The Great Canadian Woman - She is Strong and Free II

By The Great Canadian Woman and Jackie VanderLinden

In a world that is ever changing, there is one thing I know for sure - when womxn join hands to collaborate, great things are born. This book is a beautiful example of just that. Sometimes we need to break so we can rebuild. In the chapters of this book, these great Canadian womxn show you how to do just that; through their intense vul

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Great Canadian Woman inc.
• Release date: Nov 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999215125

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The Great Canadian Woman: She Is Strong and Free II Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Swain. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book is for entertainment and education purposes only. It is not intended to serve as business or life advice. This book is not intended to instruct or advise in any way. Using any of the information in this book is based on the reader’s own judgment after consulting with his or her trusted professionals. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher, nor the other co-authors.

For permission requests, write to The Great Canadian Woman at:[e-mail]

Published by The Great Canadian Woman Publishing

www.thegreatcanadianwoman.ca

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact The Great Canadian

Woman head office at the address above.

ISBN 978-1-9992151-1-8

Cover Designed by Falon Malec

Book Designed by Doris Chung

Edited by Christine Stock

Contents

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others . . .

Mental Illness and Parenting Can Co-Exist

Connection Through Great Things

Love, Marriage, Empty Carriage

Social Work Burnout to Spiritual Breakout

From Child to Certified to Coach

The Good, the Bad, and the Unfaithful

Perseverance, Kindness, and Becoming a Goddamn Warrior

Taking Back My Life

Birth and Rebirth

Breaking the Silence

Esmerelda and the Golden Nuggets

Rising through the Dark Night of the Soul

Breakthrough

My Unbecoming

My Pursuit to Fulfilment

I Am a Lighthouse

My Blessing and My Curse

Introduction

Welcome! We are so honoured you are here. Before you dive in, it’s important to know that what you have in your hands here is so much more than a book. This book holds within it the sacred lives and journeys of eighteen everyday great Canadian womxn. Sharing your story in a book means you never really know who is going to read it. This reality can create fear and hesitation for the authors. Sharing your story alongside so many others can bring up feelings of doubt and leave you wondering whether anyone will care about yours. Writing your story at all can leave you wondering if it’s even worth sharing and questioning if it would even make an impact on another person’s life. The eighteen womxn in this book have overcome these doubts and more, and now their stories rest within the pages of this book for you and so many others to read. These pages are filled with such emotion, rawness, hope, and heartfelt wisdom. And while words can never truly do justice to the pain and strength each story holds, we commend these womxn for their bravery in showing up for themselves and for their vulnerability.

The more we share these stories, the more walls we break down.

The more we share our darkest times, the more light we can allow in.

The more we share our truths, the more we can live authentically.

The more we share ourselves, the more we connect, uplift, and grow.

We hope that as you read these stories, you find a piece of yourself in these pages. You may find yourself relating to an experience or to an emotional process. Either way, you’ll feel connected.

Thank you for supporting these authors by reading their stories.

If you have a story you would like to share in an upcoming volume, please visit www.thegreatcanadianwoman.ca for details.

Please note that these stories are real and raw and contain discussions of death, loss, grief, mental illness, suicide, addiction, and use adult language.

Chapter 1

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others . . .

Janice Gladue

Belonging is belonging to yourself first; speaking your truth, telling your story, and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging does not require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are—and that’s vulnerable.

- Brené Brown, The Call to Courage

Sometimes my mind wanders into interesting spaces. I’ve spent countless hours amusing myself with creative questions and ponderings. One of the recurring thoughts that I have considered is If my life had a theme song, what would it be? For many years, the only song that I could ever arrive at to answer this question was a song performed during a segment on Sesame Street called One of These Things Is Not Like the Others.

I was a child known for having a beaming smile and possessing a generally good nature. As I grew up, I became known for being a hard worker, an excellent student, a great friend and supporter of others, and well skilled at most things I set my mind to do. I believe that most people who knew me as a child and into my years as a young adult would not have considered me a misfit, a loner, or troubled. The truth is that I was deeply troubled, and I felt like a very big misfit. And while I wasn’t alone, the reality is that I felt desperately alone. At the core of my being, my truth was that I didn’t belong.

I was apprehended by Social Services when I was about four years old. The sudden and quick removal of me from my family felt like a violent severing of connection and belonging, yanked full force from the ground by the roots. In one fell swoop I was tossed and plunged into a sea of uncertainty, instability, disconnection, fear, confusion, and despair. All the natural, organic parts that rooted me in life were washed away.

As I moved through the deep, cold, stormy waters, I struggled incessantly with finding my bearings. No matter the extent of the effort I committed, I couldn’t quite get a grasp of where I was or truly know my place. As a little girl, I ached for love and affection. I craved reassurance, but I was denied it. I fought to find my footing, to find even just a sliver of solid ground. There was nobody to hold me while I cried myself to sleep, nobody interested in witnessing my pain, no one to wipe my tears. Bedtime hugs were forbidden and general chatter and inquisitive conversation by children discouraged. Looking back, I can see that I was stranded in this unforgiving and unrelenting sea for so long—left to sink or swim.

The details that led to my apprehension do not reside in my memory and have only been populated by sparse stories and memories shared by others. The parts of my early life story that I don’t need others to fill in for me are of all the pain and desperation I experienced and not knowing where I belonged or to whom I belonged. Even now, as I sit to put it into words, my body remembers the trauma—revisiting it all is an authentic and present experience.

I was apprehended and placed into care along with the youngest of my five brothers. I don’t remember much specifically about our first foster home, but what I do remember vividly is that my brother, two years my senior, was seemingly always in trouble. I was preschool-aged, and it became my regular responsibility to bring his dinner to his bedroom. There was no childish chatter, no play—only the business of bringing him food and retrieving his dirty dinnerware after. His bedroom was where he was sentenced to serve his punishment for the crime of being an Indian. It is so strange that at such a young age I recognized that. He was always in trouble for things that occurred at school. He was never heard; his side of any story didn’t matter. His condemnation was predetermined. At each instance, our foster parent clearly stated that it was her job to raise us to be good Indian children. At four years old, I didn’t understand with full reason and words what this meant or the weight it carried, but my heart felt it with immense effect.

The next home we moved to was very different. The farmland was vast with barns that housed animals I had never seen up close and personal in my life. There were dogs, cats, cows, and pigs. There were no other homes to be seen on the horizon. I had nothing familiar to grasp onto besides my brother. He was unsteady and out of sorts, just as I was. This situation is where my temporary situation became a permanent condition, or so it seemed.

Nobody fought for me. Nobody came to get me. Nobody came to see if I was okay. Nobody visited. Nobody showed me affection. Nobody cared.

Nobody loved me.

***

When you are a child, it is hard to make sense of all the things that are happening around you. For me, this was only exacerbated by the circumstance of my life. Everything, and I mean everything, was foreign to me—the people, the language, the culture, the lifestyle, the land. There was no reprieve from stress and confusion. There was a constant requirement for me to try to make sense of foreign, strange, and often traumatic experiences. I was always unsure of what was real or stable.

I soon developed some survival mechanisms to manage the mess. I moved through childhood, fulfilling the role expected of me (to be a cute, polite, well-behaved, hard-working, and high-achieving child), pretending and strategically adapting as each situation required. Over time I put up façades, armoured up, barricaded my heart, learned how to navigate relationships (always sure not to go too deep), and developed grit and resolve inside while being bright and agreeable outside. There was such a duality, and sometimes multiplicity, to my being that there is no wonder that I had such a struggle with belonging. I could not reconcile who I was in the world, let alone to myself.

My childhood was multi-faceted and complicated. It isn’t my intention to make light of what I experienced, it’s just that it tends to get convoluted and messy to share a full, collective experience. So, I find the stories and events are much easier to tell as singular moments. Lots of things happened in my life, some tougher than others, and some joyful. However, when I was a kid, while things were happening, I also endured repeated sexual abuse. It started when I was about five years old. Every morning, day after day, one of the biological sons of my foster parents would quietly come to my bedside after he made his lunch for work. I pretended to be asleep while I screamed in anguish inside. I didn’t tell anyone about it until I was nineteen years old. For so many years, I put on a smile and played a role. I never was any trouble, and I was obedient and high achieving.

I lived in this foster home for thirteen years. For some, the length of time in one place would be regarded as a win, but despite the years there, I never belonged. I worked hard to be the kind of kid they wanted (whatever that meant). Over time I grew to accept them as my parents and to love them, mostly out of necessity as a human being. However, like with most things, it was an arrangement. There were rules, which meant any love came with rules and boundaries—it was not free and full. Their love was always conditional. I can vividly recall so many instances and experiences when I was clearly shown that I didn’t belong. There were so many times when conditions for their love were stated, and I was reminded that my situation was precarious. Subtlety was not a trait of my foster family in this regard.

My foster family was Mennonite, and Low German was spoken frequently in the home. To the foster children (sometimes there were up to three or four others in addition to my brother and me), Low German was like a secret language they used to keep us kids from knowing what was going on. It wasn’t done out of kindness to spare innocent children exposure to painful details. It was indeed about keeping us in the dark.

We went to church a lot. When I was little, we usually attended twice on Sunday and at least once during the week for bible study. In my teen years, I attended church and church functions up to a total of five times a week. The church was a big deal in our household. When we first began attending church, my foster family would regularly discuss my situation with others in front of me, making me feel embarrassed and small. As time passed, they began to introduce me as their foster daughter, always clear to emphasize the distinction. My foster mom sewed me pretty church dresses. I was very proud and felt very special in them. But then, to keep my ego in check, they would give me the ugliest, old-man shoes to wear with them. The stifling of my joy was a regular occurrence.

Once, we went for family pictures. My foster parents, their biological children, and my brother and I got dressed in our Sunday best. It was pretty exciting. I had never been to a studio before, so it was an extraordinary experience for me. The photographer positioned us all together and made adjustments as he snapped photo after photo. And then, when the photographer asked my foster parents if there were any other photos they would like, they responded, "Yes, we’d like some with just the family now." My brother and I were removed from the group. And even as my heart broke, I resolved not to give them the satisfaction of seeing it.

Visits with my biological family were always bittersweet happenings. There was so much anticipation and excitement in the days and hours leading up to seeing them. The truth is that times with my family were not all celebrations. They were awkward and cumbersome as we all tried to reconcile the immense joy of being together with the hurt and anguish of all the experiences that kept us apart. Everyone worked hard to temper sadness and dared not speak of reality for fear that it would overshadow the small, fleeting opportunity to exchange and experience love. As time passed and things got more complicated, the connectedness and belonging to my root family weakened.

After visits with my family, I would return to my foster home and to church where I was told in no uncertain terms that the spiritual practices of my family and community were pagan and of the devil. It was as if I was never allowed to hold anything sacred and special in my life; I had nothing to love and hold dear. Nothing was safe from being tainted by the judgment and expectations of others.

I experienced bedwetting until I was about twelve years old. When I was in grade 3, my foster parents got me a vibrating mesh-screen bedwetting alarm pad that went under my bedsheets. It was uncomfortable on many levels, and the alarm was jarring and just plain horrible. It would go off, and I would wake up in an absolute panic, not only about the need to clean up my bed but more so because I knew that I would have to contend with a heap of trouble. Whenever I wet the bed, I was not only made to feel bad about myself and what I had done but I also had to wash my wet bedclothes, underwear, and sheets in a pail by hand. Shaming was a major thing in our household. In each instance, I would cry, my hands in a bucket full of water, and I would have to sit in the middle of the house (not discreetly tucked into a quiet corner) and be made to pose for a photo.

My foster parents’ extended family was quite large. On Sunday afternoons between morning church and evening service we would go to a gathering of aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends. Most of the get-togethers happened at someone’s farm. The kids would run around the large yard, playing until being called for faspa (a light meal). When faspa was ready, the other parents called their children by their names. Mine called me Piddles (you know, an affectionate nickname to recognize that I was a proficient bedwetter). I’m sure you can guess how all the kids responded to that one. Once again, I was utterly devastated, but of course, like many things, I just had to grin and bear it.

Each year for my birthday, my foster mom made a delicious homemade cake heaped with sweet buttercream frosting. After dinner, the cake would be brought out, candles flickering brightly, while everyone sang Happy Birthday. I felt very special and loved by all the extra effort and attention that marked my birthday. Ooh, and what child doesn’t like gifts? I would excitedly tear at the beautiful wrapping paper. And as the contents of the package were revealed, I would fight back tears and grin the best I could. The happiness and exhilaration of the moment were quickly destroyed by being made to proudly show off gifts of diapers, toddler panties, and baby toys while being called names, laughed at, and shamed in countless other ways.

When I was about fourteen years old, I was standing in the kitchen with my foster mom when she took a call from Social Services. I could hear just enough of what the caller was saying to make sense of the discussion. The discussion was to advise my foster mom that there was a new training requirement for all foster parents. My foster mom bluntly stated that she and her husband had been foster parents for many years and that she was confident that they knew how to do the job. The person from Social Services indicated that if they did not get the training, they would not get paid for my care, to which my foster mom responded (without hesitation before abruptly hanging up the phone), Come get her then. There must have been more discussions that occurred after that because Social Services never did come and get me. And I do recall hearing that a deal was struck that they would not be required to take the new training but that I would be the only and last foster child who would be allowed in their care. I remember questioning how, after so many years, they could be so willing to cast me aside so quickly over a dispute about money. It was then that I realized my place in the family was bought and paid for in instalments; I was purely a business transaction.

Things began to unravel when I was in high school, and it was not because I was a handful or a bad kid. I was quite the opposite. But for some reason things took a strange turn, and my foster parents stopped talking to me, not a little bit but all together, for days. My foster mother even went so far as to put a piece of duct tape over her mouth for a brief time. All these years later, I still can’t put my finger on the reason why.

I struggled for a long time to come up with a solution to the situation at home. Ultimately, I ended up using the school phone to call my social worker. I don’t recall if I had to look it up or if I knew the number. After all, for years it was common practice for my foster parents to give me the number after each time I got the strap so that I could tell on them if I wanted to. I digress. My social worker, Nancy, decided that she would arrange to come for a lunch meeting with my foster parents. It was an awkward lunch. Not much was said, but when words were spoken, they packed a punch.

The silence and tension were thick. Nancy attempted to encourage a conversation to sort out what the problem was. Suddenly, just a few minutes into lunch and with plates still full of food, my foster dad stood up, stepped back from the table and said without hesitation, If you are thinking about moving, you move today. What you don’t take with you today is ours to sell. Gawd! I was seventeen! I had lived with them for thirteen years, and this?! This is what it all amounted to?! In one grand flourish I was cast away, homeless, and unwanted. I belonged to no one. I belonged nowhere.

These are just some of the tough things I endured, a sort of Coles Notes if you will. I share them to illustrate and punctuate that the challenges I experienced with belonging were multi-faceted, enduring, traumatic, and complicated. My journey as a young girl into adulthood was all this and so much more.

I am now in my forties, a proud mother of two girls, living a full and happy life with my partner who is a fantastic father and an amazing human being. I have a fulfilling career and am blessed in many ways. I look back on my early childhood and coming into adulthood with compassion for my younger self. I recall days and nights filled with deep, dark, endless despair and gut-wrenching, heaving cries that gave no relief to my situation or condition. There were periods of never-ending darkness and unshakable heaviness. I fought desperately to find relief from the pain with little reprieve. I was perpetually alone, longing to belong. Today, I am amazed by the strength, resilience, and courage I was able to summon somehow. I recognize the guidance and protection of my ancestors and the uplifting support of many earth angels, for which I am eternally grateful.

For so many years, fear and shame ruled how I navigated life. I always felt troubled and like a misfit and a loner. I didn’t just hide who I was from others, I also hid from myself. I worked hard not to be a failure, to prove everybody who expected so little of me wrong. There were so many barriers and obstacles. Sometimes it just felt