Posted on

Inclusive Education in NS – Five years later

Five years ago, I joined my friend Carly Sutherland to present to the Nova Scotia Law Amendments Committee on the introduction of pre-primary for four year olds across the province. The words I wrote serve as a stark reminder that we have not made nearly enough progress on creating supportive, welcoming and fully inclusive classrooms for all students in the province. I thought I’d share the presentation I delivered back in 2017 in the hopes that we can keep up the fight.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to present my experience as a parent of a child on the Autism Spectrum in terms of navigating the public education system.

My son was diagnosed with Autism at age four. Our lives changed that day dramatically. Almost immediately our roles as parents were now to include the role of advocate. This advocacy started with working to increase funding for our province’s Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention Program (EIBI) and has now extended into advocating for greater inclusion supports within our public education system. Following the very heated and emotional labour dispute last year; our family, like hundreds of others across the province, were encouraged with government’s creation of the Committee on Classroom Conditions and the Commission on Inclusive Education.

Encouraged, yet also understandably feeling vulnerable and afraid of the varied opinions we knew this discussion would bring forward. In fact, we had already heard many of these judgements during the labour dispute.

Our children were a distraction in the classroom. They kept the “other” kids behind. They were a parent’s responsibility, not the taxpayers. These attitudes were, and are, discrimatory. After all, who has the authority to determine that one child has more of a claim to an education over another? Education is a fundamental human right.

The actions of the government to agree with the teachers that our current inclusion model isn’t working, that we need to do better, and to enact the Commission on Inclusive Education provided me with great faith.

At the time, I gave full credit to Premier McNeil, and the previous Minister of Education, the Honourable Karen Casey for having the political courage to put inclusion on the table for a thorough examination. But. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, came the decision to implement pre-primary just a mere months before the start of the school year before any meaningful consultation had taken place, at the cost of $50 million and rising. It was frankly bewildering. Had we not, through the creation of the Committee on Classroom Conditions and the Inclusion Commission, recognized that our P-12 education system was in crisis and that a comprehensive strategy needed to be developed, budgeted for and executed in order to remedy the systematic issues at play? Our provincial government argues that introducing pre-primary will provide a better start for our province’s four year olds.

They argue that in fact, this will allow developmental disabilities to be caught earlier. That overall, our kids will be better prepared to go into grade primary. I’m not here to disagree, actually. I don’t argue that a pre-primary program has exceptional merit, and that many of our provincial communities could greatly benefit. Why now, though. One of the leads on the Commission for Inclusive Education readily acknowledged that their recommendations won’t be for minor changes to be made to the inclusion model. Rather their recommendations will require a major upheaval and restructuring that will require a significant investment.

Would it not be prudent and fiscally wise for the government to await those recommendations and the associated costs before expanding our education system? This isn’t to mean that pre-primary had to take a perpetual backseat, in fact the planning for pre-primary starting with comprehensive consultation with direct stakeholders such as early childhood educators and private daycares – as well as disability communities who could advise on inclusion supports for younger children, could have had the time it required. Because just as inclusion is an issue in P-12, inclusion will – mark my words – be an issue for grade primary. The Deputy Minister of Education acknowledged recently in Public Accounts that we did not have sufficient Teaching Assistant supports for students within the P-12 system, so how are we going to magically make this happen for much younger students? This is a serious question of safety.

Last week, my son – who is an assessed flight risk – went missing at his school after being left alone in the learning centre. This was not the first time this occurred, but thankfully this time he didn’t make it out of the school. He’s not alone, recently I learned the terrifying story of a grade primary student on the Autism Spectrum who fled their school only to be found a good while later on a nearby highway walking the centre yellow line. Lines, you see, are a great point of interest for that little boy.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend tonight was to dispute the gross misrepresentation of the issues being raised about pre-primary – suggesting that if you have legitimate concerns about the timing of pre-primary, you are completely opposed to the idea of early education. In the recent House debate on pre-primary, a government member took the floor and essentially attacked anyone who would question the implementation of a pre-primary program. He stated, “I would like to have that question answered because that’s truly the question that we’re here facing today – wait, wait, wait. Wait for what? Another 850 kids to miss this opportunity?”

I’d like to answer that question for that member today. No. I don’t want 850 children to miss an opportunity. I also don’t want one single child to meet a tragic fate. And until we can look ourselves in the mirror and say we’ve done all we can do to keep our schools safe and provide accommodations to all of our learners, I would argue that the reasonable, the responsible the RIGHT thing to do, would be to wait.

Upon first learning about the introduction of a pre-primary program, I sat down and expressed my concerns in an essay I ultimately submitted to the Local Xpress, the former media publication run by the striking Herald reporters. I used the metaphor that introducing pre-primary at this point in time was akin to renovating your house while the roof was on fire.

Unfortunately, I’ve learned this metaphor has gone through several iterations and become sadly watered down, but I was struck when the Minister of Education referred to it in the debate on pre-primary in the Legislature. The Minister stated, “If we are to accept the analogy of our education system being a home and being on fire…I would argue, in fact, that early learning is the foundation of our education system.”

I sat with this for a while, unsure as to why it bothered me so much. Just as an introduction doesn’t provide the context for a book, early education can’t serve as the underpinning of an entire education system. Edmund Burke, an Irish Statesman and political theorist, is remembered as saying, “Good order is the foundation of all good things.” The order within our overarching education system is established by the choices we make, and those choices directly impact the fate of each and every one of our student learners. And this government made a choice to invest over $50 million dollars into onboarding four-year-old Nova Scotians into a system that is irrevocably broken.

In response to the Commission’s initial recommendations, Minister Churchill said he has “full confidence” that the provincial government will “find the money” to implement the final report’s recommendations. I think I speak for many families this evening in saying that I hope this will be true. However the introduction of pre-primary before we had solved the existing issues in P-12 makes these words seem hollow. You can suggest that one choice doesn’t impact the other, but this is a government who has led with austerity. The choice to invest such a significant amount of money was made over investing in other areas.

We know this to be true because lining the shelves of government offices are multiple reports whose recommendations have yet to be fully acted upon.

• Minister’s Review of Services for Students with Special Needs, delivered in 2007.

• The Autism Management Advisory Team Report on Lifespan Needs for Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder, delivered in 2010.

• The Autism Spectrum Disorder Action Plan, delivered in 2011.

• And the first, and only, report card on the action plan issued in 2012 – a report card that was supposed to be annual by the way.

• Choosing Now, Investing in Nova Scotians Living with Autism, delivered to government in 2016.

Mr. Chairman, no family wants to put private information into the public forum; it is literally the last resort. It’s the choice you make when you are staring at the ceiling at 3am, realizing that the days, months and years are passing quickly, and these fleeting moments also take bit by bit the potential you see so clearly in your child. So, you fight. You fight for the child that depends on you and your ability to provide for them.

I worry often that our family’s advocacy paints a dismal picture of the reality of living with a child who has a disability. Tonight, I’d like to take the opportunity to set that straight. We are not fighting because our son’s life is a burden on us; it’s the opposite. We’re fighting because we have so much optimism and hope.

Shortly after my son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, I was speaking with a good friend whose son has Down Syndrome. The words she shared with me that day have stayed with me ever since and have since come to fruition. She told me, “This will be the greatest thing ever to happen to your family. An entire world will open up to you. You will see the absolute beauty in the diversity a different neurology can bring.”

I do. We do. And we have made it our life’s mission to make others around my son realize and appreciate that too.

On the cover of the Autism Management Advisory Team Report was another quote, this one by Adolf Monod, French Protestant Churchman from the 1800s, and it is one I will leave you with.

“Between the great things we cannot do, and the small things we will not do, the danger is we shall do nothing.”

I know that my family’s story will not force the halt of implementing pre-primary, rather my story, and the stories of the other families you will be hearing tonight, should serve as advance notice that when the Commission on Inclusive Education releases its report in the coming months, we will not allow “do nothing” to be an option.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Posted on

Let’s Keep Talking Awards 2021

Thank you to The Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia for the incredible work they do in communities across the province. Today I had the honour of providing the keynote address for their Let’s Keep Talking Awards, and was gifted at the end with the Outstanding Activist Award for 2021. I wanted to share the remarks I provided today, in the hopes that it may help others and possibly give some food for thought to those in positions of power.

Let’s Keep Talking AwardsOctober 8th

In my early 20s, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This news was scary to receive, but finally I had answers.

I best describe living with anxiety and OCD as constantly being situated at the peak of a roller coaster, that plateau before you jolt downwards and gravity sends you flying at warp speed towards the ground.

That’s my normal, believe it or not, stuck in my compartment of the roller coaster, constantly on the edge of plummeting downwards with no ability to stop.

My mom loved to tell the story of when we went to Disney World and lined up to ride on Thunder Mountain. My Dad assured me it was a “just a little train ride”.

My dad lied.

Mom recounts how I was in unbridled panic, screaming to get off, trying to Houdini out of the metal bar constraints keeping me falling to a sudden and certain death.  

In some ways, I’ve never gotten off that ride. I’ve just had to learn how to live in perpetual fight or flight.

Today, I manage it in part through various coping tools, including running.

But for a long time, I managed it by drinking – alcohol provided the ultimate momentary escape.

The incredible writer Ann Dowsett Johnston wrote about this phenomenon in her book Drink, which covers her own recovery and examines the “intimate relationship between women and alcohol”.

Dowsett Johnston states perfectly that, “Liquor soothes. It calms anxiety. It numbs depression. Ask any serious drinker: if you want to find your off button, alcohol can seem like an excellent choice.” 

So, I took alcohol on my perpetual roller coaster ride, and in doing so the fear did indeed temporarily subside.

I found my off button.

In the long term though, it never stopped me from spiralling downwards into unmanageable anxiety, booze just delayed the drop and made it even messier.

In other words, alcohol really works. Until it doesn’t. 

I should introduce myself. Hi, I’m Ally, and I’m an alcoholic.

A note on language, that’s not how everyone who has experienced, or is experiencing, substance use disorder likes to refer to themselves, but it works for me. It keeps me honest.

And if we’re keeping it real, I probably don’t fit your imagined image of an addict; and I think it’s important to address that.   

To prepare for this talk, I reached out to Lisa Mullin, the Executive Director at the Marguerite Centre. She kindly gave me some of her time to provide a lay of the land in terms of what addiction and recovery looks like right now in Nova Scotia, and the social inequities at play.

And there are a lot of them.

For example, there are 50 inpatient detox beds for men in the province, compared to the 12 beds available for women.

Lisa told me that she often opens up her public talks with questions she puts to the audience – and I’ll shamelessly steal her exercise and pose the same questions to you.  

So, close your eyes, and ask yourself…

“What does an addict look like to you? …

What are they wearing? …

Where are they when you picture them?” …

Usually, the answers check off all the stereotypes that we see on TV.

And those stereotypes, the ideas we have of what constitutes a “drunk”, they keep a heck of a lot of people very, very sick.

In reality, Nova Scotians suffering from addiction are widely diverse.

And the sad fact is that some of us have a better shot at survival than others.

There is a saying I saw on Instagram that I relate to so much.

It goes… I didn’t make good choices, I had good choices to make.

Yes, I had a substance use problem, but I also had access to a clearer path to sobriety.

I’m white. Middle class. Educated. Housed.

This is important when I stand here before you and share my story of recovery.

I didn’t make good choices. I had good choices to make.

Our job status, our working conditions, whether we are housed, the neighbourhoods we live in and the experiences we had beginning at childhood – these all directly impact the likelihood of whether we are able to achieve and maintain good health, both physical and mental health.

These factors also influence whether we have access to a redemption arc.

And frankly, that’s an uncomfortable truth to reckon with – acknowledging that my race, socio-economic status, my public relations degree – these things all help to make my addiction story easier to swallow.

The thing is, acknowledging that recovery has been easier for me doesn’t negate how hard it has been to get better.

Both things are true.

My story is deeply painful, and living with a mental illness is an exhausting and daily struggle.

To start, I have never had a normal relationship with alcohol. From the first time I tried drinking in high school, with a group of friends on a set of train tracks in south end Halifax, I saw booze for what it was – a boost of adrenaline, an instant shot of confidence that annihilated any sense of inhibition.

I loved it. It made me love myself.

And while my relationship changed with alcohol over the years, the relationship remained consistently toxic and absolutely intertwined with my mental illness.

Shortly after I was diagnosed with my anxiety disorders while interning at a PR Firm in Toronto in my early twenties, I found myself back home in Halifax living downtown on Argyle St.

It was the perfect studio apartment, very Parker Posey – high fives for the Gen Xers who appreciate the reference.

I had a good job in communications at the time, and I had been prescribed medication to help manage my anxiety and OCD.

And as it sometimes happens with anti-anxiety drugs, the particular prescription had an adverse effect. I became very depressed and experienced suicidal ideation.

Not knowing what was “normal” to feel on medication, I turned to alcohol to try to balance things out and would continue down this path of self-medicating on and off for the next two decades.

Most of the people who knew me back in my early to mid-twenties might remember a woman who performed relatively well at her job and networked with the right people.

Those closer to me recognized there were signs of trouble.

Fewer still knew the real story; a tale with so many disturbing chapters.

I was spending all my spare money on alcohol, resorting to check kiting – which, for those who are blissfully unaware (and good for you), check kiting is check fraud where you take advantage of non-existent funds in your bank account by writing yourself a cheque, and then depositing it, into an empty bank account.

I lived with no power for longer than I care to admit running an extension cord out into the hall and connecting it to my laptop so I could entertain myself with DVDs as I drank alone in the evenings.

It got worse.

There was self-harm – and moments where the self-harm got really dicey. Moments where I hailed down a police car to rush me to the ER.

There were many intoxicated visits to the ER.

There were sick days, and missed flights to client meetings in neighbouring provinces because I was too hungover and depressed to physically get out of bed.

There was so much sadness. So much loneliness.

So much torture going on within my head.

My journey with alcoholism has had its peaks and valleys. When my mental illness was in check, so was my drinking. When my mental illness was unmanageable, my drinking was too.

In my late 20s, I fell in love. I found someone I could trust; someone I could count on. And for many years, that allowed me the reprieve to get on the right medication, address my mental health, and for the most part drink like a “normal person”.

In my early marriage, when starting a family and raising our young kids, I had things under control.

Until I didn’t.

Life threw some curve balls, and I had not built up the coping tools to hit back.

Many of you here today can probably relate.

And for the women here especially, who have balanced work and family, you can appreciate moms are always the last one to get sick.

When everyone comes down with a cold, including us, we soldier on. There is no time off from work, no time off from parenting. No time off from the stress and the dark thoughts that plague so many of us.

Referring again to Dowsett Johnston, she likens alcohol to the modern woman’s steroid.

We have grown up in the “’women can have it all’ era” – and having it all comes with the incredible benefits of carrying the weight of a full-time job, the responsibilities of motherhood, maintaining friendships, keeping fit and chasing the illusion that we aren’t aging, so that we can remain relevant and necessary to others.

But having it all means that you have to make sacrifices, and usually that comes at the expense of you – so there’s no time for therapy, taking a walk is impossible when you need to make dinner for the kids, and the idea of taking a day off work is laughable…so you push through the day, walk through the door and pour a drink to take the edge off, and then perhaps you pour a couple more, chasing that beautiful numbness, and before you know it, you start to count on it – rely on it, and one day you realize that you can’t go without it.

This is what happened in my late thirties, my drinking escalated – although at this point, my drinking was different. I wasn’t drinking alone in a dark apartment, I was filling glasses of wine with friends at playdates, sharing memes about “You’re the Reason Mommy Drinks” on Facebook, taking what I thought at the time were sophisticated shots of my boxed sauvignon blanc poured into a dollar store goblet to post on Instagram with cringe-worthy captions like, “Kids in bed, here’s to mommy juice!”

I was able to hide my addiction, because I didn’t have to hide it – as long as I joked about it. It was fine.

It was not fine.

Alcohol dependence is a progressive disease, and I know this to be true.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about how my mother’s terminal illness led me to finally lose all semblance of control over my drinking, but I’m also realizing that it took staring down the end of my mother’s life to save my own.

My anxiety and OCD were controlling every waking minute of my life, and I couldn’t drink enough alcohol to quiet the thoughts.

I didn’t learn about “coping tools” as a kid. I mean, sure, in the generic “use your words, not your hands” to deal with feelings of anger or frustration. But there was no handbook for the roller coaster ride, for the obsessive thoughts that would torture me as a kid and make me feel as though I was a horrible, faulty human.

My mom, in many ways was my coping tool. She was the priest in my confessional booth. Those OCD thoughts that told me I had to come clean on an action or “something bad” would happen, well, I dealt with those by reporting in to her. She, nor I, knew the severity of what I was dealing with at the time. To my mom, I was just intensely honest, and albeit a bit strange.

What do you do when the one person who truly knows and accepts you for who you are is on their way out?

Well, if you’re me, you drink lots more. You pretend it’s not happening. You spiral out of control, knowing a small part of you wonders whether it is best to go with her.

There was no more pretending, there was no more hiding, the gig was up – and thankfully, I was able to muster what was remaining of my humility to reach out and ask for help.

I messaged a friend who was in recovery, I told her I had a problem.

For me, once I hit send on that message, I knew there was no turning back. I could no longer ignore how sick I was, how close I was to losing it all.

This ask for help was my first step towards recovery.

This past October 1st marked three years of freedom from addiction.

As it increases moisture levels levitra cost low of skin it helps in dry skin condition. brand levitra 20mg First trimester exposure can increase risk of congenital defects. Studies levitra sales further indicated that 80% of all men suffer from BPH symptoms. Sullivan sildenafil super and his wife Jean are the parents of teenagers worried about their safety and security.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I got sober before the arrival of COVID-19. Before the lockdowns, before online school. Before our world became much smaller.

I know that I would have depended on alcohol to get by.

And based on recent data, I am not alone.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 18 months has led to an increase in alcohol consumption and substance use amongst Canadians, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.

Statistics Canada reported that heavy drinking has seen an overall increase – with stress, and boredom, being cited as two major triggers.

These statistics don’t paint the whole picture, however, as it is challenging to gauge data on dependence – not everyone seeks treatment if they have a substance use problem, nor does everyone acknowledge their use as problematic despite meeting the criteria.

What we can definitively know is that the increased rate of alcohol consumption has a significant impact not only on our individual physical and mental health and wellness, but on our overarching health care system and delivery of social services.

Here’s why that matters.

The economic burden of substance use in Canada is $38.4 billion – $14.6 billion from alcohol and tobacco products. These are numbers from 2014 Stats Can reporting, so we can wager that this amount has increased. 

In Ontario, the disease burden of mental health and addiction is 1.5 times higher than all cancers put together and seven times higher than that of all infectious diseases. I suspect the numbers in Nova Scotia are fairly aligned when adjusted for population.

I’m not sharing this to impress you with stats, but rather to set the tone and lay down the context – especially in a province that recently voted in a majority government who ran on an aggressive health care platform – promising to overhaul the delivery of our health care services, including mental health supports and resources.

Let me be crystal clear – we cannot talk about mental health without talking about addiction.

So, let’s talk about it.

People with mental illness are twice as likely to have a substance use problem compared to the general population – at least 20 per cent of those diagnosed with mental illness also have a co-occurring substance use problem.

And it goes both ways, the chicken and the egg, mental illness and substance use disorder –as people with substance use problems are up to three times more likely to have a mental illness.

In 2018, the Report on the State of Public Health delivered each year by Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer emphasized that problematic alcohol use accounted for the greatest health and social costs based on cumulative harms of hospitalizations, death and lost productivity – more people are hospitalized from alcohol use than from heart attacks.

Women are in particular danger. The same report cited alcohol use amongst women as one of the most pressing concerns of our time. From 2011 to 2017, deaths attributed to alcohol increased by 26 per cent among Canadian women in comparison with 6.5 per cent for men.

I’ve noticed a concerning trend when statistics around alcohol consumption amongst women are shared. There is an outcry from a vocal few – whether it be in the comments on an article or responses on social media – that decry women are being unfairly targeted for their drinking habits.

Yes, it is unfair.

It is unfair that drinking 3-6 alcoholic drinks a week increases the risk of breast cancer in women by 15 per cent. Women who drink two glasses of wine daily have a 50 per cent increase in their risk of cancer.

It’s unfair, but it’s the truth. And I, as an educated woman with a grandmother and mother both having had breast cancer, did not know that; and I bet a lot of you were similarly unaware.

When I speak out about my experience, the culture that has been created where we embrace wine as a cure-all for today’s stressors, I’m not advocating to take away a woman’s right to drink. It’s quite the opposite, I’m championing for a women’s right to make an informed choice.

I’m advocating to keep women safe.

This includes being kept safe from alcohol-related sexual violence.

Data from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse reports that drinking by both women and men can affect judgment and the ability to evaluate risk, and therefore increases women’s susceptibility to aggression, date rape, violence and sexual assault.

I sadly don’t need the data to know this is true, because I am one of the alcohol-related sexual assault statistics.

No, women never deserve it. But yes, alcohol makes us more vulnerable – and reducing alcohol use needs to be included as part of a multifaceted approach to reducing sexual assault.

The perpetrators of sexual assault are always responsible, but knowing the risks and the statistics can empower women to better protect themselves.

That is important to me.  And it should be important to you.

Women are being directly targeted through savvy alcohol marketing. Society recognizes there are unique stressors applicable only to women – we carry a lot of the emotional labour, oversee majority of child care, manage the health care of our families, all while many of us try to achieve that ultimate “have it all” trophy by working full-time outside the home. 

It’s not sustainable. People know it’s not sustainable.

Instead of offering help by modifying work hours, or say, implementing progressive child care policies, we’re told to take the edge off with a glass of wine.

Take a recent Tropicana Juice advertising campaign. The company invested heavily in celebrity endorsed marketing materials that promoted the idea of women keeping a secret mimosa fridge in their homes. Complemented with a cute #TakeaMimosa hashtag, the campaign encouraged women to hide from their families and drink alone in closets and bathrooms.

A video ran on social media where celebs like Molly Sims enthused about the need to take a break while they poured a drink from their secret mini-fridges disguised as laundry hampers and toolboxes.

Yes, I’m serious. 

In the video, Molly faced the camera and raised her drink saying, “It’s amazing. It’s so I can be a better mom. The best mom.”

Suffice to say, it wasn’t the greatest look for Tropicana during a global pandemic where mental health challenges were dramatically on the rise.

They pulled the campaign, and apologized.

But look, it’s not just companies selling us family friendly breakfast beverages…

This obsession with alcohol as self-care is pervasive across all aspects of our lives, and offered up as a solution even during our darkest times.

When my oldest chid was three, we were excited to learn that we were expecting a sibling for him. Unfortunately, I, like many other women, lost that pregnancy through miscarriage. I remember vividly laying there on the hospital bed, being told by the emergency room doctor that there was no longer a heartbeat to be found.

He was sorry. I should take care of myself.

“Go home, he said, “pour yourself a big glass of wine”.

Not talk to someone. Not rest. Not cry. I should pour myself a big glass of wine.

My recovery (and everyone’s recovery journey is different) depends on working with and supporting others living with substance use problems. It is in this work that I experience both gratitude, and a striking reminder of just how lucky I am to have had the safety net I did when I was ready to get help.

Asking for help is incredibly hard, but even when you’re ready to make that ask – following through can be an impossible task, again, particularly for women.

This includes acknowledging addiction. Because acknowledging it can mean needing inpatient treatment – inpatient treatment that can cost $10,000 to $17,000 without a medical plan.

But even if you have the money – who will look after your kids? Will you lose your job? If you lose your job – how will you keep a roof over your head?

These aren’t anecdotal questions – I hear them frequently from women in the recovery community that I am lucky enough to know, love and call friends.

By the time these women finally get help, it’s usually because they’ve been mandated to get help. Their kids have been removed from their home. They’ve lost their jobs. They are sometimes precariously housed and in precarious relationships.

This brings me back to Nova Scotia’s current focus on overhauling our health care system, and providing better supports for mental health.

If we have learned anything throughout this pandemic, and I have to believe we have, it’s that the health and wellness of Nova Scotians requires a collective and unified response from all of society and all of our systems.  

The same approach will be required to better support Nova Scotians living with mental illness and addiction.

Todd Leader, psychologist and social worker described this need much more articulately in his brilliant book, It’s Not About Us: The Secret to Transforming the Mental Health and Addictions System in Canada.

Leader says, “when we talk about the health of a population, and the work of government and its public organizations to ensure the well-being of that population, we must step out of our individual focus. We must recognize that in this case, the population is the client and improving and maintaining the mental health of that population is the job.”

I love the saying, and probably use it far too often, that leadership is courage under fire. That means doing the right thing, despite the backlash, despite the political ramifications.

So, I ask our leaders – at all levels of government – are we protecting our people? Or are we protecting big industry?

Do we do the right thing for Nova Scotians? Or do we continue to cower at the feet of Big Alcohol.

One way to walk the talk is to make our intent clear through the development and more importantly, the execution, of a provincial addictions’ strategy, which would include dedicating portions of our alcohol revenue towards treatment, prevention and research.

A strategy could examine innovative and out-of-the-box thinking such as expanding even further on the current government’s proposed Chronic Illness Treatment and Prevention Program – which focuses funding on an in-home treatment model for patients with chronic illnesses, based on the INSPIRED model for Nova Scotian COPD patients.

What if we took this concept and tailored it for Nova Scotians living with addiction?   

Many of the struggles identified by COPD patients of the INSPIRED program are consistent with those shared by Nova Scotians living with addiction – no matter the recovery supports they access, they often wrestle with social isolation, relationship tension, fatigue, resentment, restricted personal freedom, anger, helplessness, guilt, depression, difficulty sleeping, loss of self-identity, and panic.

The premise of the INSPIRED model could potentially address a number of the challenges raised by self-advocates who are caught in the Groundhog Day cycle of active-addiction and recovery; offering a hospital-to-home model of care that provides specialized support for patients and their families to enhance their confidence to manage their illness.  

These ideas are worth looking into.

A provincial addictions strategy could do so many things, but most importantly, a strategy must be directly informed and developed through direct consultation with Nova Scotians who know addiction first-hand.

Nova Scotians who know the stigma that comes with a substance use disorder.

One week ago, I celebrated three years of sobriety.

It’s remarkable how much my life has changed since October 1, 2018 when I realized that I was fighting harder to be able to find a way to keep alcohol in my life than I was to free myself from its clutches. 

A beautiful thing happened when I let go; I landed. 

When mom was very sick, and I was very newly sober, I took up running. I was encouraged by a friend to sign up for a half marathon even though I’d only ever run 5k. So, I bought a book and followed a plan the best way I knew how.

Pretty soon, I started to figure that I may be able to actually knock this thing out.

A week and a half after mom passed, I ran my first half marathon on the streets of Halifax, running past the Hospice where she and I had our final chats.

I have no doubt she was along for the ride, but it was me in the driver’s seat for once.

I could do hard things, on my own, it hurt but I trained to deal with that pain.

I had…coping tools.

There’s a mantra I repeat to myself during a race when the kms add up and you hit what is known by runners as the pain cave: “The only way out is through”.

For the first time in my life, I trust myself, I have confidence in myself. I’m not hiding from my mental illness, I’m sitting with it, and in some cases, running straight through it.

And that’s what running does for me, it’s as much about building my mental fortitude as it is about testing the limits of physical endurance.

So, while I didn’t aspire to become an advocate around mental health and addiction, I know my voice can make a change.

Some of you may be familiar with the work of Brene Brown who speaks so eloquently and powerfully on shame and vulnerability. Brene says, “When we find the courage to share our experiences and the compassion to hear others tell their stories, we force shame out of hiding, and end the silence.”

I said earlier that I didn’t make good choices, I had good choices.

I had the social support, job security and child care assistance to see those choices through to fruition.

And that should be the reality for everyone.

No one’s redemption arc should be harder fought.

So, let’s indeed keep talking as we are doing today, but even more so, let’s make sure people aren’t fighting alone.

And if it’s you who feels you are fighting alone, I promise you there are people who want to help. I promise you that you are worthy and deserving of happiness.

For the rest of us, let’s get to work.   

Posted on

The Drive.

I had to break the silence, which had loomed heavy since we set out on the road.

“I’ll show you my favourite farmhouse.”

“Ok. I’ll show you mine,” Mom replied.

We had planned the day. I would take Mom to her radiologist appointment, we would pick up my daughter at her daycare, and we would make the two-hour-and-change drive to Smith’s Cove. Our family summer home, but really home. Home with the trellis of roses climbing the dark weather-beaten wood.

We had made this drive countless times during the spring, summer and fall months. Each year, new landmarks popping up and old favourites fading away. Always, there was the farmhouse that I loved.

Always. Like a promise. Forever. Like my mom.

We had planned the drive–but somehow, we had not planned for what we would be told at the radiologist. Reflecting back, we were idiots. All of us in that room. My brother and I for thinking that a brain tumor being discovered in a woman who had faced multiple bouts of cancer wouldn’t necessarily be terminal. The doctor, with his terrible bedside manner, for not realizing he was sitting with other idiots who didn’t know that their mother’s brain tumor was obviously terminal.

“You keep saying ‘quality of life, ‘” I said irritably to the doctor. “What exactly are you talking about? Quality of life for what? For how long?”

He shrugged, “About six months, give or take.”

Countless times we had made this drive. Sometimes as a family of five. Three kids squeezed in the back. Dog at my mother’s feet, my father at the helm. The soothing voices of CBC on the radio, gently guiding us into vacation mode.

I didn’t know if I’d ever shown mom my favourite farmhouse. I might not get another chance.

Growing up, she was always the most beautiful, the most sophisticated. She with the red jumpsuit with the wide red belt, she with the Lady Di hairdo and the perfect burgundy lipstick: “wine with everything” it was called, and she carried it everywhere.

She was always so utterly fantastic, but also so unbelievably humble. Probably only a few people would know that my mother was once named one of Glamour magazine’s “Most Beautiful College Students.”

This is likely where I am more like my father, because if I was ever awarded that title, you would know.

Mom was not like that. That though, was her story to tell. Just as I am an open book with dog-eared pages and highlighted sections; my mother was the reluctant poet, too humble to share the masterpiece she could have no doubt written.

Two days after the drive, my mom and I found ourselves sitting on a driftwood bench, staring out at the Atlantic Ocean.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” she said.

Those words were so poignant: of course, it was going to be me left behind. Still, I knew what she was trying to convey.

While our relationship was fraught with complexity, our connection will stand the test of time as the most sacred, cherished and committed relationship I will ever have.

We had driven these roads before, my mother and I, but this was the first time I really sat with her and felt her full humanity. Where I contemplated what it felt to actually be her, sitting in a car with her daughter next to her, her granddaughter in the back, quietly taking account of the life she had led, knowing the time allocated for her was almost up.

At my age now, my mother watched her mother survive a stroke. Then, she watched her slowly fade away.

She was me; I am her.

My daughter, in the backseat, will now watch me grieve, and watch how I live through this.

I was her; she is me.

It was on this highway, on this day, that I had the groundbreaking realization that despite being told my entire life that I was so much like my father, the truth is: in many ways, my mother and I have traveled the same path. Time and space have allowed me to see that she would often stop on the path, turning her head back to yell out and plead with me to look elsewhere, to try a new solution. Yet, I didn’t. I followed her beaten trail because I didn’t want to know another way. I knew her secrets, and she knew mine. It was safe here.

It may just be that this 230 km trek was the metaphorical cutting of the cord.  The beginning of finally getting the fortitude to forge ahead on my own.

I would turn 40. Three months from now, I would get sober. I would experience the heart-crushing agony of watching my mother die, and finally appreciate the beauty and possibilities that exist in being truly alive.

I still am, and forever will be, my mother’s daughter.

“I always knew I’d go out like this,” she said, as I held her hand while she lay on the stretcher being pushed towards her condo elevators. The fall she took in her bedroom was as much a nightmare to her as it was a mixed blessing to us. She wanted to spend her final days in hospice, but when the time came to make that transition, what we couldn’t predict was how impossible it would be to tell mom it was time to pack up and leave her home.

The fall, sadly but kindly, made that decision for her.

As a rule, the treatment will require at least 30 minutes prior to cialis 10mg http://twomeyautoworks.com/?attachment_id=249 the physical intimate sessions / activities. The best selling here order cialis capsule for this malady is Bluze capsule which is a highly effective herbal product. They are more fit in categories of glamour.This part of the industry is the most competitive because it is one of the highest cialis 5 mg paid modeling positions. Makes no sense I know, but viagra uk for some reason it works for me. I was by her side that day in the emergency room, with her as she was moved to palliative care, and I sat up front with the kind paramedic as we made our way by ambulance to mom’s room at Hospice Halifax.

Even on what would be her final drive, on her way to the crematorium, I still had my mother within sight: driving behind the hearse with shaking hands, weaving in and out of traffic, not ready to let her go.

How could she be without me? Me without her?

Five days before Mom died, I was sitting in the comfy chair in her room at the hospice, keeping her company as she put all her effort into writing a list of items for me to collect at Walmart.

We listened to some of her favourite music. “Lady in Red” by Chris De Burg. “Stay the Night” by Jane Oliver. At one point, her mind cluttered with so many narcotics, she questioned why my father was snoring so loud, and we laughed when I informed her it was actually a woodpecker outside her window.

“Every night I go to sleep and I wonder if this will be it,” she said to me. “And then I wake up in the morning, and I’m so happy, because it means I get to see you again.”

I know what that was like, the happiness in getting to see each other again. I’ve known it since I was little. Wearing a bright yellow dress, brown and pink backpack, bowl cut and bangs and feeling like my heart would explode watching my mom approach to pick me up after my very first day at school. “That’s my mom,” I said to my new friends.

I still have her list, or what I can make of a list through her barely legible writing. The scribbles seemed to me a particularly cruel card dealt by cancer, which had already stolen so much of her dignity. From the earliest age, I recall my mother handwriting her correspondence, starting over if there was the smallest mistake in her beautiful cursive. While this pristine writing would understandably have you picturing a “lady who lunches,” behind the façade was a glorious rebel without a cause. I often wish she had let that rebel yell more often.

As a young girl, my mother liked to fancy herself much older than she was. When out with her mother, my grandmother, she would look on in admiration at the ladies with bright red lipstick, cigarettes so glamorously dangling off their mouths as they pushed their babies in prim English prams. She considered their appearance an achievable aspiration, which is how she ended up sitting on the steps outside her prestigious home located in a rather uptight neighbourhood, legs daintily crossed, one hand pushing her baby doll in her doll stroller with the other hauling a discarded cigarette she had found at the local bus stop.

She remembers all these details, vividly laughingly as she recalls her father’s expression pulling his Lincoln town car into the driveway, absolutely not in the mood for this after a long day in the operating room.

So many years later, just blocks away from the scene of that crime, my mother now lies, preparing to die.

Notepads. Pens (coloured). Small. Nightshirts (different colours – mauve, lavender). Food. Napkins. Drink.

Other items on her list, I can’t make out.

I wish I had stayed over that night. It marked the last moment I’d be with Mom when she was really lucid. Days later, the palliative care doctor would tell us, “The time for meaningful conversations with your mother has passed.”

She would be sedated. We would say goodbye.

But on that night, before I went home to my family, I kissed her gently on her forehead.

“We can’t be sorrowful about this,” she whispered in my ear.

Sorrowful: adjective. Feeling or expressing sorrow or grief; sorrowful; sad. Of or relating to mourning of the dead.

Like the Sudoku puzzles she so loved, I cling to the idea she was giving me a code to unravel.

Mourning. Pronounced the same as morning. Such drastically different meanings that evoke such drastically different emotions.

Don’t be sad, I know you’ll find me.

And so that’s where I meet her now, in the mornings. In the sunrises that light up the sky. In the many mornings I lace up my sneakers and run: I chase the magic sphere as it emerges over the ocean, and the pain I hold escapes and shape-shifts into silent words I send up to her.

My mother’s life and her story are complicated. Just like every story, really. Understanding death and mortality a bit more now, I think what we can hope for after we pass is that our lives will be reflected upon like a film – where there are good parts and bad parts, but ultimately you hope that the message it carried was delivered to the people who matter. That years after you’re gone the ones you love will be reminded of small innocuous moments from the film reel and realize a depth of meaning that they previously underscored. Most of all, I think we all hope that the reviews will be kind, exquisite themes will be captured, and if we’re really lucky we’ll go down as a classic.

In the movie of my mother’s life, I will forever be grateful that I played a supporting role. That role, and the level of support, fluctuated over the years. But at our most fun, our most wicked, we were Thelma and Louise, minus Brad Pitt and the cliff.

“There it is. My farmhouse,” I pointed. “Up there on the hill.” We turned our heads to look at the home – which I have always felt resembles the cottagey feel of Aunt Em’s house before it blew up and away in the glorious Wizard of Oz.

“Now I know I’ve got a heart, ’cause it’s breaking,” the Tin Man said.  

“There’s mine,” said Mom. I looked, but couldn’t see anything.

“Hiding by the trees, behind that other house there.”

We drove past, and I quickly looked back. Then I saw it. Beautiful. Understated. Not needing to be out in front.

Like a promise. Forever. Like my mom.