2013 in review

This is the year that I have had to accept that I am officially middle aged. I turned forty and the last of my grandparents died.

For some people, the death of a grandparent signals little about their own mortality but the longevity and persistence of my elders and their familiar place in my life, makes their passing a significant remark on the finite nature of my internal clock.

I have had the pleasure of knowing most of my great-grandparents, and all of my grandparents; to have known them all well and had them see me in the fullness of my own adulthood. As the last of the grandparents left earth this year I could see that for everyone, even for those as rebellious as Beverly Haley, there is an end. And in her end I see my own future.

As for turning 40—it meant little. I kept feeling like I should feel some big weight or release. A new decade. But the dread/relief never arrived; a new day dawned and I changed one number on official documents.

This is also the year that I realized one of my life long ambitions; I learned to run. I have always wanted to run and finally found the key to success this year. I ran my first race, a 5 km in support of a Boston Bombing victim at the old Fort Devens army base just North of Boston in July. I ran that race with some of my cousins and it was one of the proudest moments of my year to cross the finish line under a burning sun.

Later in the summer I completed the 5 mile road race in my home town, a race my father had run regularly in his younger years. He, along with my kids, were at the finish line to watch me complete my first 5 mile race in just over 50 minutes. It was a major achievement.

But that was not enough road work...I ran the annual 5 mile road race during the Canso Regatta; the next town down the shore from mine, too.

I have medals from the 5 mile races and my race numbers. Those races were the highlights of my year. None of it was easy.

What may seem like an odd thing to mention, but in truth was also a major triumph, was the installation of a heat pump in my house. This year for the first time since I moved home I am not worrying about how I will heat the house and keep food in it at the same time this winter. That peace of mind, as well as comfortable temperature in the house, is a major event in the history of this year.

This year had its trials—My father was sick with something of unknown origin for months. He has never fully recovered but he's home after several months in the hospital and keeps on keeping on, doing all his usual activities.

As far as I can remember I was only in the ER twice this year-- admitted once for a night. That is a pretty good year for me. And I was not sick over Christmas which had been a common occurrence in my mid to late 20s.

We have had difficulties with the girls dad; he dropped all communication after his visit in July and that has been a constant source of stress for me and the kids. Hard to see them hurt and angry and be helpless to do anything about it.

My aunt died and my grandmother died on the same day and I was torn between heading to the States for my family there or staying here for my dad. I went to the States as I thought that it always seems after the funeral, after all the visitors have left, is the hardest time, and I knew I would be here for my dad at that time.

Those are the main turning points in my year. Overall I felt there was more good than bad and you have to be content with any year that chalks up well on the pro side of the chart.

Missing piece of the anti-bullying puzzle

The news this week out of Sydney, NS is evidence that the anti-bullying strategies so far implemented by the province have failed. Not only did one girl bully another, a second person stood by and made a recording of the bullying.

The incident as reported in The Cape Breton Post on October 16, 2013.

“The teen...was charged with assault after an incident at a local school in which she sucker punched another female student and then kicked the victim several times while she lay on the floor.

Drake said an added element to the assault was the fact the accused asked a friend to video tape the scene which was then posted to Facebook and other social media sites.

Defence lawyer Cheryl Morrison said her client denied asking a friend to video the assault. Drake said the friend admitted to being asked by the accused to film the attack.

The video was played Wednesday in court and shows the accused standing in the hallway and then running towards another female student and punching her in the head. The punch knocked the girl to the floor and the accused then proceeded to kick the girl in the head, arms, legs and chest.”

What is missing from this article is the question: how could this happen in a school hallway with no one stepping in to stop the attack? The answer is the oft cited bystander affect-- people witness a crime but are unable or unwilling to help the victim. The bystander effect plays a large roll in the continued presence of bullying in our schools and our society. When good people do nothing, evil wins.

Of course one of the most commonly cited reasons for people not acting in defence of others is that they were afraid for their own safety or were so stunned by what they were witnessing that they were unable to act.

The approaches to reduce bullying in the province, that I have seen to date, have failed to address this key piece in the anti-bullying puzzle.

Bullying is a cultural emergency. Why is it not dealt with in the same manner as we deal with other emergencies? Where are the anti-bullying drills, the anti-bullying protection classes and the mock bullying roll plays that have proved so useful in saving society from fire, medical emergencies and criminal elements that use physical violence against us?

Learning by doing, not just reading or watching films, helps people react in a real crisis situation. When a person is faced with a dangerous or fearful situation they must fall back on pre-learned behaviour, like a muscle memory, so they can operate. Unprepared, the automatic response to danger is to freeze or run away. If we want children and adults to stand up to bullies we need to do more than read books about how to do the right thing; we need to offer hands on practice.

Asking a bystander to stand up to a bully in action is like asking a man on the street to disarm a bomb. Without the confidence of training, the bystander is not able to take on the job even when they know action is required. Teaching through roll play, how to take control of a situation and how to feel confident enough to do so, will help decrease the bystander effect.

In the 1960s the Freedom Riders took on racism in the southern United States. They did not walk into a mob unprepared, but they did not bring weapons either. They practiced nonviolent responses to an overtly violent situation; they didn't just read books or watch films about Rosa Parks. They had to learn physically the lessons they already knew in their minds; racism was wrong and these were the actions that would help them defeat that evil.

Below are notes from a nonviolent training session held in 1963 for Freedom Riders heading south (http://www.crmvet.org/info/nv1.htm).

3. Purpose of nonviolence training: This session to simulate common situations and practice techniques & tactics for dealing with them. Familiarization. Remove fear of unknown & not knowing what to do. Increase understanding of dynamics of violence through direct experience. Develop generalized response patterns/habits. Instinctive reactions.

4. Format of: Direct action: Plan, —>Act, —>Critique. This training session similar pattern: Discussion, —>Role Play, —>Critique.

These notes are useful today in the struggle to stop bullying by reducing the bystander effect. I propose anti-bullying role play experiences be adopted into the curriculum. Only through hands on experience will our children have the tools to stand up to bullies.

Love is the best art of all --response

I watched the above Moth project story the other day about a mother who was obsessed about giving her children a very happy childhood. This became her obsession as a solution to her own off-kilter upbringing where her parents were so concerned over her, and her siblings, safety that they lost sight of the art of living.

Today as I thought more about this story, this woman's madness began to feel familiar. In her I could see pieces of my own mother who fought so hard not to give my sister and I the childhood that she had endured.

My mother was raised in a big family and most of the fun times were only fun in retrospect. Both her parents were abusive but the driving force behind it all was her mother.

Throughout my childhood I heard story after story of the abuse my mother or her siblings had survived at the hands of their parents. Whenever my mother and her siblings would get together they would relive and retell these stories like so war weary veterans.

I heard some of these stories so often that I almost thought they were my own.

In light of the physical abuse my mother had suffered, she was determined never to raise a hand to her own children, never to be her mother. That was her greatest fear.

So she took what she thought was the opposite approach to parenting. She was against corporal punishment of any kind. As long as she did not cross the line of physicality she thought she was safe. What my mother never seemed to realize is that one did not have to raise a hand to hurt a child.

My childhood seemed focused in the corner; hours standing there as punishment. Hours sitting at the table over cold meals which would be reheated until it was finally bedtime. Hours of my mother's faced pinched in anger and hatred all directed at me.

When I was twelve she finally broke through the barrier and hit me. She only did it once. I am sure she spent a lot of time thinking about that moment afterwards; and not about how I felt, but about how she felt to have crossed that line. It made her angrier at me. I had pushed her across that unforgivable line that made her no better, in her own eyes, than her mother.

Things had never been good but from that point on they got worse. She forced me to go to a therapist and when the therapist told her that he did not think there was anything wrong with me and that perhaps I should go to group therapy with people who had problems with their parents she called him a quack.

She was determined to have me declared mentally ill so that the onus was not on her; so our relationship could be my fault not hers. When that did not happen she left. But not before she told me she was leaving because she could not stand to live with me. I was 14 years old.

With my mother living away and only visiting a week here and there every five or six months, my teenage years got better. I loved my school, I had good friends, I was mostly enjoying life.

Then when I was seventeen my mother decided to come out of her self-imposed Northern exile and return to the city. She and my then nineteen year old sister took off like a tornado; clubbing almost every night, double dating and bringing strange men home. I went on being the only sane person in the house.

It didn't last.

In February of my Grade 12 year, my mother told me I had two weeks to find a job and move out. I can't say I looked for work. I was traumatized. I went to social services, went to my friends and my mother stood in my way. She refused to let social services get involved in my case; she said I had a parent and she would make the decisions and told my friends parents, who were willing to take me in until school finished, the same thing-- but not as politely.

She called my school and started making trouble for me, telling my teachers and the school guidance counsellor that she thought I was suicidal. Homicidal was more likely. And on and on it went.

In the first week of March I came home from a school cross-country ski trip to find my mother and sister waiting for me. They were taking me to the airport that evening and sending back to my father in Nova Scotia. I didn't want to go but I had no choice—my mother had cleared out my bank account to buy the ticket and hidden all my shoes so I would not run away in the still winter-ish Edmonton night.

My mother was desperate not to be the crazy that her mother had been. But she was a different crazy which was just as bad for me. Getting away from my mother was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

This year I attended my grandmother—my mother's mother—funeral.

My grandmother was not an easy woman. But I always maintained a relationship with her over the years because all the bad was laced with some good –even great—times. I have fantastic memories of my grandmother. Unfortunately I can not say the same for my own mother. If I think really hard I can't come up with one good memory. I am sure there must have been some good times but they are heavily outweighed by the bad.

These days my mother sends me occasional cards and sometimes calls to talk on Skype. She sees her grandkids electronically and has even met them in person a few times. This is the kind of contact I can survive—impersonal, distant, indifferent.

I won't tell my kids bad things about my mother, I won't forbid them to talk to her, I won't keep telling them how I am trying not to be my mother. Because I am not.

Sometimes in this mothering journey I get a little guilty about not being the mom who gets down on the floor to play. I can't help it—I am just not into Barbies anymore. I may feel a little guilty about working and shutting the kids out of my office—but you have to work to keep the fridge full and the heat on and the kids know that.

I have never tried to not be my mother. I was never like her and that was always part of the problem between us.

When I watched this story about the mother obsessively trying to make her kids every moment fun, the antithesis of her own childhood, I felt pretty good because I know I have done that without even trying--the antithesis part of the equation at least.

What I get up to when the kiddies go to school--Paddle

This morning's paddle from Cooks Cove to Dorts Cove.

No more kid free vacations

Cousin time

A mother should always vacation with her children. And this is not for the reasons you may be thinking—creating memories, educational experiences, bonding, etc.

No, it is because if you have time off from the mommy job it is really hard to readjust to being the one thing those little people can't live without.

Almost two years ago I went on vacation without my kids. Actually it wasn't really a vacation, although it often felt like one; I was flying solo –literally-- to Massachusetts for my grandfather's funeral. For reasons beyond my control, I could not take my children, who were 3 and 5 years old, at the time. So for five days I was kid-free. For the first time in years I was living free and easy; no crying, no fighting, no meals to get on the table at scheduled times.

The first night I arrived ended up being the first party night I had had in more than 5 years. My cousins and I, many of whom I had not seen in years, went out on the town. We went to a loud, raunchy bar, and then out for late night nachos. It was awesome. I didn't have to worry about getting home for a sitter or worry about dealing with little children while suffering from a pounding hangover the next day.

The rest of the week was a little less carefree. I attended a day's worth of wake for my grandfather, and his funeral the next. Despite that, it still felt like a vacation.

As I sat on the plane returning to Nova Scotia-- my mind was turning over the duality of life. I was looking forward to seeing my children but I did not have the same enthusiasm for returning to the mommy job.

It was a few days after I got back before I felt like I was back in mommy mode but I did learn a valuable lesson; those breaks that I often longed for from my kids were not worth the mental toll it took on me when I had to come back to my mommy world.

This summer I have had lots of vacation time; lots of time exploring new places and things with my kids. While sometimes I might have liked to be alone; it's been good to share these adventures. Right now it is time to make lunch as we spend our last weekend of the summer farm-sitting for some friends. Cows, chickens, a dog and a big barn--the kids are loving it and I am writing. What could be a more perfect vacation.

Run for my life

I run because I can't stop. Because if I stop I'll never start again.

I know in the past I have banned the word 'tired' from my vocabulary but that has not made the problem disappear.

I am so tired; so tired that I feel I am missing out on the best parts of life.

So I started running-- I run so that some part of my life feels like it is keeping up, like some part seems energetic. How could a person who can run 5 miles possibly be suffering from severe fatigue?

I run so I have a reason to be tired. Instead of just being tired for no known reason.

About three years ago I was so tired I couldn't move. I went to bed at 6 pm and if either of my two children who were 2 and 5 years old at the time needed anything; they had to fend for themselves.

When I got in bed, moving a leg from under the covers was physically impossible.

My doctor diagnosed me with hypo-thyroidism and I have been on synthetic thyroid hormone ever since and will be indefinitely. But I have not reclaimed the old me.

I was always defined as a hyper person-- one who needed to be weighed down with ballast to stay in one spot. Not any more.

I try not to think too much about being tired but sometimes I wonder how it is that I am going to live the rest of my life in this tired state.

Today I read an article in The New Yorker about a woman in a similar predicament—she became an extraordinary slave to her thyroid diagnoses and spent most of her time trying to find a cure for her disease. In the end she realized that she just had to accept that she would always be 80 percent well and live with it –instead of live by it.

I am used to living with chronic health problems – I have lived with one my entire life and I have taken it in my stride and I will live with this too. But some days it gets me down. Sometimes I just want to tell people that I just can't do one---more--- thing---today. In fact, I often do tell my kids; they are pretty used to putting their mother to bed.

So I run to fight back this disease/condition/this whatever-it-is that is slowing me down. I run and when I run I think about how I'll be tired for a reason that night.

Da

The kids were at Day Camp and I had a free afternoon ahead of me with no pressing work or house related jobs crowding my head space. I started down the familiar road to Dorts Cove anticipating a visit at my father's house or the beach; perhaps both.

I pulled into the driveway at my father's house and drove up behind the hill where the vehicles often hide when rain has not saturated the grass. No car, no truck, no people in sight.

I turned the car around on the hill and set off for the beach, just several 100 meters away.

As I drove in the beach road a familiar truck was perched on the edge of the bank looking out to sea, seaming to pull at an invisible leash that kept it tied to the shore. The truck was similar to almost every other truck in the community but the opened tailgate revealed a pair of rank black sneakers that I knew my father wore around the yard.

I parked the car and headed out across the rocks towards the mouth of the Salmon River where I could just vaguely spot a human figure.

The wind on the beach was brisk disguising the power of the sun as it poured buckets of radiation on me. The tide was high and what little sand peeked out between the rocks sparkled.

I walked up to the lone fisherman on the point who was standing in hip-waders in the river two or three feet deep. At first I wasn't sure if it was him; something didn't seem exactly right and I wasn't positive about the truck although I was pretty sure about the sneakers.

Normally I would have no doubt that it would be my father on the beach; the beach where he grew up, where his father and grandfather had grown up, where I had grown up and where now, my children were growing up. This beach is part of the family DNA. But my father's trips out to the beach were less frequent these days; his knees gave him a lot of trouble and the long walk over rough terrain was difficult if not sometimes impossible for him.

The fisherman looked up and sure enough it was my Da but with so much sunblock on his face that I barely recognized him under the white-wash. I didn't want to disturb my father, I guessed he had gone out to the beach, despite the trouble it may cause him, to be alone. I guessed that the beach acted as a sort of church for him as it did for me-- to either contemplate or forget the worries of the day.

I had come to see him on this day in the hopes of talking to him about his sister who had recently died. I had been away, attending to my grandmother's death and funeral in Massachusetts, when my aunt had died. I had returned on the day after my aunts' funeral.

Since I had been home my dad made some mention about the funeral but not much—I wondered if there was anything more he wanted to say. So here I was waiting to hear whatever might need to be said.

The death of my aunt surely struck my father hard. They were, as the saying goes, Irish twins, less than 12 months apart in age. She had been his playmate for his entire life. When I thought about her death I kept returning to a photograph I had once seen of them playing hide and seek around an apple tree when they were toddlers.

My aunt had been sick with cancer for several years but the end came quickly and unexpectedly. It was just four years ago that my grandmother died. None of us, at that time, would have believed it if we had been told that my aunt would die four years and one month later.

Now there is just my father and his youngest brother. Luckily they are friends, comrades, fishermen-in-arms. You can often find them casting out their lines at the Salmon River bridge located on the road between their two houses which are less than a mile apart.

So I waited for the conversation to start. But it didn't; at least not that one.

Da was fly fishing; hoping for a big trout. There was one already on the beach when I got there—past the point of playing the line, gills no longer trying to breathe in the unfamiliar atmosphere.

After a while a new fly needed to be tied and Da waded ashore. We talked about flys; none of them looked like anything we had ever seen in nature yet the fish went for them greedily. We sat, he tied the fly and the fish started to jump in the river diverting his attention from his knots. The more the fish jumped the harder it was to tie the fly. Finally he got back into the water and we kept an eye out for the fish who now seemed to jumping on the other side of the river.

The closest we got to talking about my aunt was when my father got up from the shoreline in an uncertain fashion—a little wonky in his waders. He said that was how it went when you were getting old then corrected himself and said, “when you are old.” He went on to tell me that his grandson Sam had recently told my father that he, Sam, could never think of Da as old. He was never an old man to Sam and that is a sentiment with which, most people that know my father, would agree.

My father has always been a woodsman, a fisherman, a man who always could and would do hard work. It's been very odd to think of him not being able to do things—for him and for me. The idea that my father is getting old is one I really can not square in my mind with the person that I know him to be and I think he has the same problem. Who is he if he is old? The death of his sister brought this question into sharper relief. A day on the river quietly thinking or not thinking about it; that's how we work these things out.

I stayed on the beach watching fish, birds and my father for several hours. The one thing in life I always want more of is time with my Da.

I started for home with a fish and fresh memories; a perfect afternoon.

Top five list

So I got this idea from a fellow blogger—top five list. However, I did not read all the directions properly before I started thinking about my top five list. Only after I had put together this solid top five during my morning run did I log in and check the link she provided and found that I was supposed to do specific top five lists like places I want to visit, books I have recently read, etc.

Well in keeping with my usual personality trait of just doing things my own way here is my top five list.

Top five things I don't regret that other people think I should

1 Being a single mother

2 Going to university to study the things I love rather than studying things that would make money

3Any and all love affairs

4 Moving back to my home town

5 Having no regrets

ONE

I can't say that I set out to be a single mother but I was not surprised when I became one. Somewhere in my head I never thought I could tolerate, compromise, or agree with another person long enough to raise children together.

When my second child was a few months old and my little family of three moved back to my home town, my grandmother, who I loved dearly, lamented the fact that I had this second child. Everything would have been easier if I was single with only one child she thought.

Gram might have been right in the short term; it was harder to work and make a living with two small children but in the long term she was very wrong. I can't imagine my child(ren) not having a sibling. To limit their life experience by making them a singleton would not have been beneficial. A sibling teaches you so much about relationships and how to live with others. I truly can't imagine how dull life would be without both of my children and I am thankful every time I can say, “Ask sissy to help you.”

TWO

From the time I was very young I loved anthropology. I made list from encyclopedias of cultural groups I should study and spent some time taking notes from encyclopedias and keeping them in a little scribbler. The different ways people do things fascinated me and still does.

In my first year of university I told myself that whichever class I got the higher grade, History or Anthropology, I would declare my major. Unfortunately, I got an A in History and a B+ in Anthropology. I decided rules were meant to be broken and majored in Anthropology.

After my first degree, I entered into the Kinesiology program at Dalhousie University. This was the “Be sensible, study something that will make money” educational opportunity. My first year was good; straight As and on the Deans List. But in my second year my personal life became messy and at the end of the second semester I flew off to Thailand and left all sensible options behind.

Several years later I started university again and entered a MA in Thai Studies. As I always say, a most practical subject.

So although there are no listings for anthropologists or experts on Thai culture in the Job Bank, my experience has led to employment and I am glad I made the choice to study what I loved not what was practical.

THREE

Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. That is a worn-out saying that I can get behind. Of all the men I have been involved with throughout my life, remembering the relationships we shared is usually a laughing matter; even if it takes several years to get to the laughing part after all the crying.

I am friends with most of my exes. I have chats with them on facebook and even sometimes visit them in other cities. It is my philosophy that if you can't say anything good about your ex, that really is saying something about you. So although not all my exs are great guys, most of them have a few redeeming qualities. Some of them are great and it really was just me and not you that messed things up.

FOUR

I moved back to my home town just over five years ago now. It was a big move. Most people didn't think I could handle it. My home town is a very small place-- maybe 400 people. Before returning here I had lived in some of the most densely populated places in Asia; Bangkok, Thailand and the north western tip of Taiwan in a few cities that felt like suburbs of Taipei.

More to the point, I was seen by many of my friends as a person in perpetual motion. According to their view of me, I would be unable to settle down and stay in one place. In the past, it is true enough to say that I lived short stints in different places but this was not a life plan I had devised for myself. My life was highly nomadic in my teen years due to my mother's inability to mentally adjust to stillness. On my own, in early adulthood, I lived in Halifax for seven years, then in Bangkok for almost eight years; Guysborough is small but I had lived in small places and I knew I could hack it. I didn't know I would like it as much as I do. That has been a great bonus.

I still want to travel and hope to venture further afield as the kids get older. As it is now I have my own house, have a job I like, have friends I can rely on and my kids live close to their grandparents. Everything has worked out better than I could have ever hoped or dreamed.

FIVE

No regrets. None. Nada. Nein. Nyet. Ok, truthfully, sometimes I regret eating too much ice cream.

So thank you Katie for getting me out of my post-less summer. Hope yours is truly magnificent.

Here be dragons

This morning on Facebook, and I hate referencing Facebook as much as I do but it is where many noteworthy things happen, a friend posted an article about a horrible mass killing at a Mexican resort.

In my friend's post she noted that incidents like this were the reason she didn't travel to the South for holidays like so many people in this area are want to do.

During my morning shower I started thinking about this comment and its greater implications. My friend is afraid to travel—the world is full of people who do not travel and life goes on but what impact does it have on our society when a portion of the population is in self-imposed exile?

Unwillingness to travel limits exposure to other cultures and other places. This fear limits one's understanding of the world. Travel is not only a great teacher it is the the greatest force for the eradication of prejudice that I know.

I can understand my friend's fear; I have been feeling it too as I contemplate travelling with my children. To take the risk that travel to foreign places might pose by myself was never a difficult decision for me but to put my children at risk, that has been eating away at my future travel plans for several years.

If I don't expose my children to the world through travel wouldn't that put them at a different kind of risk? Travel, I believe, is necessary for their survival as compassionate, informed, involved citizens of the world.

And shouldn't we be asking ourselves: What are we really afraid of?

Of course these murders in Mexico are horrific but is home any safer?

In my life I have known three people who have been murdered—all in Nova Scotia.

One might be tempted to say that that is due to the fact that I live here but in fact I have only lived here half of my life, the rest of my time on the planet has been spent leapfrogging through Asia, Canada and the United States.

My friends and family are equally geographically diverse. I have friends who live in all corners of the globe; some in what I would consider very dangerous places. Even with such a wide and varied network—it is in rural Nova Scotia that murder has been part of my life.

When I think about these facts and the opportunities that travel has provided for me; I can not think of limiting my children's possibilities. Courage is not the doing of dangerous things, it's the doing of things in the face of fear.

I hope that I will have the courage to help my children travel and experience the world; it is one of the most important gifts a person can receive.

Inspiration

I have added to my running repertoire since last year's great treadmill experiment; now I am running outside.

This is a major step forward for me. I have tried many times to be an outdoor runner and it just didn't click for me. Today, I am not a runner who makes it look easy but I am a runner who is outside enjoying fresh air and the sights and sounds of my neighbourhood.

It's been just over a month since I started running outside and sometimes it has been a real struggle to keep one foot moving in front of the other. When I have those moments, when I think of how easy it would be to stop, I think of Terry Fox.

I have always considered Terry Fox a hero. One of the few that deserve that label. He struggled through pain and sickness to run his Marathon of Hope.

Since I have been back in Canada I have taken part in the annual Terry Fox Run every September. And since that time I have learned that the Terry Fox Run is held globally including in my old home base, Bangkok.

Terry Fox is a true inspiration, for me as a novice runner and for thousands of other people in many different facets of their lives.

Today I posted his picture on my Facebook page making note that he is my inspiration to take the next step. I did this not only because Terry Fox truly is my inspiration when I am out on the trail but also as a protest. I despise all the fitness inspiring posters that pollute my Facebook feed on a daily basis. The posters generally show a woman, who is in absolute peak physical shape, with some bland inspirational message written in bold script.

The reason I hate these types of posts is that they are unrealistic and once again have women perpetuating unreasonable expectations on the female body. These posters are a sort of pornography that we are spreading among ourselves. It's unhealthy and I wish it would stop. Like the porn industry, these pictures are distorting the female body; what it is and what it can be.

And to add a little more fuel to the fire—we don't even know these women in these pictures. I doubt they are women with jobs and families. These bodies are achieved through hours of training a day; that is if they are true depictions and not an airbrushed fantasy. Most women don't have that much time to invest in their bodies and some will give up on exercise if they find themselves failing to meet this unrealistic depiction of how a physically fit woman should look.

I want to be inspired by real people, with real lives. I am inspired by Terry Fox and if you want to inspire me to exercise with a post on Facebook, upload a picture of yourself doing your body some good. I know you and I will respect you and be inspired by what you are doing.I'm not inspired by some gym bimbo I don't know who doesn't have a life outside of the gym.

I know some of my friends who post these types of pictures on Facebook may disagree—but I ask you to post pictures of yourself and see how much more inspiring that can be.

Guysborough run

Today I took a walk on the route I usually run. I start on a little path through a marsh near my house.

The pussy willows are out in the marsh.

Then onto the dirt road --Prince Street.

And down the Trans Canada Trail.

See the water for the trees.

Like any good course there are water hazards.

And it would not be Guysborough without a Christmas tree farm.

Go past the Mill Pond. Every other day there have been ducks on the water--today out and back, no ducks.

Inter-species tree hugging.This birch is wrapping around this spruce. Feel the love.

And a seed that survived a squirrel's very thorough demolition of a winter stock pile of spruce cones.

Tree fall--great place for little critters to lodge.

And almost at my turning point.

I see the sign.

I see civilization--time to head back into the woods.

This is my run--I hope you enjoyed this preview and come out on the trail soon.

Nice girls

I felt threatened. I felt uncomfortable but I didn't say anything.

It is the unwritten law that we as women were brought up with-- be nice girls. Nice girls don't make a scene. Nice girls are polite. Nice girls don't offend or make others feel awkward.

Nice girls, if they are nice enough, will end up stalked, raped, and/or dead. I don't want to be a nice girl any more. I don't want my daughters to be nice girls but I failed to stand up to sexual harassment yesterday and I've been feeling miserable about it ever since.

Later, in the safety of my own house, I thought I should just have said, “Your making me uncomfortable.”

As this imagined conversation formed in my mind I prefaced that with, “Sorry, but your making me uncomfortable.” Why should I be sorry that his unwanted attention to me and my children is making me uncomfortable? Shouldn't I just be able to say that instead of putting up with this man politely?

I comfort myself by vowing to never let this happen again. Never be nice in the face of unwanted advances. But, of course, this is not the first time this has happened and I have not yet learned the lesson that I so desperately want to impart to my own children, “Don't be nice, be safe.”

Why I am not a doctor

This morning when my daughter coughed and then said in a very weak voice, “I've got boogers in my throat now.” I replied, “It won't kill you. Get ready for school.”

As I carried on with my morning routine I thought to myself, “Now that is why I am not a Doctor.”

This may not be your automatic reaction to a less than compassionate comment but it is mine because doctoring was once in the realm of my possibilities.

In another lifetime I was a kinesiology (study of human movement which leads into occupational therapy, sports medicine etc.) student at Dalhousie. In my first year I found that although anthropology was my hearts true love, human biology was my actual intellectual strong suit. I memorized, I analyzed, I dissected. I got straight As and was on the Dean's List.

For me it was easy, it only required time—the concepts and facts of human biology were simple. They were a story. Every process in the body had a beginning, middle and end; similar to the construction of the simplest fairy tale. The Krebs cycle; a story. The digestive system; a story. Hormones and their feedback loops; a story. The body is a story if only you know how to read the book. And I did.

Stories have always been part of my life and part of what I do. I have been writing stories since elementary school and it was only natural to bring this perspective to my pursuit of biological knowledge. It was a strategy that worked and it worked so well that I found myself thinking outside of the kinesiological box and looking at MCAT (Medical College Admission Test ) prep texts.

With such a command of biology one may ask what kept me from scaling the heights of medicine all the way to the top of the heap as an MD? Books, labs and exams were all great—in fact I loved them all-- but in actual medicine, on the ground, in the hospital medicine, you have to deal with sick people. And I hate sick people.

I must revise that sentence, I hate sick people who are only moderately sick. Sick people who are dealing with their illness stoically while their bodies are wracked with pain—those people I love. I often am one of those people and that is why I hold the other kind of sick people, the sick-enough-for-the-hospital-but-still-mobile type of sick people, in contempt. It is this sort of sick person, who are the majority of sick people, that I knew I would never be able to face on a day to day basis with any compassion or bedside manner. I would tell them, as I have told my slightly sick, over-exaggerating child who wants to spend the day at home from school, “It won't kill you. Suck it up.”

My lack of compassion for the slightly sick comes from, as I mentioned above, my many experiences in the horribly-sick, wish-I-was-dead-to-end-the-pain category. As a life-long sufferer of bowel obstructions I know pain. I know sickness. I know how to keep my head down and get through it. I know that if you can talk, it doesn't hurt that much. If you can walk, you should keep moving. If your not almost dead, keep living.

One incident from my teen years is particularly emblematic of the kinds of experiences I have had that have lead me to be such an unsympathetic person vis-a-vis sick people. I was 17-years-old and in the Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton. I had a bowel obstruction as usual. I had an NG (nasal-gastric) tube stuffed up my nose, down the back of my throat and into my stomach to pump out all the accumulating gastric juices which were prevented from exiting the body by way of the normal route due to the obstruction. Beside my bed was a 4-gallon jar with a small pump attached which was emptied of the dark, green, repugnant sludge that was sucked from my body several times a day.

I had a intravenous drip. The insertion point was constantly getting infected and my forearms were swelling from the fluid that leaked out of my unnaturally small blood vessels.

I could not eat anything. Could not drink anything—not even ice to relieve a dry mouth. I was NPO.

Stabbing pains in my stomach were only slightly relieved by needles of Demerol every four hours which resulted in pains at the injection site that still ache on extremely cold days.

After a week the NG tube was pumping fecal material (I hope you all know what that means). There was nothing left to do.

I went home.

I was starving. Yet I could not eat. Everything I did eat was retched back up in short order.

I was desperate. I began just to chew food and spit it out. At least I could satisfy my taste buds if not my hunger pains.

After a week of not eating at home I went back to the hospital again. Had an NG tube inserted again. IV again. And returned to the same hospital room, again.

Now here is the thing I have not told you yet about this experience which turned me into the I-hate-slightly-sick-people person that I have become; in this room I had a roommate. She was a senior lady with a head of wooly white hair. She was slight in size but her complaints took up the entire room.

She paced our room everyday from window to door only pausing at the window of our 8th floor room long enough to say, “I want to jump out the window,” or a variation of that theme.

I never knew what was wrong with my roommate. She looked perfectly healthy to me. She had no IV. She could walk on her own unaided. She slept through the night. The only problem this lady really had, as far as I could tell, was that the minute I could get out of my bed I would head over to the window hoist it open and invite her to jump.

I think this experience and others like it over the years have sucked the compassion for sick people out of me. I am compassionate in other instances but not this.

Knowing this about myself was a good thing. I'm not saying it's a positive side of my personality. A little more compassion for the slightly sick would come in handy—particularly in the profession of parenting. The saying is, 'Physician, heal thyself'. It should also be: 'Physician, know thyself,' because if you are like me and love the biology, the pathology, and the labs but not the people you should never go down the MD trail.

I write this as a cautionary tale. An aptitude for biology does not indicate a future practicing medicine. Research is a perfectly respectable profession. Just saying.

Lucky people?

This morning on Facebook I saw this post by my cousin Dan Haley who is a State Trooper in Colorado:

Tonight was one of those nights where I really felt I had an impact on a few lives. Feels good and reminds me why I do what I do.

I replied:

Lucky people have professions where they can see the positive impact of their work. It's very rewarding.

After a little thought I decided this would be a good topic to write about—how lucky it is to have a job that touches other people. When I had originally seen Dan's post I was going to respond that in both of my accidental professions—teaching and journalism-- I had occasionally had the same feeling; the work I was doing was having a real impact on a people's lives. In the end I made the above response because I didn't want to appear to reduce the importance of what he does by comparing it to what I do. I do impact lives in my work but my job doesn't ever require me to put my own life in danger.

So I started thinking about how I would begin this post and my first thought was:

Lucky—people who win the lottery aren't lucky, people who find money on the street aren't lucky, etc, etc...People who are lucky are the people whose professional lives make the world a better place.

As I searched the internet for other 'lucky' examples I could use in the previous paragraph, I realized that people whose professions make the world a better place are not lucky, they are idealistic, ethical, political, compassionate and a few more adjectives I can't think of at the moment none of which relate to luck.

People who do the type of work my cousin does don't do it because they are lucky, they do it because they want to make the world a better place. What is lucky are occasional glimpses of the beneficial results of their work.

As a teacher it often takes years before I see the success of a student. I am just adding bricks to the foundation of their lives—it takes a lot of bricks to make a house and I may never see the finished product. In rare, extremely special cases, I can see a student's mind open, see a concept grasped, and confidence expand. Those are the moments I teach for.

As a journalist/writer it is often harder to see the direct impact you have on someone's life. I have been fortunate enough to have had a few stories that were so immediately important that they made a noticeable impact. Those are rare moments and I cherish them.

I am not exactly sure what the point of this post is except to serve as a declaration against luck as a force for good in the world. Good comes from the people that make it happen. It's not lucky that my cousin is a State Trooper. It was his choice. A choice we can only hope others will also make. What we need in the world is not more luck but more Dan Haleys.

I can not finish this piece without linking to an article about my cousin Dan who was awarded a medal for heroism by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission in 2012 for saving the life of a child. It's my privilege to call this man family.

Past lives

There is a package carefully wrapped in brown paper sitting on my desk. It has been there for almost two weeks but I can not open it; at least not yet. I am hoping that writing this may help me get to the psychological finish line that will allow me to tear the paper and read what I know is inside. Inside is a book and that book is tangible proof of everything I left behind in my last incarnation; my Thai life.

The book, Bangkok Blondes, was a project the Bangkok Women Writers Group published in 2008. For the year or so before its publication I, and several other key members of the writers group, worked furiously researching publishers, writing book proposals and calculating funding requirements for self-publishing. We held semi-regular meetings outside of regular group meetings and frequently overloaded ourselves with research on publishing to further the goal of the group.

We were close to getting the book off the ground when my relationship with my partner became untenable and I decided the best thing for me and my child was to leave the country—there was really no way to leave my partner and stay in the country; I needed distance, I needed half a planet between us to regain my sanity and ensure my safety.

In a period of just over a week I decided to upend my life and return to North America where my family would welcome my daughter and I with open arms. This was not an easy decision. It not only meant putting an exclamation mark at the end of the relationship with my partner it also meant leaving behind a life in which I was very comfortable.

Asia, and Bangkok in particular, had been where I had spent the majority of my adult life. It was in that place that I had learned who I was and what I was capable of doing—artistically, academically, and professionally. Leaving that all behind, particularly when I was on the cusp of fulfilling a major life dream (the book), was a personal catastrophe.

Some might suggest that I needn't have run so far as to cross 12 timezones but those are people who have never been scared of their partner. Never had him follow you down busy streets, on trains and taxicabs to work. Never had him accuse you of having an affair with evidence that he had unearthed by examining the trash of an entire apartment building. Never dealt with jealousy, obsession and anger everyday.

I left the country I loved because I felt I had no choice. I felt there was no other way to get my life back.

I left with one suitcase, a stroller and my baby.

I flew over continents and through time sloughing off my old life like a snake skin you might find in the jungle. My reincarnation to a life more ordinary.

This week I am free. I have sole custody of my children and my former partner no longer has a say over where I go or what I do in my life.

Through this ordeal—the back and forth between the lawyers—my former partner stated that he felt I didn't like him much. My immediate reaction was that—of course I didn't like him; his actions were constantly causing my children mental anguish. But yesterday as I sat looking at the unopened parcel on my desk I realized I also resented him for the life I lost. My friends, my writing, my work—it was a life I loved. Bangkok, I miss you daily.

The package remains a painful reminder of what I lost, what I wish I hadn't had to give up:

Slow mornings eating banana pancakes at the Atlanta Hotel.

Fast rides on motorcycle taxis.

Lazy brown river flowing past my favorite tree at Wat Chai.

River taxis.

Chulalongkorn, the calm campus in the middle of the city.

Easy, affordable child care.

Street food—som tam, Larp moo, Mussaman curry.

Students with names like—Bomb, Bank and Benz.

Rock climbing at Railay Beach.

Sitting in the open door of a train heading up country watching the paddy fields drift by.

In my new life I walk through town with a good friend and come home to a house that is mine. I pick my children up after school and my father drops in for a visit.

I love it here. I have a new list; a list of loves in this place. It is a long list.

Today might be the day I open the package. Am I ready to examine past lives? Perhaps I'll wait until I am through this turn of the wheel.

Get off my planet

I subscribe to Vanity Fair. It is a guilty little pleasure of mine that I have been fostering since my teens. While the magazine does not, to the unaccustomed eye, seem to fit in with my usual reading list—The New Yorker, The Economist, Harpers and The Atlantic-- it is an anomaly in that it features fashion pages and Hollywood fluff alongside serious feature articles about politics, art, business and in depth reporting on contemporary issues.

That being said, two articles in the February issue of Vanity Fair have made me seriously consider the audience of the magazine and whether or not I want to be counted in that number. The first article was about Sadistic Chefs: Tyranny-it's what's for dinner. While the article went on about the appalling trend of diner's being held hostage to the whim of the maestro behind the stove what I found most abhorrent was the lengths people went to and the money people spent for the privilege of being so abused.

Author Kummer described $700 dollar meals and flights to Chicago taken for the express purpose of getting a table at a top tier restaurant in Chicago. Is this not conspicuous consumption run amok? The cost of this three hour dining experience would be enough to send a child to school, to feed a family, to pay my home heating oil bill for one winter. How do people spend money in such a frivolous manner and sleep at night?

In another article, same issue, The Kelly, a handbag that cost $8,000 was demonstrated to be worth it's astronomical price tag because the leather was hand dyed and the bag hand stitched with the craftsman’s signature sewn in the lining as proof of authenticity. I had to read the paragraph with the price twice and the comments from wealthy patrons visiting the shop only once to know that something was really wrong with the world. What has happened in our culture that a functional item like a bag to hold your money can cost more than what a majority of people in the world earn in their entire lives?

When we talk about global warming, gun violence, etc....it is the people who insist on $8,000 hand bags and $700 dollar meals + airfare that I blame for the inequalities that have lead to a multitude of social and environmental ills. My compact fluorescent light bulbs don't amount to much in the face of such flagrant misuse of planetary resources.

And who, you may ask is the real object of this rant; surely not the jet set, Kelly bag swinging readers of Vanity Fair. I wrote this post for you, dear friends, for the people I can reach, because I want to ask you to consider this: look at the things you own. How much do they cost? Are they necessary to your life? Now look at how much money you have donated to worthy causes this year. If your luxury spending outweighs the amount you spend trying to make the world a better place--Please get off my planet.

Don't know what you got till it's gone

Yesterday someone pointed out to me that small local newspapers, like the one for which I work, have a precarious foothold on existence in the world of Facebook where local news travels like wildfire. Social media's entrance into the 'news' business has impacted every news gathering agency from small town newspapers like mine to the big boys at the New York Times. We in the business know this and have been trying to counter the social media affect by getting in on the action ourselves (I tweet at GysboroJournal...rarely). I am not sure if this is the correct approach. Perhaps what we should really be doing is trying to educate the public as to what the difference is between Facebook posts, tweets and citizen journalist.

What is the difference? It should be fact checking, a non-biased point of view and a critical look and presentation of both sides of any story. Unfortunately, much of the major news media groups seem to have forgotten that this is what sets them apart from the rumor mill that is social media.

Two weeks ago the federal government of Canada implemented changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) program affecting workers nation-wide. The changes were outlined last spring but when they were enacted two weeks ago the reaction was swift and negative. Within days I saw the following message on the newsfeed of several friends:

With the new EI changes in effect, you are supposed to call at least 1 place per day looking for work. I suggest that you call your MP's office every day and ask if they have a job for you and ask them to write down your information and keep it on file that you were looking for work in their office. The new rules state...s that a business must keep track of everyone who calls or comes into the their business looking for work so the EI police can call to check if you are seeking employment. I'm sure the businesses will enjoy having to take down 500 peoples information a day and keep it on file for maybe a year or so. I suggest that you then call your local PC MLA and ask them if they have a job for you and to keep track of you calling seeking employment. COPY AND PASTE SO OTHERS CAN SHARE IT AS WELL!!! This should go over like a bag of hammers...

I posted this response:

Do you know anyone who has actually been asked to do anything different under the new EI rules? I don't. I am on EI and have not been notified of any additional hoops that I am required to jump through. I am afraid that there is a lot of misinformation out there about what is now required of EI claimants.

No one posted a response claiming to have first hand knowledge of anyone actually being required to make calls, or having received notification that this would be a requirement in the future. Since the EI changes have come into effect I have filed another EI report, received my usual cheque and have not been notified of any changes necessary to keep my claim active. I have spoken to two other EI claimants in the area and they too have received no such notifications.

This stands as the prime reason that real news media, real journalism is still necessary in this world of social media saturation. Misinformation. Social media has a tendency to fuel hysteria; it's left to the real media to set the record straight. But will anyone be listening? How many false news stories have to make the rounds before people will realize that Facebook and twitter don't amount to the modern day equivalent of news but are actually the modern day version of back fence gossip. Declining readership indicates that the people won't wake up to the misinformation they've been consuming at least not yet. Will they wake up in time to save real news? I doubt it. I'll just keep humming this song and see if anybody hears it.

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

(thanks Joni)

You're so vain

…. you probably think this post is about you.

Well it is about you, in a way. It's about whether or not you; my friends, family and acquaintances, are reading what I write.

In truth this is about my vanity and my need to check my post statistics feverishly after I upload a new blog entry.

It's about instant gratification and stroking my artistic ego. It's about popularity and presence. It's about thinking I have something important to say.

It's about always wanting to reference that great Carly Simon song in my everyday life.

Cheers and thanks for bringing my stats up. 

What I am missing

Today as I proof the paper I read an 'In Memory' ad from a wife about her deceased husband. I remember this woman coming in to the office for the past two years to place similar ads in the paper on the anniversary date of her husbands' death. She's not a woman you would take note of if you were walking down the street: she's a senior lady, who, if anything comes across as a bit androgynous. But in her resided a great love and now a great memory of the love she and her husband shared. When I think of her, I think of what I am missing.

I have had thoughts of what my life as a single woman would mean emotionally those two previous years when her 'In Memory' ad came across my desk but this year, those thoughts are tinged with a new potency due to a recent break up I had with a short-term boyfriend. While this relationship was not long, only a few months, it did open my eyes to a life that I had pretty much assumed was not part of my path; a life with a companion.

For a long time I have made my peace with the idea that I would be a single person, then as life happened, that I would be a single person with children.

Being single is what seems simplest to me. I haven't had to accept all those little things that inevitably drive me crazy, or make time for another person other then my children. I have not had to deal with complications, awkwardness, deceptions and other things that often accompany a 'relationship'. I have been able to focus on my little family.

But sometimes I feel I need a break from my little family and that is when new men typically come into my life. For the past five years any relationship I have had has always been one that was outside of my regular life. The men I have dated have not become part of the fabric of my day-to-day life. When I was with them it was like I was a tourist on holiday. And as they say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

That being said, this latest and shortest relationship, was something different. First of all, he didn't annoy me. And that is a big step forward for me. In any man I have ever been involved with there have been minor things that they did that drove me to distraction; things as simple as how they would pronounce a word with an elongated vowel to as crushing as dirty socks on my side of the bed (you can see now why I have never been married). This man let his dog eat off the dishes—I didn't care. He used double negatives—I didn't care. And most importantly, he didn't read my work-- and I didn't care.

So I felt like I had made progress, had gotten past some of my 'issues'. Unfortunately, maybe he had not gotten past some of his.

Today as I read the 'In Memory' ad from a loving wife I felt a little sad that I wouldn't have this man to tell the days tales to, wouldn't call him this evening to talk about his trip to the city, and wouldn't have a day when I would be missing the love I lost.

The good news is I wrote this.