Sent home from school: Who is it helping?

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Every time I read an article like this, I again thank my lucky stars that we’ve found an excellent school for Puck – one that understands learning differences, works with the child on social skills and self-advocacy, and supports its teachers to get the training and tools they need to make it an environment where students can do their best. I can’t emphasize enough the difference supported teachers and the right approach can make. It’s been a life-changer for Puck. A life-saver, I think.

According to the above article (which I found via Dr. Brian Goldman on Twitter), Ontario students with special needs are increasingly being asked to stay home. I know from our own experience, and those of friends, that the same is very true here in Nova Scotia.

The article, which cites a study from a special education advocacy group, also notes:

  • 58% of elementary school heads and 48% of high school principals requested a student stay home for at least part of a day;
  • Most principals said they made the request due to safety concerns (does not specify whether they are concerned over safety of students or teacher), although many also said they just don’t have the resources to address students’ needs;
  • Poor attitudes toward students with special needs may also be at play;
  • Ontario has received a $1 billion increase in funding for special education initiatives over the past 10 years. And yet, we’re still hearing stories of kids being excluded, sent home, or treated as a behavioural problem instead of a learning challenge (very often the two go hand in hand).

Safety…and/or Support

The National Post article cites one elementary school principal as saying, “If I have asked a parent to keep a student home it is almost always related to safety (the student runs, hits self/peers/ adults, or vandalizes the space he/she is in).”

Puck’s distress was always focussed inward: he would hit himself when his frustration and anxiety peaked, when learning accommodations that had been agreed to were ignored, or there were changes to his daily routine that he wasn’t prepared for. The school’s policy was to immediately phone me and send Puck home for the day. This was the only response. There was no examination of what happened in the class environment to make his frustration rise; no questioning of how to put accommodations in place to mitigate the chance of it happening again. The focus was really on what the school needed, not what the individual student needed to succeed. That’s not inclusive, at all.

(I do understand that teachers are dealing with so much – big classes, lots of students with challenging needs, students with undiagnosed needs, social issues, underfunding, etc. NONE of this makes a situation that contributes to successful inclusion. I can see how sending a child home might seem like the best option in those circumstances).

Contrast this with his current school, with its focus on kids with learning challenges: when Puck hits himself or his anxiety causes him to shut down, he isn’t immediately sent home. He is given the space to calm down and has the option of going to a ‘Chill Out Room’ where he can calm down, work through his emotions, do other quiet activities, and be supervised by a support teacher. When he is ready, he can return to the classroom. He also has an entire class devoted to learning social skills. managing emotions, and asking for what he needs. Honestly, it’s a miracle of a class, and I wish it was required in every elementary school in the province. (I know a lot of adults who could benefit from it, to be honest.)

Nova Scotia’s Situation

The issues described in the National Post article aren’t unique to Ontario. Nova Scotia’s Commission on Inclusive Education estimated that about a third of the province’s 118,000 public school students need some form of support. There are currently about 27,000 students in Nova Scotia with some kind of adaptation, and about 6,000 on independent programs.

Nova Scotia is in the throes of a major overhaul of its public education system. School boards have been abolished, and a new Education Act was introduced this spring. A report on inclusive education that also came out this spring calls for $70 million to $80 million in new funding over five years to support the changes it recommends, and an increase of 600-700 more staff positions in the education system to ensure students and teachers have the support they need in classrooms.

The National Post article notes that Jacqueline Specht, Director of the Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education at Western University, says that simply increasing special education funding or hiring more staff won’t fix the problems. The bulk of resources need to be directed toward supporting classroom teachers and giving them training and tools to help keep students with learning challenges in class.

Funding a system that has, for decades, inherently treated kids with learning challenges as problems to be fixed (or sent home) will not magically create inclusive education. More funding does not automatically equal better learning or social outcomes for students with special needs.

Is Sending Kids Home Really the Best We Can Do?

So what do we need? I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m a social worker and journalist by training, not an educator. My expertise comes from lived experience and knowing the devastating impact mental illness and learning challenges can have on the entire family, both at home and at school. But I do know that when things go better at home, they go better at school…and vice versa.

My opinion: in addition to the changes proposed by the Commission, we need a holistic approach to inclusive education.

  • We need an approach that takes into account the determinants of health and their complex interplay that makes each student’s situation unique.

My child is a fairly privileged white, middle-class male in the province’s biggest city, and we have the means and the advocacy skills to get him the help he needs. This is not true for hundreds of other families in this province, no matter what the Education Act says;

  • We need an approach that understands successful inclusive education isn’t just how a child feels in the classroom; it’s about how the family feels supported to continue on this exhausting journey.

One aspect that is so often ignored in this discussion of inclusion is the emotional, financial and professional toll having a child with special needs takes on the family. And let’s be honest: that burden falls most heavily on women. This is a feminist issue.

When Puck started school, I was employed as the Senior Policy Advisor to Nova Scotia’s Minister of Health. I had a Master’s level education, a varied work history, and was a published author. The future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades.

Flash forward to now: I’ve only been able to work part-time over the past couple of years, and that work has been through self-employment, because Puck’s needs are too great. When a school is phoning you every day to take a child home because he is unmanageable or unteachable, you are not going to be able to sustain an executive-level office-based job for very long. Self-employment gave me the flexibility I needed to be there for him, to take him to appointments, to take him to the ER when he was in crisis. But the toll this takes cannot be ignored: my career has suffered, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure where my “career”, as such, actually is now. I lay awake at night worrying about it, because in my late 40s, how do I start over? Our finances have been cut almost in half (and again, I realize we are very fortunate to even have a two-income household).

There is seldom acknowledgment that sending a child home from school repeatedly places a large economic burden on the family…on the mother, usually. In his last year at that school, Puck was only in school 20 days between January and June. He was sent home repeatedly when his anxiety was high and he was ‘unteachable’. Missing so much time meant, of course, that he fell behind and his anxiety became even worse. Eventually, it just didn’t even seem to make sense to send him. By April, he was pretty much home with me full-time.

Contrast that with this year, when he was seldom sent home and his emotional issues were dealt with on-site: his academic progress has been astounding, and he’s now performing above grade level in some subjects. When the emotional health is supported, children thrive.

If only we did the same for all kids. And their parents.

  • We need an approach that addresses stigma.

In his old school, so much of Puck’s interactions with his teachers were based on fear. The teachers didn’t have the tools or training they needed to understand how to help Puck. They didn’t have support. As a result, they treated Puck as a problem. Other students saw this, and also treated him as an outcast. Puck, of course, also picked up on the stigma, and internalized it. It was common for him to say that he was stupid, or bad, or would never be good at school. He might not have heard those words from his teachers, but he felt them in his heart.

(Now, by the way, he tells me he’s good at math, likes art, and is an excellent writer. Stigma-free teaching for the win!)

I’m hopeful that the new Education Act will give teachers more support to help kids with special needs and learning challenges…to actually keep them in school, and not to send them home as a default.

Parents and teachers need support in order to help our kids thrive. Sending them home does no favours to anyone. It may remove an immediate stressor, but it doesn’t improve outcomes. And it certainly doesn’t create inclusion.

 

Confessions of a Report Card Junkie

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I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve. It feels fake and forced. For me — a true nerd — beginnings and endings were always defined by the school year. September was for new intentions and possibilities. June was the end of a chapter, a frenzied season of field trips and prom and report cards and ‘grading day’, followed by a drowsy mental hibernation on the beaches of the Northumberland Strait. 

I was a report card junkie. My friends were pretty, or popular, or athletic, or talented. I wasn’t those things. But I was smart, and grades became my validation and my drug. School was what I was good at, and report cards were my proof that I had value in the world. 

Taking pride in your accomplishments is wonderful. But defining yourself through someone else’s evaluation of you, or by the awards you’ve won or any external validation, isn’t really healthy. That sort of praise or feedback can be fleeting. And when it’s gone…who are we? Who are we, if we are not the Brain, or the Athlete, or the Beauty? Who are we without our labels (Did The Breakfast Club teach us nothing?)?Read More »

If you give a Mom a popsicle…

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When Daisy was a toddler, we had a fluffy calico cat named Scarlett O’Hairy. Daisy adored her and wanted to be just like her. She’d sleep like a cat, all curled up with Scarlett in a patch of sun on the floor. She tried eating like a cat (but even her love for Scarlett couldn’t convince her to take more than one bite of the foul-smelling food). Once, in the wee hours of the morning, Daisy saw Scarlett jump off my bed and decided to do the same thing. While Scarlett landed gracefully in the laundry basket, Daisy fell into the dresser and split her forehead on a sharp corner. This resulted in a trip to the pediatric emergency room, and four stitches. Another time, Daisy took up Scarlett’s favourite pastime – digging in the houseplants. She ripped leaves off the plants for Scarlett to eat and crammed mouthfuls of potting soil into her own mouth. This resulted in a call to poison control, and a decision that maybe a baby brother or sister would be a safer companion than a cat.

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Scarlett O’Hairy: on Wednesdays she wore pink.

 

We’ve spent a lot of time in the emergency room over the years, for cat-induced and other ailments: ear infections, kidney infections, strep throat, croup, broken bones.  Eventually, toddlers pass out of the Walking Germ Bag phase. Trips to the emergency room become so infrequent that the kids actually look back on them fondly: misty watercolored memories of being safe and warm, wearing brightly coloured johnny-shirts and wrapped in warm flannel blankets, and being treated by kind people who gave them popsicles and stickers and cool-looking bandages. 

My memories of those visits are equally nostalgic. Maybe that sounds strange – I mean, what parent looks fondly back at illnesses and middle-of-the-night trips to the ER? But like my kids, I don’t remember the illnesses much. I’ve thankfully forgotten the vomiting, the search for clean sheets in the middle of the night, trips to the hospital through dark streets with time standing still. What I do remember is how we were all treated. My kids were treated with compassion and kindness. I was also treated so well. Everything was well-explained, follow-up instructions and appointments were clear, and the health professionals seemed as concerned with how I was coping as with how my kids were managing. Once or twice, I even got a popsicle of my own.

I’m nostalgic for that, because these days my visits to the ER are for Puck’s mental health crises — something that can’t be treated with stitches or antibiotics, and is a genuinely terrifying kind of pain. And when we get past this, my experience with the mental health emergency room is not a memory on which I’ll look back fondly.Read More »

Updating my Privacy Policy

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Here is a science lesson: pearls are formed when an irritant invades an oyster. The oyster probably wishes it could just get rid of the irritant and go about its business. But it can’t. It has to live with it. So it hides the irritant. It excretes a fluid to coat it, glossing it over until the sand or parasite at its core is no longer recognizable. It’s become something else. What was painful to the oyster becomes beautiful and desirable to someone else. (Of course, it’s ultimately stolen from the oyster, so all that hard work of coating and hiding was for nothing.)

Our life stories are pearls. They often start from pain, but we learn at an early age that no one wants to see the pain. So we find ways to cover it, to dress it up and make our pain socially acceptable. We drink. We alter our bodies. We use humour. We work too much. We deny ourselves, our feelings. We lie. We fit in.

There are stories you can tell, and stories that you are supposed to lock up inside you. The ones we lock inside us aren’t pearls, though. We still feel the irritant, the pain. We can see what they really are. All else is fairy tales. 

I’ve been quiet here over the past several months. So many times, I’ve sat in front of my laptop and started typing. Each time, I edited. Coated the irritant. Ultimately, I deleted.

After writing about my experience in politics in my #metoo posts back in February, many people reached out to me. Most were supportive. Many wanted to hear more or to share their own stories.

A few others, though, wanted me to just be quiet.

Sometimes, it only takes a few voices of dissent to silence us. Ninety-seven voices can tell us what we’ve said is relevant and important and helpful. Three voices can tell us we’re stupid and misguided and should just keep our stories to ourselves.

Guess which voices echo loudest in our heads?Read More »

Current state of gender enlightenment in Halifax: “Nice hat.”

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Two weeks after my blog post on sexual harassment in Nova Scotia politics,  I’ve been getting a follow up question from media, activists, and even those working within Nova Scotia politics:

“So now what?”

How do we take the discussion beyond storytelling? How do we make change? And whose job is it to do that?

So many people have phoned, emailed and texted me about my blog post. I had messages from women I’ve worked with, who recalled the same situations and the un-named throwers of footballs and grabbers of butts. I had messages from female politicians who are concerned that the stories being shared might dissuade young women from entering politics.

I had messages from male politicians who said they weren’t sure they’d done anything wrong, but offered apologies just in case.

I’ve also heard from political parties, sincerely wanting to know how to move forward with a cultural shift.

Women have been silenced in one form or another for years. We’ve been told what to wear, and where to work. We’ve been gaslighted, and told that our stories are the hysterical ramblings of  cold women who can’t take a joke. We’ve been warned we should be quiet, because what if our families hear us telling this story? What if a future employer does? Uh oh. Don’t want to be labelled a troublemaker.

God forbid we tell the truth. OUR truth.

I am a believer in the power of telling and reclaiming stories. The very act of telling your story to someone else, in person or in writing, is liberating. It gives you clarity. It helps you see patterns. It connects you to others with similar stories. There is power in those connections.

It helps you, and others, to think about what the next chapter needs to be.

I don’t have all the answers to, “So now what?”. I do have a few suggestions for how I hope the next chapter can unfold:

Keep telling the stories.

The media is already moving on. This is an old story to them — yawn, another woman complaining. Listen: yes, this is old news. It’s old news because it’s been happening to women for millennia. We’ve been talking about it now for a couple of months. That might not be sexy from a news cycle perspective, but let’s look at the bigger picture. This is a movement. This is a cultural shift. This does not end with a 24-hour news cycle. These stories will keep coming, because there are millions of them. Do they make you uncomfortable? Are we annoying you? Good. That means it’s working. Social change isn’t comfortable.

Think about whose stories we aren’t hearing.

I’m a white, educated, cis woman. I have a lot of privilege. I felt fairly safe in telling my story, even though I knew there’d likely be some fallout from people I know, and maybe I’d lose out on some contracts for being ‘too vocal’. Most of the stories we’ve been hearing are from women like me. There are lots of other stories out there we need to hear: stories of people of colour, LGBTIQ people, people from all backgrounds and walks of life. We need to support everyone to tell their stories. This isn’t just a problem for white women. There are many layers to this.

This is not the fault of a few bad apples. The whole damn barrel containing the apples is dodgy. 

Some politicians have suggested this is a witch-hunt (of course, in the actual witch hunts, it was women who were burned or drowned…usually for being too outspoken or independent, which apparently made them supernatural). The #metoo and #timesup movements aren’t about attempting to ruin the careers of individual men. It’s about exposing parts of our society that have been complicit in oppressing, harassing and abusing women and other historically marginalized groups. It’s about making systemic change, taking on misogyny, and stop asking women to “fit into” structures that were designed and perpetuated by men to keep them out. We need to throw out the rotten apples, sure, but let’s not keep putting our apples in the same barrel that makes it easy for them go bad.

This isn’t about men not being allowed to talk to women.

No. Just stop. This is not about whether you can tell me I have a nice hat. You really like my hat? That’s nice. Tell me. The problem is, you are probably not talking about my hat. The problem is, we are probably sitting in a policy meeting, and you have interrupted what I’m saying to say “Nice sweater” while staring at the general area below my neck. And even if you really, really have a sweater fetish or like my hat, what the hell does what I’m wearing have to do with the policy issue we are discussion? Do you often interrupt your male co-workers to compliment them on their hats?

Halifax councillor Matt Whitman  also told The Coast he’s saddened that you also can’t “…be quite as free with your hugs.” Hugs are for your family and your close friends. Hugs are not (or rarely) okay in work environments. Especially when one person clearly is not into that hug.

You are still allowed to talk to women. If all you can say to a woman you work with is “nice hat”, maybe you shouldn’t talk to women much, though. And if your gregarious nature has you hugging or grabbing the bottom of most women who come into your orbit, you need to learn some basic social skills, or at least not try to live your life by being a Halifax imitation of Don Draper.

Think about policy decisions through a feminist lens.

(Did you just stop reading because I used the word ‘feminist?”)

Policy decisions don’t happen in a vacuum. They reflect a government’s ideology regarding people in society and power structures. Think about what’s happening with the school board decision in Nova Scotia — 54% of elected school board members are women. We don’t see that kind of number in any other elected body in this province. And yet, those elected women are being dismissed. Their voices are no longer welcome.

It isn’t up to women to fix this.

The women who’ve come forward with their stories aren’t doing it to be vindictive. They’re doing it to heal from something that has deeply affected their lives, their careers, and their feelings of self-worth. This comes with a steep emotional cost. It might also come with a cost to their careers and friendships. It can even come with threats and hate from strangers.

Given that cost, is it fair to expect women to do all the heavy lifting to fix society? Is it fair to ask us to singlehandedly come up with ways to fix institutions and systems we’ve never been fully welcomed into?  2018 marks 100 years since women got the vote in Nova Scotia. We’re still fighting to fit in and to be heard. We have ideas, and we have momentum, but the burden shouldn’t be ours, alone.

We need allies. We need men and women inside the political system who acknowledge what’s happened/happening to step up and commit to change. We need to media not to just tell our stories, but to shine a light on where change is and is not happening. We need media to check it own behaviour in how they treat women staffers and politicians.

This change needs to be more than not just saying, “Nice hat”. This is fundamental change in our political cultures. This is a cultural change away from the ‘boys club’ mentality. This is a change to a more inclusive and respectful working environment.

Our political parties claim to be working toward visions of a society Nova Scotians want. Can we trust them to create a progressive, inclusive province if they can’t do the work to get own houses in order?

#MeToo: Politics & Misogyny in Three Acts

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This week’s resignations of provincial and federal politicians over allegations of sexual harassment kept me awake last night. Long-buried memories surfaced. Puzzle pieces about why my career took certain detours (or outright exit ramps)  suddenly fit together. Somewhere in the wee hours of the night, I came to an understanding that my own experiences in Nova Scotia’s political sphere were not isolated, or based on my personal shortcomings, lack of fortitude,  or “taking things the wrong way”. Others have experienced the same thing.

#MeToo.

I have been involved on the inside of Nova Scotia politics since I was 20. Three times, I dove into the political pool with relish. I loved the action, the issues, and, naively — quaintly, perhaps — I believed I could be part of work to make things better. Three times,  I left feeling a bit less as a person. I left with an uneasy feeling that I should stay and fight, that I needed to protest — but knowing there was no one to listen.

ACT I:  The Page

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It is 1990. I am so young that my face looks like a blank slate in my official legislature ID photo. I am so excited about this part-time job. I am a student of history and journalism, and being on the floor of the legislature as a Page will let me feel like like I’m part of history being made — part of our province’s story being written.

Being a Page is not glamourous. It’s a lot of fetching coffee for MLAs, and (in this era before the internet) looking up information and making photocopies.

It is also, I learn, an uncomfortable dance between being noticed, but not being groped.

Most of us Pages are here for the connections we can make and the possibility of furthering our careers. All of us have a genuine interest in politics. Over half of us are young women. Furthering our careers seems to have a lot in common with what we hear about young actresses furthering their careers in Hollywood. Our MLA ‘mentors’ are helpful, friendly – but there are strings attached. We jockey to be the favourite of certain MLAs. We struggle to avoid others who are a bit too friendly. There is a whisper-network about who to avoid, why we should never be alone in a room with certain MLAs. I put up with hands resting on my bum in the legislative chambers, my shoulders being massaged in the kitchen outside the chambers, men pressing themselves close against me, asking me for drinks, asking if I have a boyfriend and what we like to do together. This is normal. This is just the way things are.

But it is exhausting. It is disgusting. Going to work at the legislature feels no different from being in a bar downtown, except that I am paid to be here, and as a student, I need the money. It is also creepier: the men who hit on me downtown are my age. The men who hit on us at the legislature are much older than we are. They have families. They are in positions of power.

Years later, another former Page tells me she remembers that working in the legislature felt like being a Bunny in a Playboy club: serving men, enduring their leers and gropes, and understanding it was just part of the job.

I leave after a year. For a time, I tell myself I hate politics. What I really hated, though, was feeling like an amusement, an object for middle-aged white men from out of town to chase.

I don’t talk about it. I don’t complain to anyone. Why would I? As a 20-year old woman, this is the world.

ACT II:  The Researcher

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It is 1998. After working as a journalist for a couple of years, I recently graduated with a social work degree. One of my social work mentors, a woman I love and admire greatly, has recently been elected as an MLA for the official opposition. At her urging, I apply for and get a job as the party’s health researcher.

I have never enjoyed a job as much as I enjoy this — not before, and not in the years since. I love the work. I love reaching out to people in the community to hear their concerns and bring issues to light. I love writing somewhat snarky questions for Question Period. I love the insanely fast pace, the long hours, the thrill of knowing things before others. I love the budget lock-ups, the need to do on-the-spot analysis of what it all means for Nova Scotians. I love that I am good at it. I love knowing that my work made a critical contribution to not getting that budget passed, and a snap election being called.

I do not love many other things. The caucus office often feels like a frat house. Footballs are thrown. Often, they are thrown at me. Inappropriate jokes are told. ‘The Boys’ (any staff who are not female) are invited out for drinks after work. They are buddies with the MLAs. My female co-workers and I are not. We are not even informed these drink-meetings are happening, and only hear about them after the fact. In politics, being left out means you are ‘out’. Those on the inside have the connections, the information. My female colleagues and I are marginalized, and fight for scraps of information. Frustrated, we watch our male colleagues get plum assignments and more senior positions not because of their ability, but because they had access to the decision-makers and information that we didn’t have.

I see our Communications Director, a capable and intelligent women, forced out of her job by men who do not respect her, who belittle her behind her back, who comment on her appearance and who leave her out of important discussions because she’s not one of “The Boys”.

I sit with a close friend and fellow staff member as she cries with anger and disgust after an MLA grabbed her and rubbed his crotch against her. More than once. And there is no one for her to officially complain to.

I stand outside a media scrum at the legislature, and ignore MLAs from another party who loudly discuss the length of my skirt, how I’m small enough to “put under an arm and carry to a back room”. They call me Policy Barbie, to my face.

At election campaign time, I listened to my female coworkers talking in low voices in the staff kitchen, negotiating who would travel with whom, so that no one would have to be alone with certain MLAs.

After the election, staff reductions were necessary. Many women lost their jobs. I was the only women left in research. My responsibilities increased, but my influence diminished. The frat house atmosphere worsened. There wasn’t even a pretence of including me in discussions (most of which took place in bars, at meetings I didn’t even know were happening). Within months, I left. On my last day, my manager (who went on to have his own career as an MLA) told me he’d seen what was going on, and apologized for not stopping it. I don’t recall how I answered. I probably said, “That’s okay”. But it wasn’t okay. It was not okay to see misogyny, and to do nothing. It was not okay to watch someone who was passionate about her work and good at it just walk away in disgust and defeat because of the atmosphere of toxic masculinity.

It was not okay.

Should I have stayed and fought?

Who would have listened?

 

ACT III: The Senior Advisor

Ten years have passed. The party I used to work for is now in power. One day, I receive an email, asking if I’m interested in once again working with the woman I so admire, who is now a cabinet minister. I would be Senior Policy Advisor to the Minister.

I jump at the chance. It is truly my dream job. It is, I feel, a chance to reclaim the career I have regretted abandoning. I hope to recapture that thrill I used to get from the work, when I first became a researcher. I put the other stuff out of my mind.

This time, I am 40. I am no longer fresh-faced. Now, I see a different side of things. I am a crone, it seems, and somewhat invisible. It is the younger women  — the caucus staff, the Premier’s Office staff – who I see struggling with the outright sexism. It has been almost 20 years since I was a Page, and there are some differences. The advances, the groping, don’t seem as obvious. But the flirting is still there. The inappropriate jokes and frat house environment is still there. The ‘boy’s club’ mentality is still very much there. I see listings of people’s salaries. There are gaps.

The men who excluded me at the caucus office are now senior staffers. They are running the show. They do not welcome me, and immediately try to put me in my place. My opinions and ideas are pushed aside. At 40, I am invisible. I’m reminded that I left once, and my loyalty is questioned. Still, I persist. In this job, I truly believe I can make a difference. I can help shape policy. I can make things better.

I see different things, this time. There are many female MLAs now, which certainly wasn’t the case when I was a Page (I think there were two, then – including the amazing Alexa McDonough). I see how the female MLAs are often disrespected. I see the eye rolls. I hear the mansplaining. I see their frustration as they are talked over. I witness their anger as deals are made behind their backs — deals that directly affect their portfolios.

This time, I stay two years. I have had the privilege of helping usher in the province’s first Mental Health & Addictions Strategy. I have helped shape and bring in key pieces of legislation. But my Minister is moving to another portfolio, and I don’t want to continue here without her. I am frustrated by being left out of conversations, by the back-room dealings among the small group of men that have not changed since my last dive into the political pool. I feel beaten down by having my ideas dismissed, my insights laughed at and overruled. Plus, this fight is more than I have energy for, with Puck’s emerging issues.

I retreat.

Should I have stayed? Should I have fought to make my voice heard?

Probably. But at this point, it feels like a never-ending fight. And I am tired.

 

I miss politics. I do. I miss that thrill, the pace, the issues, the satisfaction of being able to (very occasionally) make real progress. I miss the joy of doing work that I loved and was good at. I’ve had many wonderful opportunities since, but have never again had that sense that I was doing my best work.

Am I done with politics? Maybe, with party politics. I will always be a political person. I have found other ways to make my voice heard now and to try to make change – through advocacy, community-based work, and writing — that are more satisfying.

But maybe I’m not truly done. Maybe there is an Act IV, where I return as part of the growing resistance to fight the toxic masculinity that is beginning to crumble under the weight of its own noxiousness.

I could dive back in. Who’ll join me?

Fantasyland

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Everything in the room is colourless and plastic. The grey walls haven’t seen paint in years. (Are they actually painted grey? Or has time and neglect turned them this colour — a blend of sorrow and blur?). In the middle of the room are three beige, too-small plastic chairs – the sort parents force their rear-ends into during kindergarten visits. One bigger, mottled faux-leather chair, ripped and spilling orange innards, dominates the space – the only speck of colour in a room devoid of cheer and decoration.

This is where furniture and parents’ hopes come to die.

Just down the hall (around the corner where the other families can’t see us) is the regular children’s emergency department. I’ve been there plenty of times, with both my kids. We’ve gone there for middle-of-the-night ear infections, cuts, broken bones. There are clean cubicles adorned with stickers of cartoon characters. Nurses bring popsicles. They do their best to ensure children are comfortable and not scared.

This time, we’re here for a broken mind, not broken bones. It seems they don’t bring popsicles for that.

It’s two weeks before Christmas. Just a week earlier, we were on a family vacation to the most magical place on earth. Earlier that morning, I’d been on the national morning news, talking about a book I wrote.

Now, we sit in this colourless room, waiting for a member of the mental health emergency team to talk to our 12 year old about why he’s suicidal. And as we sat there, I was getting texts from people to congratulate me on my media appearance, or to comment on my vacation photos.  These two realities don’t align. But which one is real, I wonder? Read More »