2020 - My year of gratitude

2020 is a year that for most might not be synonymous with the word gratitude, but for me it is the word that most resonates with me when I think of the past twelve months. Many of you are already in 2021 as I write this blog entry as the 31^st of December draws to a close in Vancouver. For the first time in my life I am spending New Year’s Eve in my own company and it is delicious. I have found so much calm and perspective in solitude this past year, and in that solitude, I have found great peace as I have enjoyed the most important relationship of my life – the one I have with myself. 2020 has been a series of exquisite moments filled with such an array of emotions from intense joy to all consuming pain, but they have all been so healing. I wish to share some of events/moments over the past twelve months that have brought me so much gratitude. 

A message I found on a hike in the woods...

 

I begin with the gratitude for the lessons I have learned about myself:

 

I am grateful that I have learned to hear my inner voice and listen to her

 

I am grateful that I have reconnected with my inner child and given her space to play

 

I am grateful that I have learned to enjoy my own company so entirely and that I am what some might call an ‘extroverted introvert’ 

 

I am grateful that I have learned not to have expectations of others, but to just accept them as they are

 

I am grateful that I have accepted that I dislike organising events/gatherings/trips/evenings/parties/etc.! Yes, I am very good at it, but I accept that I did it in the past as a means of seeking acceptance and searching for love.

 

I am grateful that I have unconditional love in my life and I know what it feels like

 

Now for some gratitude beyond my own ‘growth’ lessons:

 

2020 has been a year of connections for me. My only international trip this year was to Miami a city which surprised me and where I spent an amazing week with one of my favourite humans Caítriona. It was such an amazing experience to spend time with someone you have known for more than twenty years and still learn new things about them. I am so grateful for how the pandemic has brought me so much closer to friends all across the world. It takes moments like these in our lives to acknowledge who is truly important to us. I am also grateful for having the ability to let go of relationships which did not serve me, and in doing so honouring myself. There has been something magical about everyone I know all around the world sharing the same experience (albeit a challenging and devastating experience) and being able to truly feel connecting. In April a group of friends and I who had all worked in Bangladesh at the same time were all able to be on a Zoom call together for the first time in thirteen years! I have shared so many amazing phone calls with friends all over the world where inevitably we focus on the simple moments in our lives as due to the pandemic it is the simple pleasures that bring such joy. 

 

Zooming with my 'Irish soul sisters'

 

I am grateful for the amazing community I have in Vancouver where I have had support in so many different forms over the past twelve months. Certainly Vancouver has become my home for many reasons but the people I have met here over the past seven and a half years, and especially in the past year, have made life all that much sweeter. I am grateful to have a true Vancouver ‘sister and brother’, I am grateful for hikes with two formidable women, I am grateful for dialogues with my rational consciousness, I am grateful for enlightening conversations with colleagues, I am grateful for honest friendship and support when needed, I am grateful for a little man who love pakoras, I am grateful for a hand-drawn picture. The list could go on, but the point is I am blessed. 

 

Sharing Canadian Thanksgiving with the Zammars

Playing with new formidable friends

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vancouver is a beautiful place and any of you who live here or have visited me can attest to that. Even as winter engulfs us and the rain seems never-ending, I could not be more grateful for the beauty which surround me. During the different stages of lockdown, I have always been able to get outside to the mountains or the sea and just breath. I have always been a cyclist but this love has bloomed exponentially during the pandemic. I started cycling longer distanced on my Dutch hybrid bike back in March, but in early August I took the plunge and invested in a road bike. Since then I have cycled all over the lower mainland with the latest cycle of 127km just last Tuesday. It brings me such joy and has connected me with a whole group of different people through my cycling club. The forests around Vancouver are magical with so many different hikes and just being among the trees is medicine in itself. At the end of October I travelled over to the most westerly point on Vancouver Island and learned how to surf. Then at the end of November I was able to ski again. Needless to say, I very privileged to live in such a place.  

 

My road bike Fionn and I

The magical beaches of Tofino where I learned to surf

No words for the beauty at the end of this summer hike in June

 

 

I am so incredibly grateful for my health. 2020 has been a year of true healing as I learn more about my body and the journey I have navigated for the past seven years. In October I was diagnosed with Crohn’s autoimmune disease in my upper digestive tract. My initial reaction was pure relief, to have an answer to something that has plagued my every waking moment for so long. Yes it is an autoimmune and therefore something I will live with and manage, but that I can do. I am grateful that at 41 (ok almost 42) I can cycle 127km in one day and still walk to tell the tale. I can swim 1800 metres twice a week and feel fantastic. I can hike up a mountain and still be ready for more. I am so grateful for the health that 2020 has brought me.

 

I am very grateful for all of you – my global community. When I look down at the email list I have for access to the blog I am astounded at the richness of my life. I have people on this list from all walks of life, from so many different places and so many different stages of my life. The beauty is I know that were we to sit down tomorrow over a coffee we would have a wealth of topics to cover. Thank you for being one of my blog readers. If there is something you feel grateful for in 2020 please do share it as a comment below or reply to the notification email which comes directly to me. May 2021 bring you joy and calm.

 

A friend recently introduced me to this really beautiful poem. I appreciate it because it speaks to the reason why I thrive to live - the 'bones' of life is so captivating...

 

Good Bones

By Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

      

A time for words...

Many moons have passed since my last confession! My thoughts have drifted to the blog in various moments since my last very important entry about ‘home’ in mid-September, but alas the phenomenon of so-called ‘Zoom teaching’ has been intellectually and emotionally debilitating. It is not a state of being I have ever experienced in my life. Of course, it is possibly the grate of the continued state of a Covid-19 existence has a role to play. I find myself, like so many of my colleagues in universities and post-secondary institutions, playing the role of educator but also emotional support for many of my students – the result is already being discussed in the broader media. Given a lot of my work and research over the past six years has been exploring the use of educational technologies and emerging media I found myself also being a support for colleagues in my department. To be clear neither the support of my students or my colleagues are something I am lamenting my role in, but it has taken its toll. Instead of being inspired to write or knit, two activities which bring me great sedentary pleasure, I have sought relaxation and calm in being outside and being active. The pandemic and the curbing of my broader freedom of mobility has caused me to take up road biking and swimming with a vengeance. Even in the coldness of winter I find the windows of opportunity to explore the vastness of the Lower Mainland in BC by bike. I have also been adapting to hibernation tendencies as the winter days have grown shorter, spending my evenings watching candle light dance and retiring to my bed with a good book often by 9.30pm. I have however been percolating this blog entry for much of the past two months, and it has gone through many phases as my thinking progresses through reflection.

To frame then what this blog entry is about, it is essentially about my dive into trying to understand human behaviour around how people select to follow health guidelines during Covid-19. Now to be clear my discussion below will be interwoven with other thoughts which have been dancing across my consciousness in recent times. I have decided to structure the writing around a series of words, and hence the title of the entry. Although it may sound rather negative, I hope that you can observe my undercurrent of hope.  

 

I begin with Fear. To begin with fear is both obvious and also rudimentary. Much of our behaviour as humans is driven by what we fear. Fear is a straightforward way to control people often used by people in positions of power. We are positioned in society to think that there is always an us versus them, that if we belong to a tribe where people are just like us we do not have to fear the other whom we do not know or whose view on life we cannot identify with. Once you remove the illusion that there is something to fear from what you do not know, it is like signing a torch down a dark alley only to see at the end that someone has painted a flower on the concrete wall. We fear what we do not know, and we are controlled by that fear to never shine the torch. So much of the rhetoric around Covid-19 in the media has been based on fear. I will never forget a YouTube video which went around in early April of this year made apparently by a doctor on how to deal with your grocery shopping when you returned home. I watched the first three minutes and had to turn it off as I could not endure the messaging. Now to clarify I completely understand that there was so little we knew about Covid-19 when it first emerged, and scientists were working around the clock to offer guidance. That said this video was scripted to stoke fear and anxiety around one of the simple pleasures that life has to offer – food. The video is just one example of so much mainstream media which insisted on having people frame their behaviour around fear. The biggest single drawback of a behaviour based on fear is that it leaves no room for a person to have any consideration for others. Fear speaks to the consumer culture, we are ensnared in where the narrative is, ‘I must have’ ‘I must keep up with the Jones’ ‘I want’. To ‘the need to have’, I do believe there has been some shift as people realise that they can survive without when the access is removed. As the background noise of ‘I need’ has eased I have noticed a new phenomenon in Vancouver – the tenuous possibility of friendliness. I love living in Vancouver as I have attested to in previous blog entries, but as many big cities it is certainly not known for its friendly banter amongst strangers. The evolutionary biologist Brian Hare believes that our species of humans (homosapiens) survived when other humans didn’t because they learned to be friendly. It may sound farfetched but just pause for a moment and think about how much your day is when someone smiles at you, holds in the door or helps you reach something on a shelf – simple actions but so powerful. To me these simple acts of friendliness are how we can make small steps in addressing the fear of the ‘other’.

 

As someone who thrives on seeing the light-bulb moment on my students faces, I have struggled with ‘Zoom teaching’, and look forward to the day when I can sit in my office at UBC and eavesdrop on the debates students have outside my door on a challenging concept they learned in class. My personal experience aside, the word I have heard most frequently from many is the pleasure of the sense of autonomy they have felt from working from home without someone looking over their shoulders. Of course, we all miss the spontaneous interactions we enjoy with colleagues and the dance which is the workplace with all its prescribed moves, but when you empower a person to take responsibility for something there is no greater gift. It is the moment a parent lets go of the back of a child’s bicycle and the child keeps going realising they can do it on their own. It is the moment your grandmother talks you through her pavlova recipe and you succeed in making it yourself. It is the moment you take hold of that fear of being vulnerable and say, ‘I am not ok I need help’. In all of these moments it is about an achievement, but most importantly it is the autonomous sense of the moment. There does not to be a constant agenda or mandate to be met. Each of us is different in how we navigate our lives, our emotions, our achievements, and there is no greater feeling than ‘owning’ that specific moment. People working from home over the past nine months had the opportunity to structure their day, and get their work done without the fear of not meeting someone else’s criteria. There it is again that word fear – it creeps in everywhere! To use the analogy of a sports team, the team will perform best if every member of the team is valued and given an opportunity to ‘shine’ as part of the whole. We are too quick to reward individuals who are overconfident, manipulative and self-centred, and modern workplaces have been constructed for the most part around a sense of ‘clawing the way to the top’. Some say the physical office has changed forever due to Covid-19, I suppose only time will tell, but what I do hope is that we do not return to a time of corner offices for the Big Brother manager and a loss of autonomy. Cal Newport, a computer scientist contends that long-term functional remote working is only possible if we deal with our management problem.  I acknowledge with the word autonomy that many parents (mothers especially) have suffered immensely during the lockdown from being overwhelmed with childcare responsibilities as well as the need to work.           

 

At the start of November new stricter restrictions were outlined by our provincial health officer in BC. The main culprit of our second wave was said to be weddings and large social gathering especially in one of health region – there are five health regions in BC. The health region in which the cases were rising fastest borders on Metro Vancouver and is the most ethnically diverse of the five regions with the highest number of recent immigrants to BC. There was a lot of Canadian style polite debating on the radio about whether the messaging was getting out properly due to different language barriers. Dr. Bonnie Henry, our provincial health officer, would not ‘point her finger’ but kept encouraging people to stop the house gathering. My initial reaction was frustration. You can criticize me, and we can certainly debate this, hopefully face-to-face in the not too distant future, but I do not believe the multicultural model as adopted in Canada and Ireland works. My critique is nothing to do with immigration or not feeling incredibly blessed to be part of such a diverse society, it is based on my observation in the different places I have lived and been a ‘guest’ is that multiculturalism does not propagate a sense of belonging or ownership of a society. Multiculturalism as it exists in its current form leads to the situation of ‘us versus them’ and fear. There is nothing for people from different backgrounds to feel a part of and so they hold onto, sometimes the very worst of, their own cultural identity. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about religious tolerance as I find it fascinating that people who immigrate to North America (and I acknowledge that the US is not based on a multicultural model) tend to become much more religiously extreme than the role religion plays in the country where their ancestors came from. Religion becomes a really important aspect of their identity and is used as a way to ‘other’ themselves from people they do not agree with. We are seeing this across Europe as well with the rise of fundamentalist Islam. My ‘rant’ so to speak on thinking about multicultural ideals and how they were playing out in Covid-19 lockdown lack of adherence to rules, was that different people felt entitled to continue their way of life because it is their right in a multicultural context. I found myself festering on this thought for a few weeks and disliking where my mind went and the feelings that came up for me. I processed my thinking, and I of course have no answers but more two points which stay with me. The first is that the biggest issue with multiculturalism as a failed model, is that it is still premised on the continued existence of a settler colonial structure (in North America and Australia) or a traditional structure (in Europe) so of course people fight hard to maintain some autonomy of who they are. The second is a failure of the neoliberal system as is (I always manage to bring it back to economics!). As I said the health region with the highest cases is the region where most recent immigrants to BC live as it is the most affordable in the Lower Mainland, and these are also the people who work many of the low-paid services jobs that have continued to be essential and hence has put many of them at great risk. So I still maintain multiculturalism if a poor model for a society, but in recent weeks I have turned to thinking more specifically on the failure of liberalism.         

 

People around the world were first shocked by Trump’s election in 2016 and then shocked that more people voted for him in 2020 than in 2016. I am not. Trump is a symptom not a driver of where we find ourselves today. Covid-19 has thrown wide open so many undercurrents of the massive inequalities that societies all over the world are experiencing. Some argue that selfishness if killing liberalism and that only through self-sacrifice and placing collective interests at the heart of discussions can we save liberal democracy. I have two reactions to that: firstly, liberal democracy in its truest form has never existed, especially not in North America. My second reaction, is what the ‘hell’ is the collective good?! Our fears have driven us so far apart from one another as human beings that we have lost sight of what it truly means to be part of a collective, to do something not because it will get ‘me’ ahead but simply because it adds to a cause bigger than me. Liberalism is not a doctrine like communism where there is a prescribed text to be followed, rather liberalism is based on tolerance and a belief that ultimately people should be given the right speak and act as they wish (John Stuart Mill –On Liberty). I find this idea absurd, the notion that every human should spend their life going about saying and doing exactly as they wish – how selfish is that. Unfortunately, coupled together with industrial capitalism that is exactly the world we find ourselves in today. The system is designed in such a manner to encourage the individual to strive for themselves and to stop at nothing. There is no common good here. I see it so acutely with the behaviour of so many during the Covid-19 restrictions, their behaviour indicating no thought to others but only for their self-gratification. It is a dark thought, but if you know me at all you know that I do believe in humanity. I have hope …      

 

That hope comes from tolerance. What Covid-19 has done for the world is that it has united us all within one experience, even given the vast distances and realities of where we are each based. Covid-19 has made us all so aware of our own fragility. Although Covid-19 has by no means affected people in the same way given the vast inequalities we have in our societies, it has given the world a common experience. People have become more aware of their neighbours here in Vancouver. Groups started up within days of the pandemic to support people who needed help. We have all become acutely aware of the massive disparities in our wealthy societies where some people have nothing. It is from this acknowledgement of a common experience that tolerance can grow – we are not so different after all.  

 

And so I end with empathy. A society with true acceptance and a belief in a shared common good can only exist if we have empathy for one another. This does not mean that we all have to have the same beliefs, desires or ways of being in the world, but it does mean that we can accept that we are part of something bigger. It is the moment a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim sit down together and realise that in actual fact their beliefs are not different. It is two friends who can have wonderful political and social debates but have entirely different tastes in music. It is recognition that ultimately people want the same things for themselves and their families. My deepest wish is that Covid-19 has given us greater empathy for each other as we all navigate the strange reality which 2020 has brought us. If we empathize with someone guess what emotion is thrown out the window – yes - fear!

 

I am fostering a hopeful present and so I end with a word a good friend used in a conversation we had recently about navigating the complexity of human relationships – TEAM. If we think of ourselves as part of different teams, our romantic relationship, our extended families, our friendships, our workplace and then scale it out to thinking about more and more people as part of that team. It is a great analogy to think of us as working together towards something rather than battling each other. As part of a team we can face Covid-19, climate change, and other future challenges. I live and ‘fight’ in hope for the team(s) I believe in…   

Blooming in beautiful BC

“Bloom where you are planted”, a phrase credited to the Bishop of Geneva, Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), could not be more appropriate to our Covid 2020 lives. The meaning of the phrase is essentially to do the best where you are, with what you have. The phrase with that meaning, is one which became part of my life about six year ago and is a concept I have struggled with for most of my adult life. I advert to my blog posts last summer on belonging, control, reflection and shame. Tom Longford in his blog on the phrase, urges his reader to consider that there is an element to where we are that enables us to bloom. He reflects on his passion for gardening, and his observation that plants do better in certain locations than others. I think ultimately how we bloom is a combination of where we are and how we embrace where we are.

In August I was in Naramata in the beautiful Okanagan Valley in BC with some of my Covid-bubble friends. One morning as we sat sipping our coffees overlooking the beautiful vineyards and lake, we started on one of my favourite topics of belonging and where is home. I made the comment that all of us on the trip were refugees of some sort: fleeing the war of the former Yugoslavia, escaping the reality of being a second-class citizen in Israel, or me searching for my home. One of my friends laughed out loud and said, “Siobhán, but you are the only one of us born in Vancouver”! He is absolutely right of course, but it takes more than place of birth or a passport to make a place feel like home. Vancouver is my home now more than any other place I have lived in my entire life, but it is not because as my mother used to say “blue-eyed blonde hair and born on the West Coast”, it is rather that for the first time in my life no one is trying to put me in a box!

A year ago, I was at the start of term at UBC after a summer of travelling around Europe visiting friends and discovering old and new places. I had a great time, and connecting with my global community is always a pleasure. There was a lot of movement in 2019, I moved into my first owned home, I went out in search of new people and new routines in Vancouver, and I embarked on my month-long trip to Europe. The year 2020 has provided me with a very different framework in which to live. Aside from dramatically changing how I teach and carry out my job as an academic and educator, it has physically harnessed me. If I had been told just a few years ago that life would place restrictions on my ability to move I would have descended into a visceral blackhole. My existence on this planet has been framed by moving. It had become an accepted and central aspect of how I lived my own life once I was old enough to make decisions. There was a sense that out there was something waiting for me and I just had to find it in order to uncover all the answers. The serendepic nature of life brought me to Vancouver for a job at the University of British Columbia just over seven years ago. Within only a short few months I was already looking at jobs elsewhere, planning the next move and the anticipation that the answers were there. Was it that I detested Vancouver or my job? It was neither, it was me. I will not repeat some of the personal events of the past 5/6 years which have had a major impact on pushing me to journey inwards rather than outwards to the next exotic location.

Back to last summer…I set out on my trip to Europe excited to be with so many people I cared about. I had a wonderful time. I got back to Vancouver, I felt lost and lonely. It was painful. But I was here – I had my own home, a great job and a growing circle of wonderful friends. I made a choice to try to ‘bloom where I was planted’. If any of you dear blog readers have ever made an active choice in your life to change a thought pattern, you will be able to relate to what I experienced. Something powerful shifts within you. Nothing in your external world changes, but the way you look at it changes forever. I spent Christmas in Vancouver with extended family and close friends. It was strange, but at the same time it felt right. I went to Miami in February for my birthday and for the gift of time with one of my favourite humans Caítriona. I had an incredible time, but I loved coming home. I remember getting off the plane after Miami with all the beginnings of what would become a daily rhetoric of Covid’ and feeling so grateful to be coming back to Vancouver.

Lockdown ensued and I moved from being a performer in a classroom to being a desk-monkey teaching and working online. It was a strange transition, but I did it. What struck me most as more and more closed, and we were confined to our homes was how little I felt impacted by this. Of course, I missed the ability to socialise, to go out and meet people, to have random interactions with people in coffee shops; but I did not feel trapped, I did not feel like I needed to run away, I felt the overwhelming power of calm and stillness gifted to me by not being able to move far.

I had been given a framework by life in which I had to make the most of what I had. Now to be fair being confined to BC in the summertime is a gift at any time, and being confined here during Covid when so many other parts of the world were experiencing extreme hardships made me feel so blessed. I embraced the physical beauty that the province has to offer from hiking, cycling and learning to open-water swim. I had picnics in the park in place of restaurant visits. I went for long walks with friends. I spent so much valuable time in my own company.

In early August I went on the trip to the Okanagan, as mentioned at the start of the post where we spent the time wine-tasting, biking and swimming in the lake. I rented a stationary RV (camper van) in someone's backyard and experienced a week of the semi-camping lifestyle. In late August I returned to one of my favourite places on earth, Salt Spring Island just off the coast of Vancouver. I spent three wonderful days disconnected from technology, reading and hiking around the island. Last weekend I embraced my discomfort and learned how to tent camp with two of my favourite Vancouverites, Sara and her incredible son Kian. We cycled onto the ferry taking all we needed for three days on the back of our bikes. It certainly challenged my boundaries being somewhere with one tap and two outdoor toilets among 17 campsites, but by the last day I was prepared to stay longer! Safe to say I have taken advantage of all the best BC has to offer me.

‘Blooming where I am planted’ has very much been about being in a part of the world that has so much to offer me, but it is so much deeper than that: it is my inward journey which only could have happened in a place that has not attempted to label me. 

 

My weekly kayaking view

Hiking on Pender Island with Kian

Bikes and trailer on the ferry

Performing post wine tasting in the Okanagan

Saint Marks Summit - one of the local hikes

Learning to open-water swim

My tent, my bike and I

 

My thoughts on having a biological child

I honestly believe that this may the hardest blog entry I have written thus far. As I sit down to put ‘pen to paper’ after days of processing the words in my head, my palms are sweaty and I have butterflies of nerves swarming in my stomach. Why so nervous? Because I am admitting out loud to myself and to the world (well to my blog world) deep feelings and thoughts on a topic that is very sensitive to people in general and women in particular. A few weeks ago, I read a very interesting article on Medium titled: “Beware the curse of the middle-aged non-mother” and because the article resonated with me so much I proceeded to post a link on Facebook. The article triggered some really interesting discussion with female friends from all across the globe, some with biological children and some with none. The vulnerability of my friends and acquaintances on the Facebook discussion allowed me to really unearth some of my own deep feelings on the topic of having a biological child.

For as long as I can remember there has been an undercurrent of doubt in my mind on my biological role of carrying and giving birth to another human. Maybe it is just the way I am wired or maybe it is an acknowledge of how life has unfolded for me. The struggle has inherently been around the sense that I have an obligation to the world to fulfill my biological duty and produce! I should be very clear at this point that my feelings in this written piece and in general are not a judgement of others decisions on whether or not they have biological children, my words are an expression of my own deep and for the longest time buried feelings. Children are wonderful. I am blessed to have many incredible little people in my life. Being with them makes me smile and to see the pureness of innocence, curiosity and achievement. I can remember at age 19 being introduced to Michael, first a baby then an amazing little boy and now an incredible young man, and being in awe at the emotions that being with a baby can raise. I watch Michael’s mother learn to parent under challenging circumstances and I admired how much she gave of herself. I compare her journey with that of my own mother’s journey and how much she too gave so much to my sister and I. It is a beautiful gift to give another human being, it is giving a part of you so that your child can thrive. I see the same pattern more recently in friends as they have children in their mid to late 30s, and I am blessed to be a part of those children’s life. Being a part of these children’s lives and observing my friends be incredible parents is certainly a privilege and one that enables me to connect with my own inner child and appreciate the simplicity and beauty of humanity. But was/is it for me?

 

In the moment I left my mother’s body and entered the world, I swallowed amniotic fluid (I like to think I was in a hurry to voice an opinion and so opened my mouth to shout too soon) and against the wished of my mother and her doctor the hospital placed me in an incubator and pumped it full of antibiotics. The result has been a lifelong battle with a compromised immune system of bizarre infections and battles against conventional medicine. In the past few years I have made peace with the reality of my physical health and have learned to manage it, and most importantly I have learned to love my body for what she is. I spent too many years hating my body and blaming her for my inability to feel ‘whole’ in the world. I felt that if I could just do everything that was ‘normal’ and ‘expected’ of me then I would feel better. I ignored my body trying to tell me to manage my diet, I ignored her when she told me I was pushing too hard. The past seven years since I moved to Vancouver have had me embark on a journey, first of physical necessity as my health fell apart and then of deep love for my body, to finally come to grips with deep feelings of bodily shame. One of the tributaries of this shame was a deeply buried feeling that my body does not have the physical capability to carry a child. Ok that is not entirely true, I could try. It would be challenging and complex, but not impossible. If this were a game of odds the rational thing would be to do would be to walk away and accept ‘defeat’. But the desire to have a child is often not rational, and indeed as women we often do it because it is expected of us and our partner wants it. I gave into both of these beliefs for many years and it nearly cost me my ability to return from self-hatred.

Someone I admire greatly here in Vancouver said to me at the beginning of June as I shared with her some of my thoughts on having a biological child, “Siobhán you have so much love and passion to give, just don’t think of it as limited to being challenged into a biological child”. Another close friend and I went for a walk recently and I shared some of my thoughts, she adamantly and with great conviction said, “my life is not worth only the imagined child I leave behind, I have so much more to give”. It made me think of my mother and what she left behind in the physical world, sure my sister and I and now my niece embody Jo’s genes, but Jo’s life was the thousands of people she had an impact on through her teaching, her friendship and generally just her love of the narrative of life. I might embody Jo’s genes but her love and humanity does not live on only through me. Jo was a woman larger than life and she inspires me every day not because she was my mother, but because she was/is a kindred spirit of social justice and seeing the curiosity, the beauty and the possibility that the world offers. Jo is one of a handful of individuals I have had the pleasure of encountering in my life who inspire me to live a fuller life determined by my own making.

An acquaintance asked me last week if I want or had wanted children (that conversation along with the Facebook discussion really framed this blog), and without thinking too long my instinctive answer to them was “yes in a perfect world”. A perfect world where my health was perfect, a perfect world where all the other things I want to accomplish in my life were not constrained by the fact I am a woman, and a perfect world where I did not fear for the future of the planet and what we are leaving future generations. My acquaintance commented that I had a very visceral reaction to the question of having a child and to the notion that somehow my life is determined by what is expected of me. I have learned to listen to my body and to trust what feels right and not be shaped by the voices all around me telling me how I should or should not be. I have been truly blessed in my life with so much love, opportunity and inspiration, and all I really want to do is to give a little of that back in whatever form that might entail. Is it a lonely road? Absolutely! Is it a clear path? Absolutely not! But I would not have it any other way. In a perfect world I would absolutely have a biological child of my own, but then I maintain that perfection is a farcical fantasy that distracts me from being present in my reality…            

A tribute to Cahir Country Markets

As many of you know I grew up in the desert, well to be fair I grew up along the lush banks of the Blue Nile River in Al-Gazeera in central Sudan. The desert was never far away though and agriculture was focused on cash crops mandated by the Structural Adjustment Plans of the 1980s (known to many now as the lost decade). Wad Medani, the small city where I grew up, was astoundingly beautiful in its own unique way (as every place is). I have never seen mud as black as the mud which squelched between my toes as I swam in the vibrantly grey-blue waters of the river. The neem trees which grew everywhere in Wad Medani were beautiful with their many tiny leaves creating the sense of a larger leaf. When a dust storm hit these thousands of tiny neem leaves would bring a shower of green among the stark brown of the Sahara sand. It was home, and when I close my eyes now I can still smell the richness of the water droplets settling the dust as every household sprayed their housh (yard) to cool the afternoon heat blowing in from just beyond the horizon of trees.

Going to Ireland in the hottest of the summer months, when a drop of water would evaporate within seconds, was an annual pilgrimage and one I embraced in all its contrasts to my Sudan home. The summer months were for the most part spent at my grandparents house in Cahir, County Tipperary; a place most tourists to Ireland know only if they past through it on their way to Cork or Kerry for the ‘real’ attractions Ireland has to offer. But for me Cahir was the most exciting place on earth as a young girl growing up in country which was not my ancestral home. Cahir was where my cousins were, where my mother had grown up and gone to school, where people looked like me, where my granny’s ‘ordinary’ (to me it was Michelin) Irish-cooking could never satisfy my appetite, and where every Friday I got to go to Cahir Country Markets with my granny May.

Now there is something all of you non-Irish readers need to know about Irish women – we are a force to be reckoned with, and I am only half-Irish! You may have heard of the ‘Irish mammy’, the mother who makes everything alright, takes care of all your needs and just has all the right answers when you need them. Here’s a great recent article from the Irish Times newspaper if you want to fact-check me. Even the country of Ireland, or Éire means the matron or the goddess of the land. There have many females figures in Ireland’s history, my personal favourite being the pirate queen Grace O’Malley who even had an audience with Queen Elizabeth I. But as those of us who inhibit female bodies are well aware, over time the patriarchal system (especially from the mid-1400s) has spatialized public and private life as gendered. Grace O’Malley may have met the Queen of England, but my granny along with all the other ‘Irish mammys’ was a force to be reckoned with only within the private space of the home.

The founding of the Irish Countrywoman’s Association in 1910 enabled this public-private divide to be blurred for Irish women. The activities and the events organized by the Association brought the talents and the ferociousness of Irish women roaring into the public eye. One of the activities encouraged by the Association was the setting up of local country markets where women could share their homemade goods. Over time the country markers expanded to include awards and became a real source of pride, sisterhood and income for many rural Irish women. For me the country market in Cahir on a Friday was one of the highlights of my time in Ireland, mainly because I had a whole morning of my granny and a whole bunch of incredible Cahir women. It was sometimes a rude awakening getting up early on a Friday to ensure we had the ritual of microwaved porridge (half a cup of oats, 2 minutes and 7 seconds and not a second more!) and a cup of good strong tea (tea-leaves only, as teabags were unacceptable). I can still see the sugar melting into the hot porridge before I poured the milk on top of it. The memory of the creaminess of the milk coupled with the sweetness of the sugar still makes my mouth water. We would then pack up the car with loaves of brown bread so fresh it had to be handled with great care; jars of marmalade for which I had stood guard only a few days before stirring the pot of simmering oranges; and there were current cakea, a slightly sweet bread filled with delicious raisins perfect with a cup of strong tea. I would feel the excitement grow as we pulled into the car-park of Cahir’s community hall, my nervous energy masked by the need to appear organized and ready for my granny. Despite the early hour there would inevitably be women already there setting up the tables according to produce, setting out the tablecloths and organizing the hall to create the one-way system around the tables. Each lady’s items were marked with their number, a very important identifier for receiving their payment at the end of the day, but also a means for customers to grab their favourite items. I would walk around before the doors opened to the general public, my eyes overwhelmed by the assortment of colours laid out on the tables. There were jams, breads, cupcakes, tarts (or 'pie' as known to some of you), fresh fruits and vegetables from the gardens, and bunches of wonderful flowers which filled the hall with their different scents. It was a festival of smell, at every table I found myself drooling one moment and floating the next in a rural Ireland version of the land of ompalumpas. I was allowed to choose one sweet baked item to have with tea after the market was over – it was the hardest choice I would have to make all week. As I got older I also realised that there was a ‘political’ element to the choice I made based on which lady’s baked good I choose. The anticipation would grow as the time neared to 10am and the opening of the doors. I would be told where to stand and watch the gallop of the hordes of Cahir residents anxious to choose their favourite fresh products. The doors would open and the swarm descended and I watched as all the wondrous colours and shapes disappeared off the tables in a frenzy of chatter and delight. Then in an instant the swarm was gone leaving only the wreckage of goods which had not enticed their desires. The cleanup began, and I was only too happy to help, as at the end of this was tea and my chosen baked good sitting up on the stage surrounded by the ladies and their stories. Someone would put the kettle on off stage right and we would set out a cup and a plate for everyone at the table towering over the now deserted hall. The conversations were enthralling to me, listening to the town gossip and the comparing of ingredients and which flowers were doing well this year. They would delight in my presence as I performed short Arabic poems for them or recounted stories of my ‘exotic’ life on the banks of the Nile. My granny, a lady for whom giving compliments did come easy, would look on with a glint in her eye, which as I grew older I recognized as pride. As I write this I shed tears for times passed but not forgotten, for memories and stories which will live on in me and all of us children who found such wonder and adventure around the tables of the country market.

Cahir Country Market recently closed its doors for the final time after 45 years of serving the local community. Central figures like my granny May O’Brien and Hilary Carter (whom I mentioned in my last post) were no longer there to stoke the fire of keeping the market alive. I feel so privileged to be able to close my eyes still and transport myself back to my eight-year-old self excited by the energy and dedication that these formidable ladies brought to their local community. Ślan to the Cahir Country Markets, you will live on in my heart forever.

Here's a link to one of my first posts on this blog which I wrote in 2006 when my granny had won a number of prizes for her baking and jams.

Life is a trampoline

There are not too many children who do not love to try a trampoline. I remember having a small one somewhere in my childhood, but cannot place the exact location it was. I do remember vividly taking up ‘professional’ trampolining when I was 13 in school in Al Ain, UAE. It was an after-school club, with a structure and required jumps you had to learn in order to progress to the next level. I have a memory of putting on a show during one of the open days for parents. Needless to say, I loved it – what was not to love: I got to jump as high as I could so there was risk involved, there was the instability of the surface I landed one so every landing was an adventure, and there was the challenge of learning the new shape/position and maintaining poise and balance. In 2016 and again in 2017 I found myself in Dublin and in Portland once again on a trampoline with children a quarter of my age, and it was glorious.

The images of my trampolining career as a child, teenager and then more recently have come back very vividly in recent weeks. I have been trying to process why, and to fit it in with all my other personal current inward and outward journeys, and I have decided that trampolining is a euphemism for life! Well my life at least. Here’s how I relate each of the aspects of trampolining to me life, and then I add my own spin on the activity. Firstly, in trampolining there is the challenge of learning the different positions (plank and star jump were my favourite). In life generally I love the thrill of a challenge, of learning and trying something new. I do not always succeed in all the challenges I take on, but from every attempt I grow and gain something that contributes to my life. Secondly, the trampoline is an unsteady surface which can sometimes send you higher and sometimes have you fall flat on your face. I acknowledge that life too is an unpredictable path sometimes paved with sharp stones and sometimes there’s a bicycle to help you sail along. Sometimes when trampolining you might even fall off the trampoline because you went too high or because someone pushed you too hard; sometimes in life you feel like you have fallen off the path and that you will never be able to get back up. Both have happened to me, and the truth is you dust yourself off, you take all the time you need, you accept the hands which reach out to you, and you get back on that trampoline. Thirdly, when trampolining there will be teammates or friends who jump as high as you do, who laugh when they fall over on the trampoline; there will also be teammates or friends who try to keep up with you but cannot jump as high or would rather sit at the base of the trampoline and watch you jump. In life there are people who will inspire you to jump higher, who will be right there with you driving you as you engage in your adventures and challenges; there will be others in your life who will admire your sense of adventure but who will not have the same perspective on life. I have encountered both in my life, and in recent times have come to accept the difference in perspectives people bring to my life and how much I value this. I also acknowledge that I need to jump higher and higher.

I offer a fourth element to my proposal of life as a trampoline which is how I want to share with you my thoughts on recent discussions on structural violence, racism, gender discrimination and the destruction of liberal thought: we are not all born equal, we are all born with different weights attached to our feet. Someone will have a weight because they are a woman, another will have a weight because they are gay, another will have a weight because they are indigenous, another will have a weight because they are black living in the US or Canada or Europe, another will have a weight because they believe in god, another will have a weight because they don’t, another will have a weight because they are born into poverty, another will have a weight because they are born with a genetic disorder, another will have a weight because they are born with a physical disability, another will have a weight because they are born with a mental disability. I could go on… Imagine a picture of a group of children from all across the world some with one weight, some with two, others with several, a small minority with none approaching the trampoline I call life. How are they expected to embrace their sense of adventure, face their challenges, grow and learn when they cannot even begin to jump because of the weights shackled at their feet. Let’s advocate for structural change so that we can help those children remove their weights put there by unjust societal beliefs and norms which are embedded in our structures.

 

I want to dedicate this blog entry to a dear friend Hilary Carter of my Irish grandmother May O’Brien who passed away recently. Hilary and May were women born in Ireland at a time when being a woman was certainly not a blessing and did not offer many opportunities. They met working at Country Markets in Cahir Co. Tipperary baking bread and making jam, and where they inspired me over the years to never give up trying to do the best you can (weights and all) for yourself and your family. 

My latest adventure is learning to open water swim!

                                    

Expectations, boundaries and loneliness

Earlier this week I listened to a podcast where Brené Brown interviewed Vivek Murthy on his book ‘Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World’. Murthy was the 19^th Surgeon General of the USA, and his view of that role was that he would focus on the opioid epidemic, obesity, heart disease, mental health and other preventable diseases. Instead what he found himself hearing and observing was the concept of loneliness being repeated over and over. In the podcast with Brené he speaks to the sadness he felt watching people die alone in hospital. He observes in his travels around the US in his role as Surgeon General how disconnected people are from each other emotionally and how much shame there is in admitting to feeling lonely. Murthy speaks specifically about lonely highly driven professionals are, for example medicine or law; professions which promote independent and strength as a virtue, and which see vulnerability as weakness. People are feeling acute loneliness while being surrounded by others, and this loneliness is a result of emotional isolation or a person not being comfortable internally. I have written recently about learning to be an introverted extrovert and embracing my solitude, and Murthy speaks to the distinction we must make between solitude and loneliness. I feel both, but I will return to this momentarily. 

 

The society we currently live in prides success in what our profession is profession, our monetary and material gains, over community and connection. Murthy asks us to differentiate between subjective and objective loneliness – we can be surrounded by people in our lives but still feel subjective loneliness, and this is different from being objectively isolated from others or physically alone. I would ask you to reflect on this for a moment and think of yourself in a crowded room, or indeed on a crammed bus of people or sitting in a meeting at work, or at home with your family, and you stop and think to yourself I feel very lonely right now. I think a lot about mobility, community and belonging (and I have written about this in recent times) as it has had a profound effect on my feelings of loneliness over the years and indeed I think of it a lot in our current pandemic. Our modern world enables us to be very mobile and of course to be virtually connected, but this is never going to be the same being face-to-face on a daily basis with a community (family, friends and/or colleagues) who you feel emotionally connected to. 

Murthy speaks to the extreme loneliness which comes when we focus more on wealth, reputation or power over our social connections. In a recent entry I spoke to my acquaintances in Vancouver and how much I felt the void of their presence during the lock-down here. As things have opened up in the past two weeks, I have had the opportunity to connect with some and it has been wonderful to do so. I think the most powerful aspect of connecting with people outside our immediate circles is that it exposes our humanity in a different way. I need to unpack this statement even as I write it, I am thinking through what I mean. With relationships we have had all our lives, family, neighbours, religious institutions, we fall into patterns of behaviour or we perform roles that we have been taught or have developed habitually over time. We also tend to develop relationships based on context, people who live in the same area as us, people at work, people we went to school or university with. People do this so that they objectively never feel alone, but they then ignore the subjective loneliness – the loneliness that over time cause us to disconnect more and more from the most important relationship of all, the one we have with ourselves. In interacting with my acquaintances I always find it interesting to observe how easy it is because I have no expectations of them and they none of me.

Now I personalize my own experience with loneliness and really appreciate how Murthy’s thoughts in his interview (I have yet to read the entire book) helped me shape a lot of thinking I have been doing during the pandemic. I start with the positive as is just good common courtesy! Recent personal events in my life have forced me to address a deep fear I had of being alone, a fear that came from a place of shame and a place of feeling that I was not good enough. I felt this shame and sense of not being enough in all aspects of my life: with family, with friends, in romantic relationships and even in my professional life. In beginning my academic position at UBC in 2013, I found myself feeling like an ‘accidental academic’ in a department where I was not accomplishing enough. I choose the route of an education focused role in academia because it is what I am passionate about, but it is not the ‘norm’ in a profession that is ultimately very hierarchical and based on ‘output’. Outside of work over the years I have surrounded myself with people in different contexts simply so I would have someone ‘to do things with’ without really reflecting on how they really made me feel. Then of course there is expectation – I have been hard on myself most of my life, the not being good enough voice – and in being hard on myself I funneled this my expectations of others. I wanted people I cared about to make me feel better, to take away my shame, but most of all to take away my loneliness.

So social connections are indeed fundamental to our lives as Murthy rightly emphasizes, and I dearly hope that in learning from the current pandemic we can reflect on how important those connections are to us. That said simply surrounding ourselves with people or maintaining relationships which do not serve us simply so we do not have to be objectively alone will only push us further into subjective loneliness. The first social connection we all need to focus on is the one we have with ourselves, the one connection that will always be there no matter where one goes in life. In addressing my fear and shame I have been able to banish objective loneliness at its most fundamental level. I really do enjoy my own company and hours of bike riding, writing, colouring, yoga, dancing around the living room, over the past three months have brought me so much joy. Do not misunderstand me I am still very much an extrovert by nature and I thrive on my social connections with people, but I have a much stronger sense now of what those connections can and should look like. I have realistic expectations of others because I have realistic expectations of myself. If being with someone or talking with someone does not make me feel good, as I learn to listen to my intuition more, I respect my boundary and of course theirs. Not every single person I have in my life will give me exactly what I want, that impossible and frankly a little selfish of me to think they would; but in listening and observing people’s interactions with me and my reactions to them I can learn what to expect from them. I do feel loneliness, I am human. I crave a romantic partner in my life, a companion who is my emotional equal and who wants to share life’s adventures with me. I have a formidable global community of friends, but they are far away and I will not see them this summer as I had intended. I thirst for a stronger community of people in Vancouver to experience things with, to have great conversations and debates with, to try to change the world with (even if it is only one small action). I desire more acknowledgement and connection with colleagues at my university with the same passion for teaching and learning as me. Ultimately though I will not sacrifice my own sense of well-being for anyone simply to avoid feeling physically alone…                              

Water leaks, neoliberalism and action

Silence has become a great friend of mine during physical distancing, and in the silence, I find great stillness. I have termed my time as embracing solitude and learning to be an introverted extrovert, but it is deeper than that it has been about really understanding my value system and my boundaries. This past week life threw a curve ball my way enabling me to dig deeper into understanding those values and boundaries. I sat on Monday night writing at my dining room table at 9.30pm in the anticipation of getting into bed and being engulfed by the world of my current book ‘The Outline Trilogy’ by Rachel Cusk. The stillness and the flickering light of the candle I wrote by were interrupted only by the sound of dripping water. I hesitated momentarily not yet comprehending the reality of the sound. I bounded from my seat only to discover water pouring through the ceiling and wall of my utility room just off of the bathroom. To briefly provide a summary of the situation (as it is not the focus of this blog entry but rather the jumping off point), the water heater in the apartment above had burst and was leaking rusty water into my utility room. It was negligence on the part of the owner (who rents out his apartment for an extortionate amount to two girls) as the heater was 14 years old and in a desperate condition. I have good insurance for my apartment, but there is a new law in British Columbia that the insurance of the responsible apartment will not cover the damage caused to the apartment below. There is no rational explanation to this situation aside from the greed of the insurance companies (this is partly the focus of this blog entry). So it falls on me to pay my deductible for a situation that I did not cause. I am sure you can understand that on Tuesday as all this unfolded, I was an emotional mess, penduluming back and forth between frustration and tears. I had done nothing wrong and I was being punished was how it appeared to me.

And so I ask you is that not the situation for the three million Canadians who lost their jobs in March and April, for the millions of Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Indians, international migrants who also lost their jobs over the past few months. What have they done wrong? Their only crime is that they live in a broken economic system, one framed by greed and Politics.           

Obama was quoted today by the BBC as having said about the response to Covid-19 by the current US administration, "it would have been bad even with the best of government. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset -- of 'what's in it for me' and 'to heck with everybody else' -- when that mindset is operationalized in our government." I am not Obama’s biggest fan, but in these words I could not agree more. I would contend that Obama could be talking about most governments in the world right now. The reason being is that governments are now the enabler for large corporations and the general population are being held hostage by a handful of individuals. What Covid-19 has taught us is that most of us are the worker ants and that we are expendable, if the ‘queen ant’ corporation no longer deems us productive. How did we get to this situation? Well we took away any notion of a universal basic income, we took away decent healthcare, we took away a good quality of education. The pandemic has exposed the rotten and decaying healthcare systems across the globe; it has made it clear that our hairdresser, our barista, our waiter are all living day to day with nothing to fall back on; it has exposed that this pandemic and all future pandemics are created by the greed of the elite at the expense of majority; it has exposed how racist and prejudiced our societies are to people of colour, the elderly, migrant workers.

In Vancouver last week, Tim Bray a VP for Amazon resigned in protest at the firing of several Amazon employees for protesting the treatment of workers during the pandemic. Here we have one of the richest men in the world, I dislike him so much I refuse to write his name on my blog, and the workers in his company do not feel physically safe during a pandemic! Amazon is a terrible employer to begin with and I have boycott using their services for almost five years now, a statistic I have proud of. Covid-19 has exposed just how atrocious the conditions are for all Amazon employees. You can now multiple the situation of Amazon workers by millions and billions of people from the shop assistant at Walmart to the garment worker in Dhaka to the Chinese worker assembling your next iPhone. Across Europe businesses are beginning to open up and people are clamoring to book appointments with their hairdresser and plan their first meal out with friends, and yet the threat of Covid-19 has not lessened. There is no vaccine, there is no cure, global healthcare systems have not miraculously improved overnight. In fact, today a top Chinese official admitted that a less than efficient healthcare system in China is to blame for the poor containment, reporting and early response to Covid-19 in Wuhan. 

 

In Vancouver the beaches and parks are bursting with people, an illusion that there is a return to normality as the queues at the liquor stores continue to astound me. I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, but it is a city rotting at the core under the pressure of an inflated housing market, international money laundering schemes, an unaffordable daily life for many, and an appalling drug (fentanyl) overdose problem. Like so many other places people are falling for the illusion of need, they are victims of advertising, they succumb to the accumulation of stuff.  Do I want to go to my hairdresser? Do I want to have brunch in my favourite spot? Do I want to go for a glass of wine with friends? Absolutely! But I also want to know that we are relaxing physical distancing because it is medically the right thing to do and not because big businesses are telling us to do so. Ask yourself who has profited most from the pandemic? Do you think big businesses are going to hire back all the workers they let go? So much now can be automated and done by a machine, and they don’t require healthcare or basic rights. 

I am being extremely cynical I know, but I think so many do not fully grasp the extent of the black hole we are in. We are still swirling at the opening, still with an opportunity to make changes, changes that will improve the lives of people globally and will have a positive impact on stopping climate change. It all starts with you though. You must change the way you behave, the way you shop, the way you treat others less fortunate than yourself, it all starts at the local level and that you have the power to influence. I cannot fight the insurance companies but I can ensure that what happened to me this week does not happen to anyone else in my building by working with my fellow owners to bring in rules regarding our water heaters. As a building we can show the one owner/landlord who does not care that he cannot behave like that, that it is unacceptable to take advantage in the name of making more money. What can you do?