Category: Read + Write

What do you get when you cross sex trafficking with an octopus? Wait – hear me out, this is not a terrible joke; this is an honest look at the world around me and the decisions that go into writing about it.  A local article posted to Facebook from Toronto Life about sex trafficking in our region caught my eye – would a line from the piece resonate with me?  Would I find myself writing about this topic?  Before the article took me by surprise, I was intent on sharing my recent interest in a book I’m reading about The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness called Other Minds, by Peter Godfrey-Smith.

Life is a tapestry, a smorgasbord of content, and my pen is my needle and with each colourful thread I weave into sentences my ideas are brought into being.

Additional topics floating through my mind:  the weather, the absolute dull greyness of the season; the February blahs and a need to escape, or maybe that was less of an idea and more of a feeling.  Winter weighs heavily on my mind.  One minute (last week) you’re up; the next, the sky is grey and meaningless, a piece of your life’s work gets rejected, your husband abandons you for work (insert melodramatic violin playing here) and you’re looking after your parents’ dog who gives you this look of constant disappointment.  You can’t measure up.  You receive that rejection and think ha! this next piece is going to sell.  That next piece, which you feel like it has taken you five years to get to this place of pitching it; you achieve the impossible and pare down your thoughts into one simplified beautiful email.  You take your time on the email pitch, spend the best hour of the morning on it then send it to its intended destination with bated breath.  You receive the universe’s reply before lunch, “I’m going to pass.”  Hopes dashed right out of the gate, before noon.  But there’s more hope!  They’ve passed your piece onto a colleague!  “They’re going to pass, too.”  Alas, you sigh deeply, failure.

Life is just like that!  Write it down.

I’m waiting to hear about a big project, a story I want to write, but waiting, waiting is so painful.  I’m not a very patient person or perhaps (refer to last week’s post) my type A personality leanings mean I have a hard time relinquishing control.  But you know what helps?  To bide my time, I read.  Whenever I’m in a bit of a rut, I turn to books.  I create a new world around me.  Books hardly ever fail me, and when they do, I put that one away and pick up another.  There are loads of lives to choose from when our own lacks luster.  I keep stacks of books at my bedside and ready to go on my phone.  On the brain and in my ear.  I listen to books when I work out:  on the bike, on the treadmill, out for a run on dry earth and icy sidewalks.  I listen to books when my husband’s away and I need fifteen minutes to do the dishes and clean up.

“Go play,” I tell the kids, and in go my earplugs as the tap whooshes on and now Jessica Simpson is telling me about her latest tummy tuck (yes, I listened to Open Book – don’t judge me – I fully intend to offset said trashy Hollywood star drama memoir by next reading Les Misérables in French, a 19^th century hefty literary classic, to give my brain a stretch.  Also, I’m going to stick up for Jessica and say I have to hand it to her for putting herself out there, whether she did really write most of that book like she says she did or not. Though spoiler, I think she skipped over some of the juicy bits, to tell you the truth).

Stories are fodder for the fire that burns within me.  Here’s where sex trafficking comes in:  I see an article where a person is telling their story in a format referred to as memoir or narrative nonfiction – the kind of writing that I write.  From there, I think of selling one of my stories to that same media outlet.  A new pitch is born.  This is the act of paying attention, salvaging what is useful.  A website.  The name of a magazine.  A particular detail.  Illegal sex trade, you name it.  The writer in me also seeks out how does this woman go about telling her story?  I’m curious.  I’m leaning in and I’m learning.

And my connection to octopuses, you ask? Why did I even mention that book in the first paragraph of this blog post?  Well, because there’s a story there.  I feel like I could write a whole essay about octopuses, and maybe I will, but for the time being I’ll imprint upon you a few contrasting images from real-life.

I met with a woman who told me her baby was born with their intestines outside of their body.  This happened to her, twice.  Once with her first child; they told her it would never happen again.  Then again, with her second child.  The first time she laid eyes on her baby’s intestines strung up in a pile overtop of her baby’s body in a clear plastic bag, she thought, well those intestines look like an octopus.  That’s one of those lines and images that stays with you.  After my meeting with this woman, I walked through the library and there was a book with an octopus on the cover and I had to feel it in my hands, take a closer look.  There was something drawing me to the octopus; I couldn’t tear my eyes away.  Life is like that – unpredictable, seemingly random – and so are the connections we make.  But they mean something.

Our youngest daughter, Penelope, is obsessed with octopuses since our around-the-world trip.  While traveling, we visited three different aquariums (two in Japan, one in Portugal), and saw many octopuses, and then she began to ask for one.  A real one.  We aren’t in the habit of picking up gifts for the kids, especially live creatures, like cephalopods; nor do we treat Valentine’s day as a gilded affair, but I walked into Chapters and there was the most perfect plush pink giant octopus with life-like tentacles that a girl could ever want, and so I bought it for Penelope under the guise of a Valentine’s day gift.  Now picture a three-year-old decked out in her favourite magenta dress with sequined stars, and a magnificent mop of golden-brown curls on top, squeezing her beloved new plucky pink octopus stuffy tight in an embrace of pure adoration.  “I love you, octa-pus!” she declares, then proceeds to introduce him to the other stuffies in town.  “This is bunny…”. In ten years, when she’s thirteen, twenty-three, thirty-three, can I hold onto this memory?  Of a girl and her octa-pus.

I signed out the octopus book, Other Minds, on a hunch and took it home with me.  I should note I am not averse to signing books out and taking them right back (you’ve been warned, crappy books).  I make it a habit to swing by the library – a great free location to write, undisturbed, and a great place to stumble across random books about octopuses.  The octopus book opens with a narrative, which is immediately more interesting than just biological or psychological or philosophical babble, which is hopefully not where the rest of the book is headed.

The opening scene takes place off the coast of Australia; a diver descends into the depths of the ocean and comes across an unusual scene:  a large group of octopuses hanging out on a pile of thousands of empty scallop shells with a handful of baby sharks.  What hooked me though, was the diver’s encounter with an octopus.

Octopuses don’t shy away from human touch; they are highly tactile.  The diver explains, “If you sit in front of their den and reach out a hand, they’ll often send out an arm or two, first to explore you, and then – absurdly – to try to haul you into their lair.”  The octopus does this initially for gastronomic purposes, but realizing it can’t eat you, out of curiosity, an octopus will still pull you in for a closer look, if you let it.  In case you were worried for the diver’s safety, the octopus he’s referring to is about the size of a cat.  We aren’t the only ones searching for meaning.

From the time she was born, we have jokingly referred to Penelope as our Genius Baby.  Imagine my surprise at the end of the first chapter of the octopus book when I find this paragraph:

“Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals.  Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behaviour.  If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over.  This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.”

I had to laugh then, that Penelope, our Genius Baby, latched onto the octopus, the “intelligent alien” of the ocean as her invertebrate of choice and object of affection.

Interesting cephalopod fact: the eyes of an octopus work like ours.  They zoom in and out like a camera, and it was these eyes that developed through evolution, in addition to more complex brains, to help protect us from predation that similarly evolved over time.  Jelly fish never used to have poisonous barbs.

Another interesting fact.  Never turn your back on an octopus in captivity, as that is when they will make their escape and you’ll turn around to find your octopus, once neatly contained in a bucket, is now crawling along the floor (think Hank from Finding Dory); and even when you are observing them, watch out for their spray.  Octopuses can and will selectively shoot water out at people they don’t like.  What fascinating creatures, right?  I know.  This book was a great find.

The world at large and the world of books are equally as fascinating to me.  If we stay attuned, we learn and grow from both making our way through the world and skimming our finger across the page.  A writer’s job is to then translate that knowledge onto their own page, weave the tapestry, in the form of an interesting story. Make every stitch count.

Do octopuses hold a special meaning for me, now that I’ve given them a narrative in my life, even in relation to others?  Of course.  I will never look at an octopus similarly again.  But whether I imagine a baby’s intestines dangling in a plastic bag, or a friendly cephalopod handshake with a pull, or my three-year-old daughter squeezing her stuffy tight, will depend on the day and the story I want to tell.  The meaning I want to make.

The life of a writer is just like that.

I am debating with myself whether I am really going to go from a post about my dog dying to seething rage.  I’m going to do it.  Angry Adelle says fuck it.

Angry Adelle is a real person, a part of me, though only a select few have met her.  My husband, my children, my parents, my brother, and likely my in-laws have caught the cusp of her.  In her element, at full appearance, she is a beast to behold.

I felt a storm brewing this morning, that old combination of not enough time, too much to do and take care of, too little support.  This may be the war cry of women everywhere.  Angry Adelle’s appearance this morning was in relation to wanting to work and be free of childcare responsibilities in direct contrast with my current reality.  Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s back up a minute and dissect what I just said.

I want to work.  I want the time and luxury that my husband has in his career to immerse myself in my art, in my passions, in my writing so I can build a career.  I should be clear that I have some of this already; I likely have more of this than a lot of people, but Angry Adelle doesn’t give a fig about other people – emotionally extreme versions of ourselves are selfish like that.  My husband is totally supportive in regard to my building a career as a writer, but truthfully our society isn’t.  People who love me, friends and family, struggle with the idea that I need time to write.  When it comes to what we value as a society, money talks.  If I were a gainfully employed, full-time hours, read: paid creative writer, there would be no question that I should, for example, receive moral support in finding childcare when school is not an option.  That I should not have to squeeze my work day into a six hour frame on the days when I do have support.  But, to become a paid and published author, and more important still, a better writer, imagine that I need to practice.  Daily.  Imagine this required time, which it most certainly does.  Ten thousand hours plus to become an expert, to be exact – where is society’s support then?  The idea of supporting oneself through one’s art alone is ludicrous to the point of being a farce in Canada.  The top one percent of writers will potentially do this, but even their roadway is not paved in gold.  Many award-winning Canadian authors hold down regular paying jobs to support their art, and here’s the catch-22 for the emerging writer: to qualify for any grants or bursaries in Canada, you need to have at least one book published.  My first book took me over three years to write, and I’m still seeking publication with response times from publishers that can be obscenely long, a process that is pushing four years, soon to be five.  That’s a long time to go without a paycheck.

The struggle to become an established writer is real and alike for men and women writers, but there is the added stigma that women should be managing their families and their homes, an added responsibility that takes time away from their writing.  This is what’s grating at me lately.  The obligations of my sex.  Men at large seem to be released from this particular association of women and house.

Now I’m not trying to play the victim.  You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.  I built this life I’m living and I am an active participant in the choices that have gotten me where I am, master of the house and all.  I mean, ladies, could we really leave it up to the men?  Come on.  Yes! Yes we can.  And we should!  I do when I can.  You should!  If you ever want any time to yourself to get some work done.  I love my kids, but there has to be a balance.  Now let’s get into this building a new career and having kids thing.

I am starting anew, and building a career in writing after having three girls.  Let’s dissect having three girls.  First of all, I chose my life with my girls.  I loved being home with them – mostly.  The ability to stay home was a gift for which I can thank my husband’s career.  Not to sell myself short, before there was his career, there was my career that carried us into our first home.  For me to stay on at home with each of our babies, there would not have been another way without my husband’s salary.  He thanks me in return, for the time I have invested in our family.  Eight years have come and gone.  I nursed each of those babies to completion.  I fed them, walked them, watered them.  They grew tall, strong and narrow toward the light.  I have guided them to the best of my abilities and sacrificed myself many times to do so.  And I’m done.  I don’t want to be the one to do all the sacrificing anymore.  And this is where Angry Adelle and the rage comes in.  I think this is a collective rage of women of old, of days gone by.  Felt by women since there was a man to look down on her and keep her in the home.  Felt by the Austens and the Brontes and the Woolfs.  None of these women writers had children though I’d take my freedoms over theirs any day.  Two hundred years ago women needed permission and an escort to leave the hearth.  And there was no time to write and what decent woman would?  Women could write letters, say in their idle time, if they were attending to an ailing father’s bedside, but Writing was a man’s domain.  Sadly the only writing about women from that time is by men.

The rage that bubbled forth inside of me was not directed at my children, for they are innocent; or for my absent husband who’s earning a living for our family.  The rage that boiled forth was a resentment of circumstance; circumstances that make it hard for me to write.  Maybe this post is about not getting in my way, not getting in the way of any female who knows what she wants and is ready to earn it.  Maybe it’s about acknowledging the brunt of the work women have taken on for centuries, millennia even, that goes unpaid and therefore unvalued and unappreciated, or maybe it’s about a writer struggling to find her way and make a living in exchange for creativity.  Do we still care about passion and creativity?  Do we value artists who make art in its various forms as a society?  Do we value the unpaid work of (mostly) women?  I think we can do better.  Maybe this post is about all those things combined, the underlying seething rage, the entrapment of domestic life and the monotony of the daily grind.  Maybe this is a way for me to push back, as a woman and a mother, and say, “hey!  I’m still here.”  Maybe I’m just taking a hard look at myself and not liking everything I see.

But here’s what I do know.  Angry Adelle comes and goes.  She was here before lunch, I fed her well and was joined by good company, a fellow female creative, and regular Adelle, also known as me, Adelle, is back now and in good cheer.  Kinship and companionship have a way of doing that, lightening and elevating the mood.  Fellow creatives unite!  That soothes the soul, too.  So does doing a good deed.

On my way to lunch, working through my snit, a man stood waiting for me as I parked my car.  What did this asshole want? He better not try and mess with me.  Grrr…Angry Adelle.

Turns out he needed a boost for his wife’s car, which he was quick to point out was a bit of a junker and he could hardly squeeze himself into it.  I saw the car right across the street and immediately agreed to help him, texted my friend to say I’d be a few minutes late, and left with a different perspective than the one I came out with.

“You sure have a nice car,” he said, “really good motor too.”  My shiny red van happens to be brand new.  I am not a starving artist.  My husband supports me.  When he called his car a junker, I told him we had a junker, too.  The car my husband drives used to be mine when I bought it fifteen years ago for work.  That car could go and at any moment it might.  My husband makes sacrifices for our family too; I think most modern, forward-thinking men do.  These men are invested in raising their families and raising up their wives.  I’m incredibly fortunate to be married to such a wonderful man.  Also, I know when our car breaks down, we have the financial security to replace it.

With his car hooked up to mine, the gentleman’s car started right away (notice how he’s a gentleman now?  That’s the power of a change in perspective)

“That’s it? I asked.  His needs were simple.

“That’s it, thank you so much!”  and he repaid me with a kind smile.

This man did not look down on me one bit.  Ironic how good helping can feel when it’s not forced or ritual or expected.  When it’s just a person helping a person in need.

My rage subsided; it usually does.  But there’s a history there.  Back to work.

I like to tuck tiny words into the pockets of my soul.  You never know when you’re going to need them. 

To writers and non-writers alike, there’s a practice I’ve been doing off and on since the time I could write that has served me well.  When you’re reading, if there’s a line or a poem in a book that speaks to you, jot it down in a journal (include the source).  If I’m lying in bed and too tired to hunt down my journal or a pen, I set a reminder on my phone with the page number and brief description for the next day.  Your journal can be a spiral notebook or whatever you wish.  I’ve come to favour five-sectioned spiral notebooks for their ability to section off writing projects.  They cost a fraction of what fancy notebooks do, have substantially more room, and provide a better writing surface.  Use the words, phrases, song lyrics, lines or poems that you collect as inspiration in life, in your work, and most definitely, in the case of the writer, in what you create.

In reading local author Jeff Sutherland’s memoir Still Life, I came across two beautiful words by Dr. Maya Angelou.  Love Liberates.  Love liberates.  Dr. Sutherland’s memoir relays his story of receiving a diagnosis of ALS (a disease that attacks the motor neurons of voluntary muscles) while in his forties as a flourishing family physician, followed by the subsequent loss of his eldest son in a freak water accident.  When Dr. Sutherland lost his son, he also lost his son’s girlfriend who had become like family.  The young couple had been kayaking in behind the family’s home on a serene, sunny day.  Just months before the accident, his son’s girlfriend had the words ‘love liberates’ tattooed on her arm and so did her mother.  Love liberates.  What did it mean?

Certain lines trigger my writer senses and I knew this was one of them I had to explore further.  A quick google search revealed a video of Dr. Maya Angelou talking about how love liberates, using story as only she can.  You can watch the amazing video here.

Love Liberates

“I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love because that liberates.  Love liberates.  It doesn’t just hold – that’s ego.  Love liberates.  It doesn’t bind.  Love says, ‘I love you.  I love you if you’re in China.  I love you if you’re across town.  I love you if you’re in Harlem.  I love you.  I would like to be near you.  I’d like to have your arms around me.  I’d like to hear your voice in my ear.  But that’s not possible now, so I love you.  Go.’”

~Dr. Maya Angelou

Dr. Angelou’s poem applies to loved ones who have moved on, as in the case of Dr. Sutherland’s son and his son’s girlfriend, and it applies to those whose love we might take for granted in our daily lives.  Our husbands.  Our wives.  Our parents.  Our children.  Upon hearing her words, I immediately thought of my husband.  I instantly knew what ‘love liberates’ meant.  I remembered how in 2014, when we had two little kids and I told him I wanted to travel to India for ten days on my own for the World Down Syndrome Congress, he said go.  And how when that same Congress came to Scotland four years later, and we now had three babies, and I proposed another ten days away, he said again, to go.

In both cases, he knew he couldn’t be with me, but he sent me anyway.  He would have liked to have his arms around me.  We like to be near each other.  We spent forty-five days travelling the world as a family. We are close. He told me, I love you, go.

Before we had kids, almost fifteen years ago, I wanted to go on a trip abroad with friends.  He supported my leaving, though he would have rather I stuck around so he could hear my voice in his ear.  We had been dating four months.  We talked nonstop during our dog walks those months.  “Go,” he said.  But my exam schedule conflicted with my friends’ travel date, and so, dejected, I resigned myself to staying.  When I told him the news, my husband smiled and pulled me close, “Good, now I get to go with you.”  And he did.  I didn’t know I could do something like that, just plan a trip and up and leave.  We travelled to Cuba, the first of many adventures to come.

I want to write a book, I want to speak in schools, I want to travel the world, I want to go back to school to do my Master’s, I want to train for an Ironman.  “I love you.  Go.” he says every time.  Love does not hold.  Love does not bind.  Love liberates.

And my life is infinitely richer with him – and the words to express what he means to me – in it.  Pull your loved ones close, and when they ask of you to love them, let them go.

The date is January 1st, 2020. What could be more promising than that? The start of a new year. A fresh day and calendar, like the first page of a crisp journal says the writer trembling in anticipation. A blank page in front of us. An open space to mould and shape into whatever we will it to be.

I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought to the upcoming year. My youngest will start Kindergarten in September and then I will be officially kid-free. This was our master plan, Dan and I, that he would work to earn an income for our family, and I would leave my career behind and stay home to raise our children until they reached Kindergarten age and went off to school. Check and check. Wave a magic wand and the time has disappeared. Penelope’s infancy and toddlerhood, gone, in a heartbeat. At the blink of an eye. I think I’m prepared for this, but I am not. I’m bracing myself eight months out. Eight years. Eight years of being home with my three children. Three lifetimes. Along the way of being a mother, I became a writer, or rather, I came into myself as a writer. I shed other skins behind. Now, an important task lies ahead of me, that of building a career and filling the box.

Here’s my problem. First of all, my box is already full. I have a healthy portion of life already spread out on my plate, thank you very much. You didn’t think I’d stay home and twiddle my thumbs with my kids, did you? I did my time settling into motherhood. In the beginning, I made a plan to try and get out once a day for a walk and to have a shower and be fed and feed my children. In the beginning, those were lofty goals. Never more than one outing per day. I was exhausted. By the time Penelope, number three, came around the game had changed; I had changed. We jogged and hiked everywhere together; I found time to write a book, my memoir, during her naps, with the support of my husband and, let’s be real here, some paid daycare. I’m into triathlons now, I write mostly for pleasure and keep our family’s schedule and life in balance. I plan our trips and schedule appointments. Sign the kids up for extracurricular activities and get them there. I make sure meals and lunches are organized and made, that we have groceries all with the help of my amazing husband, to be sure. None of these tasks are going to earn me Woman of the Year, but my point being, they take up my time, and if my time is spent doing other things, like say, paid employment, then something’s got to give.

I’m staring into the theoretical empty box for the year ahead and the problem is that I want my life to fit neatly into that box, like picking the right sized container for leftovers. But life doesn’t work that way. I’m building as I go; the box is of an inestimable size. I want the box to be big, but too big for its contents and I’m going to feel inadequate. Too small a box, and my life will fall apart, unsupported. As Shonda Rhimes says in her memoir, Year of Yes, I’m laying track for the story of my life, every day I’m putting down the rails, but time is speeding ahead, and I’m scrambling to cobble together a career and get myself together. I have a vision for the future, a place I want to go, but the specifics are hazy.

If I take on too much, how will that affect my family life, my personal time to exercise that I so covet? But if I don’t take on enough, the risk is much greater, the bitter taste of regret. What could I have done, if only…I never want to utter those words. I’m finally ready to dive headlong into a career in writing, but what that looks like is…laying track. Lots of it. Picking up pieces here and there and paving the way. There is no pre-set ‘Adelle’s writing career, this way’ sign pointing up ahead. Just a whole lot of track to lay and the hard work of building a path worth traveling.

There is the fear of failure. Not only am I hesitant to pick the size of the box when it comes to my career, but I’m afraid to fill it. What if all I need is a tiny box? Can I handle a mediocre life?

Mediocracy is like boredom. The bored are often boring. Mediocracy by definition is the middling, commonplace. Ordinary. Logic dictates that most of us fall into the middle. We average out. As long as that middle place involves book deals, I’m good. Though I find it highly unlikely I will ever be content to sit in one place for long. I’ve grown accustom to a certain insatiability, to biggering the box. I think we should all aspire to bigger our boxes, no matter the parameters. Mediocracy is for the mediocre.

In an unconventional sense, this is the year I push to launch my career as a writer. I started laying track about eight years ago, in earnest; arguably, before that. I’m putting it all out there this year, more blog posts, more pitches and published pieces, reaching to sign and secure that elusive book deal, and beginning my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. This year, I will write the introductory chapters of my second book – are you ready for it? – I’ve already started. This year, I’m going to pick up the pace of my track-laying, fill that box, take myself to somewhere new, never forgetting to enjoy the scenery along the way and be grateful for the hard work it took to get me there.

I’m seeking courage for the New Year to write my truth. Maybe that is my resolution? Write my truth. This isn’t a ‘one day you have it, one day you don’t’ goal; truth-telling is an incremental improvement type deal. Each time I set out to write, it’s an attempt to grow bolder, be braver with my pen against the page. To go against that voice in my head warning me to shut up. Who is that voice? Where does it come from?

Truth telling is painful for a writer, when the truth you’re telling is your own – but it’s the only way. Readers aren’t interested in reading that which rings false, even if it’s made up, especially if it’s made up. And if what you’re writing is a page from the script of real life, then you had better get it right, get to the emotional truth of the scene, our human-ness, our inter-connectedness and the complexity of our relationships; you had better write that truth to the bone (note for writers: read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones) But, pop culture Lizzo says it best, the truth hurts. She ain’t lying. Even the truth, sometimes, can be too much.

I’m reading Roxane Gay’s memoir, Hunger, a history of her body and eating. Women have such complicated neurosis related to their bodies, society expects as much. I grew up being taught to love and respect my body for what it can do, mostly through sports and respectable coaches, but also through a fostered self-awareness of the amazing things my body can do and being surrounded by men who did me no harm. My father is the gentlest man, my mother fierce, thankfully. They provided for me, gave me space, let me make my own decisions, accrue failures, and enabled me to grow healthily into my own body. My brother and I were valued equally.

I learned my body can do things. I can flip high in the air, score a goal. I can run a marathon, hike up a mountain, surf in the ocean. Athleticism is in my genes. I can carry to term and birth babies, then feed them with milk from my own incredible body, so on and so forth. My body is amazing, and I’m not going to let anyone tell me otherwise. As an adult talking to other women, I realize how rare my confidence is, how often women put themselves down, especially their bodies. We fault our bodies for what they are not, and for what they are. Too fat, too thin, too tall, too small, too light, too dark. You are beautiful, each and every one of you, and if you have lost that love and appreciation for your body, I hope you will find it back, love the body you have and treat it well. I don’t always treat my body well. I just stuck a second white Lindor chocolate in my mouth, but I have a soul too, and chocolate nourishes my soul. I also understand there are many reasons why women don’t like their bodies, and why bodies are abused. It’s complicated.

Are there things I don’t like about my body? Yes. But I don’t hear my husband or my brother or brother-in-law, none of the men in my life are sitting down and picking apart their physical flaws as defined by the media, so why should I? Why do this to ourselves, ladies? Let’s stop. You’re seriously beautiful and sexy and funny and smart. Flaunt what you’ve got, or don’t, you be you, shy girl – you do you – and let’s teach our sons and daughters to do the same, and place value on the whole person.

The truth is brave. Roxane Gay is courageous. She wouldn’t want me writing that, she flat out says she’s not an inspiration, or writing to share some miracle story of going from fat to thin, her now standing in one pant leg of her old pants on the front cover of her book. That’s not what happens. But her writing is courageous because she shares her truth. Hers is a story of victimhood and surviving her truth. Her truth is that at twelve years old, a boy she thought was her friend leads her into the woods to an abandoned shack where a group of his friends are waiting. They take turns raping her. I know, this is too much. This truth is too big for any one of us to hold. She put on weight to hide the truth under layers of fat. She put on weight because she believed it would make herself disgusting toward men, to keep herself safe and keep men away. She put on weight because she was ashamed that she had let that happen to herself. That is a truth right there, that we live in a world where women are ashamed for the wrongs of boys and men.

Women are ashamed of their bodies for a litany of reasons. It is complicated.

I’m reeling from Roxane Gay’s memoir, eyeing my own little girls across the room. What would I do if someone hurt them? What wouldn’t I do. We live in a world where a woman’s greatest fear is that of being harmed, of losing her life, while a man’s is that of being ridiculed. As mothers, fathers, men, women, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, how can we make this right? I’ve heard a few good places to start. Complimenting women and girls on more than just their appearance. Keeping your hands to yourself. Watching movies with strong female characters and reading books, such as the Rebel Girls Stories of Extraordinary Women series, that highlight accomplished women of various backgrounds. Paying women equal salaries and supporting both men and women in raising families. We can demand that mainstream media shows a more just representation, a broader slice of humanity, if you will, of women and support businesses that do so. We can support, instead of judging, pitying or AGREEING, with women who put themselves down by listening. What I want most as a woman is what most men take for granted: just to be listened to. Women often feel unheard. We live in a world where seen, but not heard, is still the norm for many women. These women deserve to be heard.

Women need to be told it’s okay to take up space in the world. It’s okay to take up space in the world. It’s also okay to love your body, do something you love, and be a presence. You are a gift to this world.

The truth is throughout my life my body has been a gateway to my greatest pleasure as well as my most devastating pain and I must respect it as such. My body brings me immense joy and the truth is there are men and women who would want to murder me for saying that. For talking about my body like it belonged to me at all, for using this voice my parents paid and I worked hard to educate, for living this life freely and taking up space in the world. The truth is too much, and it’s not enough to sit idly by. Thank god for the Beyonce, Malala, Roxane Gay and Gretas of this world. The truth hurts, but there are so many women, and the men and women who support them, who inspire hope.

I hosted my first Writing and Wellness Retreat over the weekend. How to explain the writer’s retreat? In a word…I can’t do it. Life-changing? That’s two words. A dream come true? That’s a phrase, overused and too saccharine. Teachable moments? There were many. Exhausting? Emotionally draining? Challenging? Hard work? That just sounds like I’m complaining about an experience that was truly incredible, but in truth, all of those words are true to the experience.

Perhaps a word won’t do the writer’s retreat justice, but I can capture the retreat in the moments that stood out for me; in the moments that are mine to share.

So much of what happened is not mine to share because the stories are simply not mine. When you are the host, or the teacher, you are there to give of yourself and to take in and try and improve what others have to offer. I was there as a guide, not primarily as a creator. So that will be my story.

The themes we touched on were heavy, I can tell you that much: cancer, loss, abuse, grief, violence, trauma, love. I have read memoir of unspeakable things: children dying, rape, gruesome murder, tragic deaths, devastating disease and deformities and yet I didn’t know the authors. They weren’t standing facing me, looking me in the eye. I didn’t care about the authors whose books I read the way I cared about the participants at my retreat. Their stories will haunt me always, but not in a way that I want to forget, but in a way I will hold with me and want to remember.

There were tears. Of course there were tears. I cried when I wrote my memoir, but I hadn’t anticipated the tears would be mine this time; that I would be blubbering. In the seemingly most unlikely scenario, a writer took me by surprise, she sideswiped me and I was carried away by a sea of tears. I don’t think she would mind me sharing that it was motherhood that did me in. I held it together through the abuse and the trauma and the unspeakable violence, but tell me about the chair you nursed your babes in, the cheap one from Sears with the stains on it; the one you stuffed granola bars into the side pockets for the late night feedings when you got the munchies (nice detail, I might add). Then tell me that nine years after you purchased that rocking chair, the time has come to let it go, and I will come undone. The flood gates will open and I won’t be able to stop my tears. The tears find their way back even now, thinking about it again. It’s the mundane everyday things, a rocking chair, that can really get ya. My friend believed her piece wouldn’t have the same emotional punch as some of the darker subjects, but it’s all in how you tell the story and man, she knocked me right out.

She shared her story, as we all did, during the Saturday night Writer’s Circle I organized. This evening event, which proceeded our Chef-created dinner and scrumptious dessert, was one of my favourite times of the whole weekend. Everyone shared a piece of writing, one to two pages, and then we discussed it. As my friend read her piece about the rocking chair, she hit a nerve – I realized I will be in the exact same position as her next year, sending my last baby off to school. I was sitting next to her, and as she read her piece aloud, at one point she needed a comforting gesture, a hand on her shoulder to help her get through it, but instead of leaning in, I threw my hands in the air, sobbing, “Don’t look at me. I can’t help you!” Some facilitator I am. Whatever happened that night, I know I’m not the only one who felt the energy in the room, it was magic. There was talent, raw talent, and though sadness and loss and grief and pain and tragedy wove their way through many of the pieces shared, there was also so much hope sitting in that room. Love, hope, acceptance and peace. Resilience. Perhaps, in allowing ourselves to connect with others, we open ourselves up to moving forward in our grief and in letting the good flow into and out of our hearts.

While the writer’s retreat was never specifically geared to narrative non-fiction, primarily that is what participants wrote and therefore the weekend shifted to a more personal focus. I therefore played the dual role of writing coach/ therapist.

Creating this weekend, for me, was about bringing writers together, feeling inspired by each other, but also to see if I wanted to teach creative writing. I begin my Master in Fine Arts for creative writing, narrative nonfiction, this spring and at its completion I will be officially qualified to teach writing at the college level – did that even interest me? As it turns out, it does! I was privileged to spend some one-on-one time conferencing with two of the participants and to work through their stories with them, and – as hard as that was, emotionally – I loved it!

I am so grateful to the six women who took a chance on me and for putting themselves out there. Grateful to myself for putting away my fears of who do you think you are? and just going for it. Grateful to my husband, as always, for his support and care of our children. Grateful to our wonderful Chef, Sheila Ward from LOCA foods, and yoga instructor, Erica Forbes, and to the cottage owner and my friend Randi with all the connections and to the universe for conspiring to bring it all together. And, I am especially grateful for the opportunity to do it all again in May, and for the writers whose names are already on the waiting list.

Life is nuanced and random. Today, I dressed up as a fairy with fluorescent green hair, I made my toddler cry before picture day by shooting saline spray up her nose, and my husband is flying home. At 11:05 a.m. exactly, I got my first manuscript rejection and that filled me with hope. Yesterday, I lifted weights in a gym; one of the weights fell off but no one was hurt. I saw a man pushing a young girl with purple hair in a grocery cart curse another man out, and when I asked him if he was okay, he said no, he wasn’t, then he told me why. I bought a denim jacket. I received a loaf of bread. Ariel screamed, “SHE NEVER LISTENS!” I looked at the kale in my grocery cart and I thought, there’s only one way to eat kale.

Taken at random, these events I’ve described on their own don’t make a whole lot of sense, but when you add story to these points of intrigue, you add dimension and layers of meaning. You add heart. Sit with me a while, gather round the fire, let me tell you what happened.

Kale seems like the most logical place to start.

Yesterday was a workday for me, meaning no kids, and it also happens to be the day I lift weights at the gym first thing. I was loathe to have to pick up groceries after the gym and cut that much into my work day, but after school Ariel had Taekwondo and I wouldn’t have the time or energy for a full grocery shop with all the girls in tow – and with Dan away – it was simpler to go after the gym. At the end of my weight class, after sixty minutes of exerting myself and conditioning every muscle group in my body and flinging that bar around, as I walked back to put my weights away the clip quit and the weight suddenly slipped off, all casual, like it wouldn’t have bashed in my face had I been doing bench presses. I took this as a sign to keep my eyes open.

From the gym, I strolled up the hill and over to grab a few supplies from Dollarama for my writer’s retreat this weekend. On my way out of Dollarama, I saw a man, yelling at another man, pushing a grocery cart. He was furious and I saw the small child in his cart with the purple hair and something in my heart pulled at me to speak to him.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not!” then he went on the long diatribe that followed:

“My daughter here has been at Sick Kids for seven and a half years. Cancer. See, she’s got her bags and everything,” the girl looks up at me with sad eyes. I see she isn’t so little; she’s only made herself small. The man continues.

“That van blocked the only entrance ramp where I could get up onto the sidewalk with my daughter and when I told the guy she has cancer, he said he didn’t care!”

The man is shaking. I tell him I am sorry for his trouble and smile at his lovely daughter. He has been heard and I can see I have helped him to calm down by some small measure in listening. His breathing is returning to normal as I leave them. I wish them well.

I drive to the grocery store and shop as fast as I can. Afterwards, I arrive home and put my car into park as the girl’s piano teacher pulls in beside me with a loaf of bread her husband baked for me. The bread is a thank you for editing and making suggestions on a piece of his writing. In the scope of the universe, this act of kindness, the baking of the bread, may very well have cancelled out the wrongdoings of the man in the van who said he didn’t care about a little girl with cancer. I am overjoyed by this token of gratitude. In an email, the piano teacher’s husband wrote to thank me, “I like to pay people in bread.” He is a musician as well, a drummer, and he comes from a long line of Italian bakers. As a maker of a variety of art, he comes by his gifts honestly. The dough rose for eighteen hours before he baked it to perfection. Later, the girls and I enjoy slices of this magnificent fresh loaf as a bedtime snack. I slather on butter and strawberry jam and watch Elyse devour her slice. Kindness reverberates; there was more than enough bread leftover to find its way to my lunch plate the next day and probably the day after that, too. With kindness there is somewhere to go, and kindness means to go on.

I write all afternoon, but not on the piece I planned to work on. After an enlightening phone call with a friend, I end up working on her suggested edits to a piece I’m submitting to a magazine. I would I were a bread maker for her sake. I later text her to thank her for lighting my brain on fire. I pick the girls up from school, and while I’m making them a snack, utilizing the new groceries, I ask Ariel, eight years old, to please walk Oreo who is begging to go out. As I chop strawberries, I hear Ariel’s impatience mounting in the inflection of her voice, the rising whine. She calls to Oreo with no success. She melts down. In a pouty voice, yelling to no one in particular, she screams “SHE NEVER LISTENS!” referring to our deaf dog, which I think, makes the scenario funny. Oreo is fourteen years old and going blind and deaf. I remind Ariel she has to walk up the stairs to get her and to show some compassion.

I load the girls in the car for Ariel’s Taekwondo lesson and make the decision then and there that I have been coveting a denim jacket for long enough. I would make the drive to the outlet mall in the time between Ariel’s forty-five-minute class, buy a denim jacket with two young kids in tow, and get back in time to pick Ariel up. The mall scene could have gone down two ways. The girls could decide to cooperate, or they could make my life a living hell. Magically, they cooperate. Penelope sits contentedly barefooted in her stroller. Elyse runs through the mall shouting, “We’re at the mall! We’re at the mall!” She’s elated and joyful and when I miss the store and we have to walk through the entire massive outdoor mall and then double back, she doesn’t even mind or act tired. This is a huge win. And score, I find the perfect denim jacket.

On my way leaving the mall, I check the time. Exactly fifteen minutes to get back to Ariel at taekwondo lessons. I text my husband and tell him what I just did, “I am A-FUCKING-MAZING!” I brag of my feats, as we jokingly like to do. I miss him. It feels like he’s been gone for weeks. Subsequently, I am six minutes late picking up Ariel, but damn, my denim jacket looks good.

But we’ve gotten this far, if, you’ve gotten this far, and you might be wondering, yeah, but what about the kale?

With a full cart of groceries paid for, as I made my way out of the grocery store earlier in the day, I looked down at my bursting bins of produce and product and it was the kale that caught my eye. Innocuous enough, perhaps, but when I looked at that kale, it dawned on me that other people might notice the kale in my cart, as some have before, and they might wonder what I do with it? Raw kale is unappealing, as it’s quite bitter-tasting and coarse on its own, so you have to dress it up in some way. I’ve tried kale as a dessert, as a baked chip, sautéed and as the base of a salad, and in that moment pushing my cart, I knew the truth as it stood for me, there’s only one way to eat kale. There’s only one way to eat kale, and that is the way that my family chooses to eat it every morning, blended in a smoothie. Then I thought, well, isn’t that just an analogy for life? What one person does with kale is not the same as what another person would do, and it’s just the same with the moments and events and choices in our lives. We each make our own decisions, but there’s only one right way for you to do things, and that’s the way that you choose for yourself. How I like my kale may not be the way you like your kale, heck, you may not like kale at all! But it’s the only way for me. I liked that thought. That there are right ways for each of us. There are right ways for each of us, and room for each of our right ways. And it occurred to me, I’m going to write about that.

You’re still here? Oh okay, I’ll tell you the story of the green fairy princess. It’s me, this morning. I dress up, wearing a neon green wig and a forest green dress with green socks and green fairy wings to celebrate French culture and language in Ontario at my daughters’ school. I call myself La Fée de la Francophonie, which I like to translate as The French Fairy. The students dress in green and white and walk around the block in honour of Terry Fox, combining two events into one. The garbage man looks twice and laughs as I pass him by. A mother pushing a stroller exclaims “Look! It’s a fairy!” to her baby. When I arrive at the school, the children stare at me in disbelief. Smiles creep across their faces.

I had to give Penelope’s nose a saline spray because she’s been coughing, and I want to whisk away any bad germs before our big trip coming up in TWO WEEKS.

I walked home through the streets, dressed as a fairy, feeling full and humbled by my time with the girls at the school. I decided to check my phone and that is when I saw the subject line with the title of my book. I raced home, tore off my wig and wings and settled myself on our steps. I knew the email would be a rejection. I figured the publisher who accepts my manuscript might give me a call. But I didn’t yet know the nature of the rejection. This editor held my timid little heart in their hand. The rejection was a boon; I was bolstered by their words detailing my writing as accurate, vivid and “quite reader friendly”. They liked my book; they just didn’t have a spot for it on their roster at the moment. I was told to check back. I could not have asked for a better rejection and was filled with hope.

The story of the rejection letter is kind of like the story of the kale. There is only one right way and that is the way that you are doing it. This rejection is part of my path, and though not everyone may choose to see it that way, forward is the way I choose. For that man and his daughter and for anyone else out there who needs it: I choose hope.

I’m not talking about the kind of retreat where you slowly back out of the room, or head for the hills, screaming for mercy, in the heat of battle – I’m talking about a writer’s retreat, the one I’m going to run, the one I’ve alluded to in another post this summer, which you might have picked up on if you were really paying attention. I digress. Before we can talk about that retreat though, let’s go back to the beginning of my chaotic morning where I finally drop the kids off at the splash pad, with their teenage babysitter, after getting snacks ready, bathing suits packed, water bottles filled, breakfasts eaten, pizza lunch prepped, bathroom trips executed, the dog walked and fed, and sunscreen applied. No problem!

I usher the children out of the van and on their way to splash pad bliss and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Writing time. Writing and running are the two things that I do just for me that also feel productive, if that makes sense. I see both activities as essential to my health, both physical and mental with some overlap in-between (I sometimes do squats while I’m writing – just kidding!)

I take a quick detour to the café on my way to the library where I plan to work, and grab myself a London Fog and an almond croissant, yummy. I’m watching the bespectacled youth prepare my beverage and I’m impressed with her barista skills – the abundance of milky froth. Except – this isn’t my drink. There’s been a mix-up, which I will only discover once the acrid taste of cappuccino hits my tongue, my aversion to coffee remaining as strong as ever. Now, by the time I realize the drink switch, I’ve already lugged my books across the street, trudged down to the library basement where I like to camp out, and arranged my belongings, scattered about, in my favourite spot.

Halton Hills is so saaafe I bleat internally like an innocent lamb, making a judgement call based on split-second bad decision-making that should only be reserved for last resorts. I bail on my laptop and notebooks – just my life’s work, no biggie – and head back across the street, where as fortune would have it, the café ladies are expecting me, and we seamlessly make the switch in one swift motion, exchanging acrid cappuccino for misto sweetness, and I’m back at my desk before you can say, “Wait? You did what …”

There is a funny part to this story, and it isn’t that I risked having my computer stolen for a five dollar drink. When I was back at the café the first time, loaded down with my purse and book bags and holding the scalding hot cappuccino in one hand and trying to finagle a cardboard sleeve onto it with the other hand, the hand that was also holding my croissant, a gentlemen beside me, whom I’d barely perceived in my periphery, reached out his hands and said, “Here, let me help you.” And before I could object, he did. He slid that sleeve right on while I tried to squelch any embarrassment at having needed his help. After all, I’m a grown woman. I am capable! I can do things! I am a mother and look after three children for god’s sake! I may have picked up the wrong drink order, but that’s beside the point.

Having others do things for me is both a strength and a flaw in my personality when it leads to laziness. While I’m repulsed by helplessness, I am all for resourcefulness, and I know that wherever I go I will be able to use my friendliness as a resource to not only make new friends and connections, but also to get help if I need it. This skill, of needing others, is both a blessing and a curse. The classic story, which Dan loves to bring up, took place on our one-year anniversary pre-kids. I have a long standing history of struggling to cut the meat on my plate. I know, I know. This is super embarrassing. Anyway, so here we are on this glamourous European Mediterranean cruise, and I’m privately wrestling my prime rib with my steak knife.

Dan discovered early on in our relationship that cutting meat was a challenge for me. On one of our first dates, I started cutting my steak and flung it onto my lap. No joke. Stop laughing. I was mortified, but he’s still with me, and kindly offers to be the one who cuts our kids’ meat without making me feel like too much of a failure.

Anyway, back on the cruise ship, at the gala dinner with me dressed in a ball gown, I’m wrestling my steak when our waiter comes over to our table and rushes to my side. “Please ma’am,” he says kindly and without a trace of judgement or disgust at my ineptitude, “allow me.” And he proceeds to cut my steak.

I’m just going to say that I’ve had to accept this about myself, that I’m not so great at cutting meat and that most other people are. I’m not going to stop eating steak, so I have to accept that there are better meat cutters than I in the world, and if sometimes they see me struggle and want to help, why should I say no? I have other strengths, and others would be wise to accept my help in those areas. Just don’t ask me to cut your steak.

Generally speaking, I often feel like I am a person others like to assist. I waiver back and forth on whether this is a compliment, or a huge character flaw, but more than likely it just is. Just like how in looking over photos of me, my headshot photographer and some of Dan’s work colleagues called me “cute” instead of say “sexy”, “hot” or “beautiful”, barring the appropriateness of said comments. If cute comes to mind, I’ll take it, but I’m sure most grown women would rather be called something else a bit more alluring, perhaps be taken more seriously than “cute”. Stuffed animals are cute. Baby chicks are cute. Toddlers with curls are…okay, I’m thinking of Penelope and frankly, she’s adorable! Cute doesn’t cut it. Cute has a youthful connotation to it, so I’m going to stick with that and not think of youthful as “child-like”. I am a woman, and I am cute, and I hate cutting steak! There, I said it. I feel much better.

The universe works in mysterious ways. Now the gentlemen working beside me in the library has abandoned his computer station and I’m thinking to myself someone could take that laptop, but they won’t, because I’m going to keep an eye on his stuff for him. He doesn’t know it, but I will. My way of giving back. Good karma.

Speaking of good karma, and giving back, and the fact that while others often feel the need to help me – one of my high school teachers told me I have a barometer face, and that he could look at me and gauge what the rest of the class was feeling about his lessons – maybe I look lost? Regardless, I love to create pieces that are all my own and bring ideas to life through projects, and strive in the direction of my goals. We should tell ourselves every day that I am capable. And also, that we are here to connect with each other. It isn’t so bad to accept help and a privilege to give it in return. So my idea for a writing and wellness retreat was born. I’m not retreating at all! I’m walking toward something.

That guy’s computer has gone to sleep. He’s been gone a while and really should come back soon.

I came up with the notion of running a writing and wellness retreat while vacationing at a beach cottage on Lake Huron. I knew the idea of writing retreats interested me, and I had planned to attend a few this year.  Perhaps I was feeling inspired by the sparse, paired down simplicity of life at the cottage, but something was telling me my retreat didn’t need to be fancy or perfect, just plan it, plan your retreat. I was suffering from what I would describe as “imposter syndrome”. You’re not a writing teacher! You don’t know what you’re doing! You’ve never even been to a retreat! Who do you think you are? Those beauty questions and shame-filled statements haunted me, and while they carry a tad of merit, they also just – don’t. There is nothing productive in those thoughts, nowhere to go with them. I rejected each one, and came up with my own notion of a writer’s retreat. There would be a wellness component: a chef to prepare our dinner using locally-sourced ingredients. There would be yoga. And the thing every writer craves the most: time and space to write. There would be some group discussion and opportunities to share work with an audience. I could afford to give other writers these things and it happens to be one of my strengths to bring people together. I didn’t need to be an expert teacher, I only needed to have the passion and organizational skills to make it happen. Passion I have, in abundance.

I’m pleased to announce my first writing and wellness retreat is well on its way to being born. I have space for ten ladies total. I have a beach house in waiting, a chef prepped to indulge us and a yoga instructor ready to vinyasa on the beach. I have several wonderful women writers and creatives who are ready and willing to come and a few who can’t make it to this one, but who can’t wait to come to the next one.

No matter how cheesy it is, as the retreat comes together, I can’t help but think of the movie, Field of Dreams, with Kevin Costner and the famous line that incites him to action, “If you build it, he will come.” Building my retreat has been exactly like that. Like a dream whispered in my ear that is about to come true.

The guy with the laptop never came back. I hope he’s alright. Though my writing time for the day is up, and it’s time for me to head home; I’m not going anywhere. I’m just getting started.