more like a mythological figure. But no amount of stories or remembrances can fill that void. I grieve the loss of my father, I grieve the lost chance to know this great man I hear so much about, and I grieve the lost chance to know what it feels like to have a father, any father. Sometimes just thinking about all the people who knew him and remember him hurts my heart. It just feels so unfair.

Becoming a mother puts this in stark relief. When I see other kids with their grandfathers I feel sorrow that my daughter will never know Grampa Ken. I try to picture what he would look like now and what kinds of jokes he would tell to get her laughing. On the other hand I take so much joy in watching her with her dad, seeing that relationship grow and develop. I watch them and hope that being witness to that love will somehow make that hole in my heart a little bit smaller.

My need for my daughter to know about her Grampa has led me to talk to her about death starting when she was two and a half. At three she knows that mommy's daddy died when she was little. I don't know if this is too early, I just know that I needed her to know. I need it to be part of the fabric of her life, not something she learns suddenly when she's older.

No matter how old you are when you lose a parent it tears you down. At every age it's a little different. My sister and I share the same loss but at the same time we each have our own unique experiences of grief. I want to be able to reach out to my mother and sister, but I don't want to rub their wounds raw. I don't want to bring them to tears. So I talk about all the family stories and laugh. But the grief, that I try to keep to myself.

Whistle while you work

2010-03-02T19:46:00.004-05:00

I just got back from my first ever weekend away from my kid, up until now I've never been away from her for more than five hours. I traded places with my mom and camped out at her place with the gourmet kitchen, huge soaker tub and cozy library in which to cuddle up with my laptop and work my little heart out. That's right, my first weekend away and my top priority was work. But really it's not as bad as it sounds. It was beautiful to get so much uninterrupted time to focus on my work and I was able to really relax into it and get into the flow of it. For me, making enough time to work definitely qualifies as self-care, which is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.

Usually when you think about self-care you think about taking a hot bath or going for a massage, maybe a run in the park. But that list can start to feel pretty cliche after awhile. Not that a good massage doesn't feel pretty damn good but let's face it, how long does that last? If you really think about what self-care is it turns out that all sorts of things fit the bill. When I try to define self-care this is what I come up with: Something that helps me relax, something that helps me let loose, something that gives me (non caffeinated) energy, or something that puts me truly "in the moment." So while it may not sound like getting 8 hours straight to work is self-care, for those 8 hours I was totally in the moment or as Mihály Csíkszentmihályi says I was in a state of flow. So after a kid free weekend of work and hot baths (blessed hot baths) I came home to a kid who gives me lots of big cuddles "because I know you like it." and a renewed commitment to all those other things that make me a better person. Hell I actually woke up at 6 this morning to work out. So, on that note here's my Self-Care checklist.

Breath, seriously, breath
Listen to my music (let the obscenities fly!)
Try new recipes, make the time to cook them without time pressures
Eat good quality chocolate and pastries
Ride my bike as much as possible
Drink good quality tea
Always keep a good mystery or sci-fi on hand
Minimize television viewing
Sleep damn it!
Eat when I’m hungry
Stop eating when I’m no longer hungry
Go to the chiropractor
Go to the dentist
Spend more alone time with H
Have coffee/brunch with close friends regularly
Pursue my own interests
Find as many opportunities to laugh as possible, especially with my kid
Don’t take myself too seriously
Set aside time to work on business
Did I mention breathe?

Okay, I showed you mine, now you show me yours.

Repeat after me, I love my mama belly!

2010-02-23T22:07:00.004-05:00

Okay, guilty pleasure number 12, watching "How to Look Good Naked." So tonight I watched for the umpteenth time a beautiful mom say that she hates her belly. No matter how big or small, short or tall, so many moms (me included), avert our eyes when our bellys come into view. Even on a show that is meant to make any woman feel beautiful, the first step is to don a "body shaper" that tucks in that nasty mama belly. It makes me sad that after bringing a baby into the world and dedicating our hearts, minds and bodies to the well being of that child we feel shame about the physical markers of our momhood. My belly's pouchy, my boobs are floppy, why can't I look like [insert celeb mom with personal trainer and plastic surgeon on speed dial here]?

This is the thing, if you were meant to look like a childless 20 year old, you would be one. Having tight abs, while taking a certain level of dedication, is not in itself a life achievement. Being an engaged and dedicated parent is. It's bad enough that women feel like they need to fit into some tight and tiny mold of physical beauty. It sucks that those of us that are (or think we are) fat (that's right I said the F word) or over 35 or tall or short or not white or not femme or ... ah forget it the list is too long. So ninety-five percent of us think that we're sub par and inadequate in the looks department and that's severely disturbing and wrong. This has been discussed and debated and analyzed from one end to the other. But there's something particularly perverse about despising the very things that mark us as moms. Being a mother is not some dirty secret, it's something we love and should be proud of. That belly and those boobs tell you and the world that you are a mom inside and out.

I've been a fat girl (hell according to the BMI I'm freakin' obese) for the last fifteen years of my life and the belly's always been an issue but I gotta say, it wasn't until I had my daughter and started seeing it as a mama belly that I really started to make peace with the jiggly.

It's time to take a deep breath and learn to love that belly. Instead of looking at it and saying, "why can't you be flat and toned?!" thank the belly. Really think about what it's done for you and be grateful. This body is the only one you've got and it's carried you through your life and taken care of you as best it could.

As moms we pay a lot of lip service to self-care but when push comes to shove it's the first thing to get shoved off the to-do list. I'd like to add something to the top of every mom's self-care check-list: learn to love that belly!

Now repeat after me, "I love my mama belly!"

*recommended reading:
The Fat Girl's Guide to Life, Wendy Shanker
When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing yourself from food and weight obsession, Jane R. Hirschmann & Carol H. Munter

And this is why high school sucked...

2010-02-15T19:39:00.003-05:00

One of the hardest things for me about having a kid is worrying that she will be bullied and ostracized like I was. After all, she is my kid. If I was a freak it's not unreasonable to think that she'll be as weird as I was. Just to clarify, this is not self disparagement. I grew up in an unusual family and I was an unusual kid (people who know me best would agree, I'm still kind of unusual). Thus I have always been happy to be weird and proudly proclaimed myself to be a freak. So no, I'm not worried about my kid being different, I'd be shocked if she wasn't. I am, however, worried about how I would manage if she were to face anything like what I went through in school.

I know from experience that telling your kid that "they're just jealous" is trite and useless. Frankly, as a "victim" of bullying believing that they were jealous (which, by the way, they weren't) would not have changed a damn thing. Having no friends always sucks, having friends that will only talk to you in hiding always sucks. I also know that ignoring it makes no difference, if the other kids have decided you don't belong, they'll make sure you know whether or not you react. Finally, I learned that reporting the bullies to the school more often than not made it worse. On this last point, I'm hoping that things have changed but I suspect that most school administrators don't themselves know how to deal with these situations.

In my case my solution was to leave. Because I lived in a rural community I was unable to change schools within the region. As a result I went to my mother at the age of fifteen and said, "Mom, I need to move out. I need to leave if I'm going to survive high school." At first she cried, what mother wouldn't but we talked about it and we found somewhere for me to live so I could finish high school in a city three hours away.

So, here's the thing. I did get out and it was one of the best things I ever did for myself. But, and this is a big but, I was wrong to think that was the end. Removing a child from a bad situation or bringing that situation to an end may stop the bullying but it does not make everything okay. I spent the better part of fifteen years trying to figure out how to put that pain behind me. It was a long and difficult path and I have now reached a place where I no longer feel hostage to my past but it might have been a little bit easier if I had found a single resource for adult survivors of bullying.

So, if you have a child that is being bullied be proactive, get involved with the school try to find creative collaborative ways to address the issue. Talk to your kid and help them to find ways to connect with kids outside of their school. I found friends at environmental conferences and alternative camp, just knowing that they were out there helped me get through. If you have to, take them out of that school, you may even have to get the police involved. But when the dust settles that's when the real work begins because once you leave the battle field, you learn pretty quickly that the war rages on in your head. The sooner you can start the healing process for your child the sooner they will be able to rediscover how beautiful life can be.

Recommended reading:

The Optimistic Child - Martin Seligman
The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander - Barbara Coloroso
Letters To A Bullied Girl: Messages Of Healing And Hope - Olivia Gardner, Emily Buder and Sarah Buder

Why I'm grateful highschool sucked

2010-02-13T09:37:00.004-05:00

Like most people I've had my fair share of struggles in life. I lost my father when I was three, I got bullied in school and I experienced cycles of depression throughout adolescence and young adulthood. That being said, I don't regret any of it. I've never been interested in wishing things had happened differently, it always felt like a waste of energy and self-destructive to boot. When we sit around telling ourselves, "if only that hadn't happened I would be happy" we are focusing on things that are out of our control. Unless you're Erica Strange* there are no second chances, the life you've lived is the the life you've got. If you spend your time and energy wishing it was different all you're doing is disempowering yourself. After all, if the only way to make life better is to change the past you're pretty much SOL.

One of the things I hate to hear people say is, "it ruined her life." This is often said when someone has been victimized or suffered a terrible tragedy but life is full of examples of people who have found ways to come out of tragedy and trauma stronger, wiser and committed to making the world a better place. The mother who loses her child to drunk driving and becomes active in education and advocacy, the youth who gets severely bullied in school and winds up touring schools to give presentations on the impacts of bullying, or the man who loses everything to the horrors of war and becomes a leading peace activist. Even in the darkest moments of human experience we have the capacity to not just survive but to thrive and draw on those struggles and challenges to move forward with hope, faith and gratitude.

Rather than regretting all those hardships or the hurtful things we have done, we can choose to accept the past for what it is and focus on what good can come of it. Can we learn from mistakes? Become more empathetic? Connect with others with similar experiences? At the very least, can you see how the struggles eventually brought you joy?

A conscious life is a kind of cognitive-emotional alchemy. We take those hard times and through thoughtful consideration and positive action we turn them into opportunities to learn, grow and make a positive difference in the lives of ourselves and others and for this we can be grateful.

When we let go of regret and become open to seeing what good may come from bad decisions or bad circumstances we free ourselves to discover countless opportunities to which we would have otherwise been blind.

As parents our instinct is to protect our children from all suffering but in truth the best thing we can do for them, especially as they approach adolescence is to give them the tools of resiliency, confidence and empathy that will enable them to face those struggles and take from them whatever they can to learn and grow into wise and capable adults.

*Canadian TV character who gets to go back in time to revisit her greatest regrets.

I don't know what kind of person a princess is...

2010-01-31T09:52:00.006-05:00

Following up on last weeks post, here's another thing that strangers often do that rankles me. Everywhere we go people tell her how beautiful she is and call her 'princess.' I regocnize that the intention is good and it's all meant to be friendly and complimentary but it just doesn't sit well with me. First, while I agree one hundred percent that the kid is bloody gorgeous, I don't want her getting the idea that that's the most interesting or valuable thing about her. She'll get enough of that when she's older, I'd like to build a strong foundation of self-confidence before people start undermining it. Second, it's the princess thing. Have you gone to a pre-school or kindergarten lately at Halloween? The girls are all either princesses, fairies or fairy princesses while the boys are batman, spiderman, a knight, a ghost, a vampire, a cowboy and the list goes on. The boys are choosing from this infinite supply of characters and heroes and the girls are all just pretty.

Boys don't proclaim that they want to be a prince, if anything they're the king. So why do you never hear a little girl say I'm a queen. The symbolism of the princess, especially as filtered through the Disney lens, is about being pretty, having nice things and getting a man. And unlike the prince (who will one day rule the land), the princess has no real power beyond those of attracting princes and making old crones jealous.

I have spent some time thinking about how to deal with people calling Mae a princess and I have decided not to say anything on the spot. For the time being Mae doesn't even know what a princess is. At Christmas she was given a tiara and a building set complete with hard hat. She loves that hard hat but when she tried on the tiara she said, "I don't want to wear this, I don't know what kind of person wears this." So when someone calls her a princess she usually says, "I'm not a princess I'm a girl!" When she's older (and exposed to everything her classmates know) I'll talk to her about it and let her form her own opinions. But for now I'll rely on limited exposure and her own indignation at being called anything other than a kid or a girl.

Don't take toys from strangers!

2010-01-24T10:19:00.004-05:00

When I take Mae out something inexplicable happens, strange old men give her things. First we were in the mall and an older man came up, bent down in front of her and gave her a stuffed pink giraffe. Another time H was with her on the bus and an old man gave her a stuffed dog, and on several occasions various older gentlemen have tried to give her candy. There are several things about this which bother me. First, if you want to give anything to a small child (particularly one you don't know) you should always ask the parent first. To offer it directly to the kid puts the parent in a very difficult situation. If I say no, not only will I offend the giver but I will disappoint my daughter. Second, I don't want my daughter getting the idea that she can expect strangers to give her gifts, that it's okay to take gifts from strangers or that being pretty (as she's so often told) gets you things. When it's candy it's easy, I can just say, "No thank you, she's not allowed candy." But with toys I don't have a simple explanation on hand and the last thing I want to do is get pulled into a debate or argument about the reasonableness of my thinking. When Mae is a little older I will be able to explain myself to her but for now I'm stuck, flummoxed every time it happens, wishing that old men would just stop giving things to my little girl.

These are the kinds of moments that get us thinking about our gut feelings as parents. What do we really want or not want for our kids? At these times it is worthwhile to take the time to sit with it and reflect on why you're having this reaction. If I'm ever going to be able to effectively say no to these gift givers I need to be clear about how I really feel about it and why. Even if I don't explain myself to others I will not have the confidence and clarity to "stick to my guns" if I don't understand my own reservations. The other side to this is that there may be times that those reservations are based in irrational fears, prejudices or insecurities. If we do not examine our 'gut feelings' we are at risk of, on one hand doubting ourselves and not being able to respond with confidence, and on the other hand reacting in ways that may not reflect our true values and beliefs.

The key here is the difference between reacting and responding. When we react, we go straight from the gut with no pause. Clearly there are times when this is warranted. If your child is on a collision course with the ground reacting quickly is what's going to get the job done. But more often we find ourselves reacting in ways that cause us more conflict and stress than necessary. When your potty training kid pees on the flour for the umpteenth time, the reaction is to be exasperated and maybe even punitive with the child. This kind of reaction however is likely to lead to nothing but tears on his part and more frustration on yours. However, if you pause for a moment before reacting you can calm down and shift that gut reaction into a thoughtful response. Instead of yelling, "Come on! I just asked you if you had to pee why can't you just go on the potty!!!" you can say, "Oops, looks like you peed your pants. That's okay, it was an accident. We'll just clean it up and next time you can try to go on the potty." Now you and your kid are both more relaxed and he's not learning that peeing his pants is a great way to get a reaction out of you.

Making the shift from reacting to responding is not easy, it requires the ability to step back for a minute and reflect on the best way to proceed. However, it is a skill well worth learning and once acquired it is indispensable in diffusing conflict and staying sane, especially when dealing with children.

Walking the tight rope with a three year old

2010-01-17T20:44:00.004-05:00

Many parents have kids who throw epic tantrums, I have a crier. Every day she's testing her boundaries (and mine) and every day there is a power struggle. The challenge is that while I know she's just trying to get her way, and I refuse to give in just to calm her down, I also recognize that at a certain point she is genuinely upset and past the point of reason (I think this holds true for some tantrum throwers too). At some point, in her mind, I transition from the mom who won't let her have her way to the mom who won't hug her to stop the sadness. So now I'm trying to strike the elusive balance between standing firm to encourage positive behaviour and honouring her feelings and being the source of all comfort.

Let me illustrate. Yesterday the three of us were on our way to the bus stop, she was walking and H was pushing the empty stroller. Mae commanded in her best whiny tone, "Hold my hand!!" Now I am currently engaged in the unending battle to end whining so I said, "Okay, can you just ask nicely?" to which she responded, "No, I don't want to. I want you to hold my hand! Hold my hand hold my hand hold my hand!!!" So, now that we've both dug our heels in we quickly escalate into me forcing her writhing body into the stroller, almost turning back home and eventually getting her strapped in despite her best attempts at escape (miraculously without raising my voice). Now I am faced with a distraught child who is far past remembering that this was all about the word please and doesn't understand why she can't hold her mom's hand.

So, I get face to face with her, talk in my best soothing voice. "If you can sit nicely in the stroller until we get to the bus stop, then you can get out and when the bus comes you can sit in my lap." Of course this takes some repetition, a great deal of eye contact and the promise of much singing on my part, but eventually the message gets through and she concedes. After three songs in my lap on the bus she's back to her normal lovely laughing self and I was relieved to have survived another PDB (Public Display of Bawling).

One caveat, I don't want anyone to think that I am always able to stay that calm. In this case my husband was standing their frustrated and impatient the whole time. For some reason I am better able to maintain my cool when he's there being impatient. It's like he's taken on all the kneejerk emotional reacting and given me the space to respond thoughtfully.

So the upshot of all this is:

Don't even think about what other people might think. Cultivate a little insulating bubble of motherhood and just do what you need to do, the neighbours be damned.
Remember that that little tempest is 95% emotion and 5% reason and you are the centre of his or her emotional universe. Try to find the strength to take the high road.
It's better to work through those tantrums now than to spend a lifetime putting up with whining, rudeness and an overblown sense of entitlement.
Know when to change focus. Just like you are not going to give her that chocolate, she is not going to say please anytime soon. Take the time to come up with a compromise that will fulfill her emotional needs and encourage more positive behaviour. In my case I told her that she just had to sit still for a few minutes (while I sang to her) and she would get the freedom and comfort she needed.
Breathe!

The Christmas torch is passed

2009-12-01T20:10:00.002-05:00

The holidays are almost upon us (oh my God it's December already!?) and this is our first year having Christmas at our house. Up until last year, when we all flew out to Newfoundland to have it at my sisters, it's always been at my parents house. I'm excited about starting our own Christmas eve and morning traditions for our daughter but I'm finding it challenging to figure out how to make it feel really special when we're not even leaving home. This, of course means thinking about what kind of memories and warm fuzzies I want to give to Mae.

Now for us Christmas is less a religious celebration (neither of us being Christian) and more a time to focus on family and the cultural (rather than commercial) trappings of Christmas. There will be a big tree, a stocking and cookies for Santa but there will not be a huge pile of presents. I have told my daughter about Santa and her stocking but I have not made it contingent on good behaviour. I believe in a God that loves everyone unconditionally and I want my daughter to believe the same of Santa (the closest thing to God she can comprehend at her age). On the other hand I have not mentioned the idea of writing a letter to Santa. I figure if she hasn't gotten it into her head to start enumerating all the stuff she wants, I'm not about to introduce the notion. She'll have plenty of time for that when she starts school.

So all of that being said, I'm still a little stuck for what traditions I could start that could become a treasured part of her childhood. Maybe I'm thinking too much about this. I suppose some of the best traditions just grow rather than being planned out. All I really know is that we will be making cookies on the day of Christmas eve to put out for Santa and that my little cookie monster has proclaimed that they will be "Mae Mae cookies with brown hair." Any thoughts on what to use for long brown hair on cookies?

It's like falling off a bike

2009-11-10T19:43:00.003-05:00

I know this may be an unpopular position among life coaches but one of my pet peeves is when people say, "There is no try, there is just do" or anything to that effect. While I understand the sentiment behind it and I see the value in committing to an action I cringe every time I hear someone say this. First, it's trite. It's like so many "wise words" and "deep thoughts" that we hear in movies or on TV. While they may move the plot along in fiction, in real life they tend to fall flat or simply fall apart upon any deeper reflection. I would argue that almost any statement that is delivered as a universal truism is inevitably limiting and possibly harmful when taken to heart.

For example, when Mae was a baby, and even a toddler, if I was making plans to meet someone I never said "I will be there at 1 o'clock. I always said I'll try to be there for one, probably somewhere between one and one thirty." This is not because I didn't respect the other person's time or because I'm chronically late but because I only had so much control over how quickly I could get out of the house. You never know when you're kid might go for a marathon feeding session, have an explosive diaper or puke all over you and her necessitating completely new outfits (and possibly a bath). If I commit to being there at a set time it may work out or I may wind up with a very irritated friend.

There are many things in life that are not in our control and it is because of this that I find it difficult to buy into "don't try, do." Sometimes, in some situations, the most I can reasonably commit to is trying and surprise surprise this often winds up with actually getting it done. The problem with never "trying" is that you will either make commitments that you can't keep because you didn't want to say, "I'll try" or you fail to make any commitment at all because you never even try unless you're convinced you will succeed. If I'd done that I would have never bothered leaving the house. It's funny to me that this little truism is supposed to be empowering. My experience is that when you commit do doing something and you fail you feel guilty or incompetent or inadequate. But when you commit to trying to do something every success is celebrated and the failures are no big deal because you started out with an understanding that it might not work out.

Furthermore, when you decide to try something that you're not sure you can do you can learn a lot about yourself. I grew up in the country and I loved riding my bike but ever since I moved to the city I've been terrified to ride a bike with all the pavement and cars and whatnot. This past spring I decided that I would get a bike and slowly work myself up to riding on the roads. I figured I'd just ride on the paths for a month or so, move onto side streets for another month or so and eventually graduate to smaller main street with bike lanes. I never expected to ride on any main streets without bike lanes and I figured it would take at least a month before I felt confident enough to ride with the trailer for Mae to ride in. With all of this caution and uncertainty and my slow process of trying I was thrilled when I found myself taking leap after leap and by the time I'd had my bike for two weeks I was already pulling Mae along larger streets, bike lane or no. If I hadn't been willing to slowly try I would have never gotten on that bike. But as a result of my trying I discovered that I had untapped resources of confidence and faith and I still draw on that in other areas of my life. I guess my point is that the value of trying is that sometimes it's important to give yourself permission to fail. Without that we wind up either limited in our experiences or constantly disappointing ourselves.

That's not to say that you should never "just do," my argument is simply that life is too complicated and crazy to only do and never try. If we never tried something that we thought we couldn't do we would learn a whole let less in life and a lot fewer great discoveries or inventions.

After all, "If at first you don't succeed, try try again."

Martha Stewart's got nothin' on me...

2009-10-29T21:09:00.004-04:00

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Perfection as: Completion; making perfect; full development; faultlessness; perfect person or thing; highest pitch, extreme, perfect specimen or manifestation (of).

Perfection is a funny thing. It's something for which so many of us consciously and unconsciously strive. There are two basic manifestations of perfectionism. The first is what I like to think of as the Martha Stewart perfectionist. This is the person who has an immaculate home with CDs organized alphabetically and children whose clothes never seem to get wrinkled. This is decidedly not me. If anything I fall into the other camp, this is the, "If I can't do it perfectly I won't do it at all" camp. So my house is a mess and everything is cluttered and scattered around because the amount of work involved in getting it to the state in which I would like my home to be seems, frankly, inhuman. Both of these types have an "all or nothing" approach but while one spends endless hours achieving the "all" the other spends endless hours agonizing over not being able to achieve the "all" and instead settles for achieving "nothing."

As a mom I know that it's really easy to get swept up in the notion that I should be perfect. This is, after all, another person's life I'm responsible for. With all of the, often conflicting, expert advice out there, never mind the self appointed experts on the street, it is easy to believe that one "wrong" decision could ruin your child for life. But let's examine this thinking a little.

First, let's just pause a moment and remember that most of the expert opinion that's available to us now was either different or simply absent when our mothers were raising us. For all the time we spend agonizing over whether to introduce cereal or sweet potatoes first we forget how minor this decision really is the grand scheme of things. Expert opinion has its place but it's also constantly changing. When my daughter (who's not yet three) was born the advice was to start them on rice cereal, then veggies, then fruit and finally meat. Before she was even two they had decided that maybe it would be good to start with meat after all. If I had realized how quickly the experts could change their minds I would have spent a lot less time worrying about meeting those particular standards of perfection.

Second, when it comes to parenting one of the most important things you can remember is, "this too shall pass." This especially applies to the anxiety's we develop as new moms. I can't tell you how many times after twenty minutes of trying to get a spoon of anything into my kid's mouth I reminded myself "she will not be 18 and refusing to eat from a spoon." This holds equally true for potty training and getting them out of your bed. When you're feeling beat down and inadequate because you can't get your 18 month old to sleep through the night just remember that this is what toddlers do and she won't be one forever. The one constant in parenting, as in life, is change and, for the most part, it will happen when your kid is good and ready for it. Alas, we do not set the schedule for our kids' development. All we can do is do our best and try not to have a complete emotional meltdown in the process.

Finally, and most importantly, who the hell wants to be perfect! I had a friend in elementary school who excelled in all subjects and to whom most people often applied the word "perfect" but if you asked her she always said, "I am not perfect, I don't want to be perfect, perfect is boring!" Of course now as adults we understand, at least in our minds, that not only is it boring, it's not real, it's not even human. Our "imperfections" make us who we are. If we all met some abstract notion of perfection we would all be alike, that's not human, it's borg.

I don't want "the perfect life" I want the the life that's perfect for me right now. And so long as I'm always striving for a life that embraces who I am and who I love I am always living the life that's perfect for me right now.

I didn't do it! Responsibilty vs. Blame

2009-10-17T20:10:00.003-04:00

Responsibility can be a tricky thing for a lot of people. We have these associations with "taking responsibility" that make us think in terms of "taking the blame." Blame and responsibility, however are not the same thing. When you take the blame or lay the blame on someone else it's really about telling you who to be angry at. If you're to blame you berate yourself and thing of all the things you should have done differently, if you're blaming someone else you get angry and go around and around in your head listing everything they did wrong and what a terrible person they are. However, when you take responsibility you acknowledge whatever role you might have had in the situation without the guilt or shame or anger. Instead you can focus on how you would like to do things differently next time and what you can do to remedy or ameliorate the situation now.

The trickiest part of responsibility is understanding how to apply it to situations where you really aren't responsible for what happened. If you come home from a night out to find your home burglarized you are clearly not responsible. The only person responsible is the person who decided to rob you. What you can take responsibility for is how you deal with and respond to the situation. This is equally true in any situation where you have been victimized by someone (or something) outside of yourself. If you choose to blame you will be angry at the other, guilty or ashamed of yourself and unable to move forward in a way that supports you. On the other hand, if you choose to "be responsible" you can take responsibility for how you address the situation, both externally (dealing or not dealing with the other person) and internally (finding forgiveness, learning how to heal).

When you choose responsibility you free yourself from the endless cycle of blame. You can learn, grow, heal and move forward while also being responsible in how you deal with others in your life. Another beautiful thing about responsibility is it grants you the freedom to be wrong. While we all enjoy the feeling of being right many, if not most, of us have just a little bit too much invested in this feeling. As a result we can argue our case a little too vehemently, fail to listen to others and get trapped by our own egos when we can't admit that we're wrong. When you are taking responsibility for yourself and your life you can be open to and accepting of the fact that you won't always be right. You can admit when you are or could be wrong and you can turn what may have been a heated argument into a much more productive conversation.

I've learned in my own way the importance of admitting when I'm wrong because people seem so often to assume that I know what I'm talking about and must, therefore, be right. I find myself feeling guilty if I make an impassioned and convincing argument for my case and then later realize that I was completely wrong (this usually involves something like song lyrics, driving directions or a quote from an '80's movie). As such I have added four very powerful words to my vocabulary: "I could be wrong." More importantly, when I realize that something I've said or done was not accurate, fair, informed etc. I bring out the big guns and unequivocally state, "I was wrong, I'm sorry." These five words, when spoken sincerely, can open up dialogue and minds. And I promise you, being "right" is never as good as being open.

The power of acknowledgment

2009-10-04T11:01:00.003-04:00

So I was chatting with someone at my early years drop-in centre about my present stress levels and all the things I'm working on (stay at home mom, night classes, starting a business, designing a website for a friend) and she said, "You don't know how many parents I see who just plug their kid in front of the TV for hours at a time. You're taking your kid out getting her engaged with the world and other people, you need to give yourself credit for that."

This got me thinking about acknowledgment. As a coach I know that two of the most basic and powerful tools that we have are to provide an objective sounding board and to acknowledge the client for what they do and who they are. In my life, however, it can be so easy to forget to acknowledge myself. One of the hazards I've found with living an authentic life, where my decisions come from who I am, is that I tend to think of those decisions as givens. In some way I don't perceive myself as having made a choice, I just think, "well what else could I do, this is who I am and I can't be anyone else." Of course this is ridiculous. We are always making choices and just because you can't imagine yourself doing it any other way doesn't mean that you haven't made a conscious choice to do what's true to you and your values.

Similarly, we often find it difficult to acknowledge ourselves for doing well at those things that seem to come naturally to us. We have this upside down idea that we should only be proud of ourselves if we had to struggle for our achievements. When you really look at this it makes no sense at all. For there is truly something to be proud of when you can find and follow the path that best fits your passions and your strengths.

This is no trivial thing. When we forget to acknowledge ourselves for our choices, strengths, achievements and efforts we get much more easily bogged down by the day to day work of living those choices. But when we can take a step back and appreciate all that we are and all that we do it can be a powerful experience that carries us past all those trees so we can really see the forest that is our life.

No, it's not all in your power...and that's okay

2009-09-26T11:13:00.003-04:00

I got in an argument once with another coach about a comment that she made that "all your barriers are in your mind." I understand where she's coming from and this is pretty common in the self-help field. I realize that this is supposed to be empowering but I also believe that there are real tangible external factors that can block people from doing what they want or need to do. In these cases it is not empowering to tell someone it's all internal because they can just wind up beating their heads against a wall. In fact this is backed up by research done by Martin Seligman. In his book "Learned Optimism" he outlines the links between depression and a pessimistic explanatory style. Part of this pessimistic explanatory style is that when bad things happen you think it's because of you, this is an internal explanation.

I do believe that it's important to be aware of all the ways in which we exercise choice in our lives but sometimes we need to recognize the external barriers in order to be able to identify what our choices really are. Telling someone who works three jobs to support their family and barely make ends meet that the barriers to finding more fulfilling and sustainable work is internal ignores the economic realities and familial responsibilities that cannot be realistically escaped by a shift of perspective. Recognizing the external barriers and finding ways to work with or around them is far more empowering. This is equally true of less concrete factors. When someone is regularly facing discrimination and prejudice this must be acknowledged before they can identify what choices they need to make to contend with that reality.

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics. Perhaps it's a fundamental difference in perspective and life experience. Either way I believe that in order to truly become empowered in your life you need to be able to recognize those external barriers so that you can make meaningful and informed decisions about how to move forward and create both the internal and external life that you want. If you don't recognize external realities you can wind up distorting your inner reality and that surely is not conducive to positive forward movement.

Choosing gratitude over regret

2009-09-15T20:41:00.002-04:00

One of my core beliefs about life is that I don't regret anything in my life. This doesn't just mean that I don't regret things that I have or haven't done, it also includes those things in life that have caused me pain or suffering. I have certainly had my fair share of struggles and I might be expected to wish that many things had never happened but I can say in all honesty that I don't. One of the biggest traps we often fall into is playing the "if only" game. You know the one,
"if only I'd never dated him he never would have broken my heart."
"if only my parents had stayed together I would be so much happier."
"if only I'd finished school I would have a successful career."

These kind of hypotheticals hold two dangers. First they can lead to an infinite regress, trying in vain to go backwards in time to isolate that one thing that's to blame for all of our current suffering or dissatisfaction with life. Second, when we focus on everything that we perceive to be wrong with our lives, present and past, we become blind not only to the things in our lives for which we can be grateful, we are also blind to all of the opportunities that those "bad things" can open up for us. If you've got some bad experience in your past give this a try, take a few minutes to think about all of the positive things in your life that wouldn't have happened if that "bad thing" had never happened. Here is a personal example.

If my father hadn't died when I was young:

I never would have met my stepfather
We never would have moved up North.
I never would have met the friends I had there.
I would have been my best friends shadow all through highschool.
I wouldn't have experienced all the bullying and harassment there and therefore...
I wouldn't have left home early to live close to my grandmother.
I wouldn't have finished high school at Collegiate and made all those friends.
I wouldn't have learned all I learned from that independence.
I wouldn't have met my husband.
I wouldn't have my daughter.
I wouldn't be who I am today.

With all the good that can come from the bad I choose to be grateful rather than regretful. I choose to appreciate all the ways in which not only my experiences but my perspectives and responses to those experiences shape me. Most importantly I choose to embrace the imperfection of life and to raise my daughter to do the same.

Of course, however powerful it is to shift your perspective on the past, it is twice as powerful to approach new struggles with the same gratitude. When faced with new trials the first question we can always ask ourselves is, "what can I learn from this." With this approach we can be open to all the possiblities that may arise from the inevitable troubles that will be sent our way.

I think therefore I blog

2009-09-04T13:50:00.003-04:00

Blogging is a tricky thing. You want to post regularly and keep things interesting but at the same time you want your posts to come from inspiration not desperation. If I were blogging about my life I could tell endless stories about my daughter or the latest movie that I've seen but when I'm blogging about coaching it's more challenging. I go through my days and try to keep my mind's eye open for any "coachable moments" or inspirations that arise from conversations. This past week I think I've been so focused on getting through each moment that it's been harder to find (or recognize) those moments of inspiration.

The funny thing about stress is that you don't always know that you're being affected by it until some small thing makes you cry or yell or you realize that you've been storing it all up in your back or neck. Or of course you may look up from the table only to find that you just ate an entire tub of ice cream.

In a culture fuelled by "multi-tasking" and "efficiency" it is easy to become so accustomed to stress and low level anxiety that we don't even realize that anything is wrong. If we don't check in with ourselves and take time to take care we can so easily become disconnected from ourselves and miss out on all the little moments of joy and peace. I am no expert on stress management. I know that eating chocolate and popcorn only stuffs the stress down. I know that listening to the right music can be either thoroughly relaxing (Back's cello suites) or absolutely cathartic (NOFX).

In Quaker practice it is recommended that you take time every day to be still and connect with a deeper spirituality or "the God within." Even if you're not Quaker, or not religious at all, taking that time to check in with yourself and reconnect with what matters to you can bring some much needed calm to your otherwise buzzing brain. With that calm you might become energized or find some new clarity or simply recognize that you were more stressed than you realized. Without that calm you may find yourself sitting on the couch weeping at cell phone commercials.

You are what you do

2009-08-23T19:54:00.007-04:00

Recently Howard and I watched a movie in which a bullied boy is advised to “hit them, hit hard, hit harder than you dare.” Knowing that I got bullied quite a bit when I was in school Howard asked me if I thought this was good advice. Of course he also knows that I’m Quaker and, as such, opposed to violence. So my answer to his question was a decisive “No.” Of course being me I then expounded at length as to why I thought it was bad advice.

The gist of it is this, everything you do in life, especially what you do in a time of stress or crisis, helps to define who you are and who you will be. When a child is being bullied our instinct is to try and figure out what will be most effective at stopping the bullies. That’s all well and good but what does it mean for who that child is, and will be, if they solve their problem with violence, cruelty or revenge. There are myriad ways to deal with bullies and sometimes the solution is to simply remove the bullied child from the unsafe situation.

Pulling back from such a specific example my point is this. The effect of your actions on your sense of self and internal well-being should be considered at least as seriously as any more obvious outcomes. There are two simple questions to ask yourself when making a decision, “Is this who I am?” and “Is this who I want to be?” You can’t always be your perfect self and some decisions are just too complicated to ever be satisfied with your choice. But if you know who you are, and you know that you’ve done your best to be true to that, you will be able to weather the storms and move forward with a strength that comes only from living a confident, authentic life.

After all, when all is said and done and the dust has settled, what you’re left with is you.

Potty training coaching moments

2009-08-20T13:10:00.002-04:00

So I'm in the midst of potty training my two and a half year old and it's both exciting and tiring (not to mention a little messy). I decided to go cold turkey on the diapers, she wears underpants all the time except for when she's sleeping. Like all parenting this task has provided me with what I like to call "life's little coaching moments." This is where I have to step back and think what would I say to a client if they were having this problem or reaction.

Now Mae was doing pretty well with the training we're only a week and a half in and as of Sunday she was 90% accident free. Of course I should have remembered that as with all things with kids there would inevitably be some ups and downs and yet I consistently get used to something going well or being easy and when it changes, as it always does, I seem to be caught unawares. Yesterday was one of those days. The morning started with a kitchen puddle and the rest of the morning was punctuated by various minor annoyances, including poopy underpants in a coffee shop. Any one of these things I could get over and continue my day with a smile but everything together had me summoning all mommy censoring powers not grumble obscenities as I pushed the stroller down the street.

Now generally I'm a pretty happy person but at times like this I know that what I really need to do is step back and ask myself, "Why are you letting this stuff ruin your mood." It's so easy to allow all the little irritations take over. My experience is the more you buy into the idea that you're "having a bad day" or that the day is "ruined" the more true it becomes. These things are only as big as you make them. As a parent I'm constantly having to remind myself and my partner that "it's only an issue if you make it an issue." When you're getting all stressed out because she won't eat anything on a spoon just remember that she will not be 18 years old and refusing to eat soup or yoghurt. When he's taking "forever" to get potty trained remember, they all get it eventually, you will not have a twelve year old in diapers.

You can't control everything in life, and frankly why would you want to, but you can control how you deal with whatever comes your way. My experience is that you get back what you put out. If you're cranky and focused on all the little things that are going wrong they'll just keep going wrong. You'll trip because you're distracted, you'll get bad service because you're unpleasant to deal with and you're bad mood will feed itself. But if you're positive and focused on all the little things that might make you smile you're day just gets better. Just like a bad mood feeds itself so does a good mood. Think about spending a day where everytime some little thing starts getting to you you remind yourself of one or two things that make you smile. Another approach to take is to think about how funny this will be as a story when you're telling your friends later, when it's all piling up just take a break and have yourself a Seinfeld moment.

When it comes down to it, your mood is up to you. You just have to find the best way for you to pull yourself out of it and get some perspective.

To be a freak

2009-08-17T22:22:00.003-04:00

I've spent my whole life being weird. I was just never quite like the other kids, I knew it and they knew it. I went to an alternative school until grade 5 and I was still the weird kid. I was in a gifted program for middle school and I was still the weird kid. When I started high school in a small town I wasn't the weird kid I was a full blown freak. I wore weird clothes, I was loud and outgoing, I called myself an atheist and I didn't drink, smoke or do drugs. Nobody had a clue what to make of me, I wouldn't go to bible study or get high by the train tracks. I've been taking flack (and outright bullying) for my style, my values and my self-expression my whole life and I always knew that with everything I had to go through because of my non-conformity it mattered more to be true to who I was than it did to fit in or be liked.

Now as an adult my style of dress and hair have toned down and when I refer to myself as a freak the most common response is, "no, you're not a freak" as though I'd just lamented about my fat butt (which by the way I'm also not ashamed of). My answer is always, "Yes I am, I'm proud to be a freak, I've been one my whole life." I call myself freak like I call myself queer, with a sense of reclamation and pride. Both of these words are clear and to the point and, yes, a little in your face. I think anyone who's been taunted and bullied for being different and never changed who they were to fit in can proudly call themselves a freak. I identify as queer because, to me, this is an all inclusive term for anyone whose sexual or gender identity/expression is outside of the mainstream ideals. I'm not just queer because I'm bi, I'm also queer because I don't fit into traditional expectations of femininity. In either case (freak or queer) I'm not just making a declaration of identity, I'm claiming membership in a larger community.

This is why I want to coach people to find their authentic selves and learn to live more authentically, whether they're trying to find their place in the queer community or simply trying to create more meaning in their lives, because I know what it means to feel grounded in whoyou are and to live accordingly. It may not always be easy and it certainly won't always make you popular but it will make you stronger, more compassionate and just plain happier.

Let's try this again...(sorry if I ramble)

2009-08-16T22:03:00.003-04:00

Okay, I'm not the best blogger I admit. But here we go with another attempt at a coaching blog. Since my last post I have opted out of choosing a specific niche and re-focused to two quasi niches. Basically I am and internal life coach focusing on helping people to re-connect with their authentic selves. Within that I am focusing on two different groups. The first is queer folk who have been through the process of coming out and are now faced with figuring out who they are now that they have let go of the pretenses. The second is people who want to re-connect with who they are and find ways to have a positive impact in the world and their communities that is authentic to them.

When you come out you're not just letting go of who you've been pretending to be, you're figuring out who you are as a (insert sexual/gender identity here) and where or even if you fit into the queer community. It's like there's a bad sitcom playing out in your head:

"Does this mean I have start liking Madonna?"
"Am I butch or femme?"
"Am I allowed to wear heels?"

Our heads are full of all the stereotypes we've learned growing up and on top of that, if you're moving into a big city and exploring its community there are so many sub-groups that you may have never even known about. Am I into leather? Do I like bears? Am I a bear? Am I political? Do I want to be?

If you haven't taken the time to get centred in who you are, it can be overwhelming. Even without the drama of coming out, many of us allow ourselves to get squeezed into some box that it supposed to define us, to quote the late great John Hughes, "a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess (or) a criminal." It may be easier to adopt a simple identity and simply fit in but if you're going to live the life that brings you real joy, fulfillment and purpose you're going to have to know who you are, and that is rarely simple.

Coming out is one of those rare opportunities in life to redefine yourself on your own terms. As a coach I want to support people through this process so that they can move forward into their new lives with confidence, self-awareness and joy.

Having rambled on about my first "niche" I think I'll save my musings on the second one for the next post and I promise they're will be one!

Until then.....

Getting a little closer to my authentic niche

2009-05-11T21:51:00.002-04:00

I think I may need to rethink my niche. I'm not sure. I'm really feeling that the real focus of my coaching is on authenticity and helping people to find and live their authentic lives. Whenever I think about the niche of "helping people in the non-profit and social services to find balance and move from surviving to thriving" I feel like I'm trying to fit my real interest in authenticity into the idea of balance. I do believe that reconnecting with your values and working from your strengths will help you to achieve more balance but that's more of a side-effect if you will. If I was really a balance coach I would have to really add some other elements to my approach and that's not feeling all that authentic to me.

I'm trying to determine if it would make sense to focus on the same client group but focus more on the idea of "burnout prevention and management." This is along the same lines as "balance" but not exactly the same. Certainly if you are living more authentically, working from your strengths and grounded in an optimistic approach you will be less likely to get burnt out. This would also still allow me to run workshops for organizations and give a focus to my retreats.

The other thing I've come to realize is that I am more of an internal life coach rather than an external life coach. While all coaches certainly work with you to shift your perspectives and equip you with new ways of thinking about yourself and your circumstance, most coaches take a very goal oriented approach, helping you to set and reach your goals (get a promotion, change careers, improve your health etc). My approach is really to work from the inside out, focusing on clarifying your values and determining what it would take for you to live a more authentic life while also supporting you in finding new ways of thinking about the challenges and successes you face in life. In this case changes to your external life are really the secondary outcomes that result from finding your own internal balance and resiliency.

I need to do some more thinking I think but I'm definitely getting closer and I can't wait to get started and find my feet with my first client.

Oh I'm so bad at blogging

2009-04-09T22:30:00.003-04:00

Okay, I am not good at this. I cannot find the time to blog and I'd rather take notes in my little book in a coffee shop. But here's the latest. I've written the bio I'm going to put on my website and I'm very happy with it and I've also come up with some workshop outlines and ideas on how I would go about group coaching. So I'm really feeling good about having some forward momentum for building my practice. I also had this great idea to add to my practice once I've got some workshops and clients under my belt. So, below is my bio, for the first time published on the web.

Born to a Quaker hippy and an atheist Beatnik and raised by a couple of storm chasers, I never quite had a chance of being “normal.” And between my father’s family (bingo, bowling and beer) and my mothers family (classical music, literature and fine wine) I have gained some unique perspectives leading me to the three most important lessons I try to apply to my life:

Always be true to yourself, you’re the most important thing you’ve got
Life is best lived with an open mind and an open heart.
Never take yourself too seriously, laughter will take you through a surprising number of bumps in the road.

In other words, know who you are, be open to who others are, and never stop looking for the humour in your circumstances.

While I truly believe in the importance of being true to the core of who we are. I also strongly believe that we have the power to witness and change the ways in which we think about ourselves and our lives. This ability to shift our perspectives and guide our self-talk is a powerful tool that can be used to bring us closer to the best of who we are while learning to accept and embrace ourselves with all of our blemishes and imperfections.

One of the cornerstones of my life has been the constant quest to live a life that is aligned with my values. I find great strength and solace in knowing what is most important to me and finding ways to incorporate those values into my life and my everyday decisions. When I can live true to myself and true to my values this is when I am living authentically.

In finding my authentic life path I enjoyed taking the scenic route. Unlike many coaches who have transitioned from successful and established careers in other fields I have explored and pursued various careers learning something new about both the work in question and myself at each step.

My first passion was studying psychology. No matter how many times I changed my mind about what I wanted to do with my life I never for a moment regretted that time. Through my official studies, my involvement with the LGBT community and my work at the student human rights office I learned a great deal about my passions and myself. After one year of graduate studies, however, I realized that I could not be an academic and live my life in alignment with my personal priorities and values.

With my new found awareness I studied web design and arts administration leading to a brief but very fulfilling foray into events management in the arts. I took great pride and pleasure from my work in this field but when I had my daughter my priorities shifted again and after two incredible years at home with her I knew that it was time forge a new path.

In coaching I have found the path that will give me the autonomy and flexibility of self-employment while enabling me to do meaningful work using my natural skills and affording me the opportunity to share my optimism and joy for life with others. Now I am thrilled to be part of the learning community at the International Coaching Academy and truly excited to create positive coaching relationships with my clients.

Striving for balance and optimism

2009-03-01T10:00:00.003-05:00

Alright, I think I've settled on a niche and an elevator speech. So here it is, "I help people who work in the non-profit and social services sectors to find balance and move from surviving to thriving."

I'm reading Martin Seligman's "Learned Optimism" right now and it's really got me thinking about my coaching model and my research paper. I'd like to incorporate the ideas and tools of learned optimism into my coaching model, something like "cultivating optimism." I'm also thinking of maybe doing my research paper on this topic. His work is really compelling especially because it's all grounded in extensive research. Coming from a background studying psychology I really appreciate being able to see the research behind the theory about which I am reading. Seligman talks about the importance of optimism in preventing depression but I think it would be so valuable when working with people in my niche especially in this economy when organisations are losing funding to governmental cuts and decreases in charitable donation. I also really want to do seminars and workshops but I'm feeling unclear on how to incorporate the coaching approach into the seminar or workshop format. I'll have to think some more about this and maybe try to get some thoughts from some other folks at ICA.

I've finally got a trial session with a peer coach scheduled and I'm planning to work with her on finding balance in my own life. Not only because I need it but because I think I need to really address it in my own life in order to be able to be a balance coach to others. I have cut down on my course load, it's amazing how much time and energy goes into being a stay at home mom. It feels like there's so little leftover and I was not giving myself the time to really integrate what I'd learned in my classes. I think this schedule change will help but now I just have to figure out how to best manage the time that I do have making sure that I get enough time to relax and take care of myself. In any case, I've taken a few steps and I look forward to meeting with my (potential) peer coach. In the mean time I'll just try maintain a high laugh to cry ratio ;)

Time is so elusive

2009-02-03T19:49:00.002-05:00

I've really been struggling with time management issues. Mostly trying to figure out how to manage having hardly any time. I've restructured my class schedule so that I have one more "free" evening in the week. I'm hoping that this will be enough to give me the time to blog and do other online stuff.

I've also been thinking a lot about my niche (or lack thereof) and I think I might have it. At first I thought of coaching women who were trying to move away from weight-loss dieting and towards a more healthy and balanced way of relating to food and their bodies. Then I realized that I didn't want to spend all of my time with women who had food issues.

Then I started thinking about two things that came up in my classes. First, someone said that to find your niche you should think about what about you resonates with others. Second, we were talking about values in class and I was taken aback to realize that so many people have never really thought about what their core values are. I've been thinking about my values since I was seven years old. The constant thread in my life has always been trying to find the best way to live out my values (leading to much struggle in adolescence). All of this being the case I thought maybe I could coach people through the process of discerning their core values and finding the best way to live their lives according to those values. The problem with this is that it's too general and I couldn't narrow it down to a target market.

So upon further reflection, and thinking about my existing experience, I'm thinking now that I might want to coach people who are interest in making a transition into either working in or becoming involved in the not-for-profit sector. I might also have a second niche of coaching people who are already working in the not-for-profit sector who are experiencing burnout or trying to avoid burnout. I guess I'll mull this over for awhile and talk it over with some people in my support network. Perhaps I should also contact my peer buddy so I can have a fellow coaching student to bounce it off of. So far I'm feeling pretty good about it but I think I should give it some time to simmer before I commit to it.

First class

2009-01-06T22:13:00.002-05:00

I just had my first class and it was really good. I was surprisingly nervous about it but now I'm even more excited about coaching. I'm really glad that my first class was a business class because I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out specifics about how I want to run my practice. I like to be able to plan and visualize what I'm working towards and getting the practical business information is invaluable to that process. Plus I'm that much more psyched for tomorrow's class.

On another note. I've been thinking about what an advantage it is that I'm not trying to transition from a full-time career into coaching. Because I'm a stay at home mom I can slowly build my business without having to worry about when to make the big leap of faith of leaving a steady pay-cheque. This is part of the appeal of having my own practice. I only have to pay for childcare for the days that I set aside to see clients so I can start with a small number of clients and slowly build without worrying about the loss of income from leaving a job. This really appeals to me also because I'm not ready to give up all of my days with my daughter. Being at home with her is a joy and a privilige and if I can find a way to start working again without completely giving that up I would be thrilled.

All in all this class was a great cap to a long tiring day with my beloved but ever so slightly terrible two year old.

Second (or third or fourth?) wind

2008-12-16T23:24:00.000-05:00

It's been a long road to get here but I'm finally on a path that feels right. I've just enrolled in the International Coach Academy and I'm really excited to be on my way to having my own coaching practice. I know I've changed my mind on several occasions (therapist, mediator, social psychologist, web designer, arts administrator, electrician even!) but in each case I felt like there was something I had to compromise from my vision of the life I wanted for myself. I've always wanted to be self-employed from home so that I could better balance work and family. The idea of helping people to live more authentically is so appealing to me since I've been striving for this in my own life for as long as I can remember. Even in grade school I cared more about staying true to myself than about fitting in.

I believe that many people have gotten accustomed to living on automatic pilot, not taking the time to examine what really matters to them and find ways to make there values integral to how they live their lives. I want to help to guide people through this process so they can live more authentic integrated lives.

This is the gist of why I want to be a coach, I can't wait to get started!