I'm A Matchbook Girl

The past fifteen years have been a long journey. It is a lifetime and a minute. Time moves in a wave when some moments last hours, and other moments speed past me like stock cars on a race track. 

Life and everyday stress, dealing with the fallout of two ruptured brain aneurysms, estrangement of my son, death of my son-in-law, a stress cardiomyopathy, also know as Broken Heart Syndrome, and dealing with the repercussions of a car accident 14 months ago have beaten me down. In the culmination of all these incidents, I've discovered, I am a worn out book of matches.

Having your brain blow up is something I never want to deal with again. It took five years for a semblance of normality to reenter my life. And it left permanent damage. I have always been an optimist and tend to find the positive in most situations. I have to, or my brain would compress into a tiny ball of depression and darkness, put me in a hole so deep, I could never climb out. Just before the brain surgery, the nurse was explaining what the procedure was like, and how the neurosurgeon had to be specific. I'm thinking, huh, I wonder if he downed a red bull or twenty because he was on a thirty-six hour shift, got into a fight with his wife that morning, and lost his wallet. Just how steady were his hands?

When the nurse said they were talking a camera and inserting it into my leg, travelling through my arteries until it hit my brain, I burst out laughing. In my mind's eye I was picturing the surgeon stabbing my leg until he found the right artery. The nurse's jaw dropped. At this point I had come in for a routine appointment for 12:30, and did not leave the hospital for five days. I was exhausted, my husband was a train wreck on the inside. I recognized the signs, but he was calm and asking the right questions. He gave me that look. You know the one. All people with ADHD recognize the LOOK—the glare over the glasses and frowning. I get that look a lot from a lot of different people. Meh. #addisagift. 

I went in for an hour surgery, and came out five hours later. No one had updated my husband in the meantime, and I am sure he was thinking I died and they were trying to resurrect my desiccated corpse on the table. People all atwitter in the OR, machines making sounds, doctors blaring out orders, someone sitting on my chest doing compressions while looking like a succubus. 

I cannot recall why the surgery went over time. I do know they had three surgical teams, two on standby in case I went to visit the spirit in the sky—at least I hope that is the correct direction. If I find out, I will let you know. The best was the aphasia, which I still have to this day. I had a lot of fun with it, because I am the weird kid who writes horror. It was something I took great pleasure in because I never knew what would fall out of my mouth, so it's new to me too.

One day, a new security policy alert went out and I remember talking to my Sgt, explaining the new procedure for security with computers. Everyone had been assigned a profile tied to a specific computer, and he asked me what do we do when a person leaves the unit. I said we would disembowel them, thinking of the word disengaging, for the computer. The look on his face was priceless. But then, he knew I was a horror writer. And I was the weird kid with a dark sense of humour.

A decade later, after the loss of my son and son-in-law, and now having had three incidents of PTSD which occurred in less than a week, my energy levels depleted faster than my bank account when the kids became teens. This is how it works for me. The alarm bellows in my ear. I have not slept well. I wake up and down two cups of coffee so I have the energy to get to work. I've burned out three matches already, and I started with a book of fifteen rather than the full book of twenty-five. 

I enter my office and walk to my desk. People are asking questions or needing something. I haven't even had a chance to put my briefcase down or taken off my coat. A daily occurrence. I start to show up two hours earlier. And then, so did my employees. I thought I caught a win. But no. They defeated me again. Another two matches burn out. I open my e-mail and another match burns out. Twelve matches left. I scan the emails, triage them into order of importance, deal with the urgent ones and shut it down. I won't look at it again at the end of the day. Fridays, I decide, I am not looking at them at all, because, someone will email with a crisis 3:00 PM on a Friday of a long weekend, because they 'forgot'. 

In the hallway someone says they need equipment by tomorrow, even though the policy is clear and states we need two weeks notice because the tech team may be on the road. I smile and it is on the list. I look at the staggering pile of work on my desk. Goodbye, three matches. Nine matches left.

My boss tells me he needs a financial report by this afternoon, and proceeds to stand over me, eating his lunch while I try to focus on the report. I am now down to five matches, and it isn't even lunch yet. 

The afternoon is filled with meetings which should have been emails, employee struggles, checking the status of projects, and going into my overwhelming emails which pile up faster than a snowbank in a snowstorm. Two lonely matches left.

I get in my car and drive to pick up errands or drop something off. Down another two matches. Now, I am at zero. But there are still kids, supper, laundry, you know, the regular life obligations.

I have to eat dinner: down minus 1 match. On super stressed days, I am too tired to chew. I need to change the sheets and I need a shower. That brings me to minus four matches. I am exhausted, and ticked off I only have fifteen matches while others had a full book. I lose matches dealing with people. I am an introvert with ADHD.

Extroverts start with twenty-five matches and gain more when they are surrounded by people. By the end of a good day, they will have fifty matches, while the introverts are so exhausted, they just want to sleep.

The next day, I start with eleven matches and the extroverts start with fifty matches. Let me tell you, working in a cube farm, while interesting and saves costs, impacts people, productivity and accuracy for the negative. Hey, but we can fit y'all in the egg carton. Phones, people chatting, people needing answers of things they could have found themselves had they looked, and the endless traffic is exasperating. By the weekend, I am a worn out like a sack of wet mice. I want to stay up and watch a movie, have a glass of wine, red please, and relax with my husband. 

Everything changed with the car accident. My perfect, sweet baby, a 2019 Camaro, was demolished beyond repair. The airbags exploded into my face and legs. Time stood still and there was no sound at all. Nothing. The black particles of chemicals hung in the air and I felt I was in a gothic version of a snow globe. Seconds, minutes, hours, days went by. Time did not mean anything to me. Nothing hurt. But then, I was in severe shock, had a bad concussion and whiplash, which I would discover three weeks later. 

I opened the car door and looked at the destruction. Pieces of my vehicle were hanging on by a thread and the leaking transmission fluid looked like a blood-bath on the street, after the Sons of Anarchy visited The Mayans MC. 

An ambulance and police arrived, and I told them I was fine because nothing hurt. That was the shock numbing everything until four days later. The paramedics asked if I wanted to go to a hospital. I said no. In hindsight, they should have taken me, without asking. I don't know why they ask. I was in traumatic distress, I did not have the executive function to make decisions. My car littered two lanes. The front end was obliterated. The inside of my car was demolished and the engine pushed against the cockpit into my legs. Parts of my engine was on the road.

I was an emotional wreck. I could not get enough air and I was sobbing and unconsolable. I called my husband and he took me home. I went to bed. 

The pain was intense. The pain scale peaked at nine. I could not sit, lie down, stand or walk without my body screaming at me. I could not speak because of the intensity, and I had to remember to breathe. I held my breath for months. I have nerve damage in my ankles, shins, hips, lower back, spine, neck and shoulders that still linger fourteen months later. I need a cane to walk if it is a very short distance, less than 50 feet, and I need a walker to go any further. I have severe vertigo, and fall a few times a month. Severe headaches, and the pain is constant. I know, this is not sounding good at all. BUT there was an enormous positive that outweighed all the negative. Because I could not work, I immersed myself into writing. This did not occur right away. It wasn't until January 2026, I could concentrate enough to get the work done, shot bursts at a time. I have a three hour window. Anything that needs to get done, is in those three hours, then mentally and physically exhausted I need to sleep.

I now write every single day. I am working on my first novel and have another four lined up. The first draft should be done by September, 2026. And revised by end of October. 

My house is silent. This is such a blessing. So is the writing. Every day is a gift despite the pain, the insomnia, the nightmares and nerve and spinal damage. No more telephones, notifications, alarms, or slamming doors. No more chit chat in front of the water cooler. No more sports talk. No more constant interruptions in a job which held huge responsibilities and accountabilities, and with a team of nine people I was responsible for mentoring, coaching and training, and having to accomplish that surrounded by people.

People are exhausting. Crows are not. So, be a crow. Drop in, say high, go find a shiny thing to bring back. Then you will have my attention. 

©MLRoos2026

Life Balance: Creating Positve Change

I attended a great National Manager's Conference the other day with speakers from across Canada, and across all levels of government. The overall message is 'People are our greatest resource'. I firmly believe this because as a leader, people are what make or break a team, an organization or a business.

So why do so many of us not feel the spirit behind the message? Why do these five words cause consternation and emotional dissonance? What are we doing as leaders to support our people?

According to the American Institute of Stress, 65% of people reporting that workplace stress impacts negatively on their lives, not only on the job but overall. This is a small excerpt form the article.
Highlighted statistics from the CDC NIOSH report: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/99-101/

•40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful
•25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives
•Three fourths of employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago
•29% of workers felt quite a bit or extremely stressed at work
•26 percent of workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work”
•Job stress is more strongly associated with health complaints than financial or family problems

Highlighted statistics from the Attitude in the Workplace Report: https://www.stress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/2001Attitude-in-the-Workplace-Harris.pdf

•80% of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they need help in learning how to manage stress and 42% say their coworkers need such help
•14% of respondents had felt like striking a coworker in the past year, but didn’t
•25% have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress, 10% are concerned about an individual at work they fear could become violent
•9% are aware of an assault or violent act in their workplace and 18% had experienced some sort of threat or verbal intimidation in the past year.

This is a serious issue and there are numerous courses, seminars and workshops that teach us how to cope with stress, and teach us what the repercussions are to our health when dispositive changes occur in the workplace.

People become disengaged, morale plummets, sick days increase, people are calling it in, rather than giving it their all, which decreases productivity and we end up with a generation of unhealthy people. Doctors visits increase, which places a burden on our health care system, substance and drug abuse increases which impacts our bodies, and we become complacent believing nothing can change. 

People are our most valuable resource, but when the writing on the wall says we can hire a younger, cheaper version of a seasoned and knowledgeable employee, or we can cut your status or pay, but you still get to have all the responsibility, then what really is the message? And as an employee, how do you mitigate the impact to your life and to your family?

Attitude: become versed in keeping emotion out of your attitude. Much easier said than done, since this can feel personal. Step away, emotionally, and look at the reason behind decisions, but do this based on fact, not the tapes running through your head. You know what I mean. Someone will say or do something, such as invite an entire team for coffee, but neglect to offer the invitation to you, and you watch as they all walk past your desk, without telling you they are leaving or why. 

Immediately you start telling yourself, you don't matter, they don't like you, why should you do anything for them in the future and you spiral into a vortex of anger and hurt. Stop. Stop this tape. It is self defeating. Instead become curious. Is there another reason why you did not get an invite? You can do this by checking in with someone when they return. A simple way to approach this is to ask,"Hey Fred, I am curious about why you didn't let me know you were all leaving." Check in with the person, but do it in a way that is not emotional, not accusatory, and do it without the tapes running in your head. 

You may get an answer such as it was a project meeting we needed to discuss to work on details, or any other number of reasons that have nothing to do with you personally. By checking in, we can reframe those negative associations we make, which causes increased stress. 

Stay focused on your role and responsibility: what is the reason behind what you do? Are you doing it to the best of your ability? Are you able to keep up with the demands and pace of your job? Do you need additional resources, tools, time? Reflect on these questions and if you need help, say so, but again, do it without the emotion. Storming into your manager's office and making demands will not work quite as well as setting up an appointment with a clear message of what you want to discuss, and then go the appointment with your issues, and your possible solutions. If you are just coming in without solutions, you have not done your job. All you are doing is complaining. 

Leaders take the time to discover what the issue is and come up with options and solutions. Do not expect your manager or boss to help you if you are not willing to come up with some ideas as to how you can change your work in order to help yourself. I use the word leader intentionally, because regardless of your job title, you are all leaders, and how you behave reflects on whether you are eligible for promotion and effects your reputation. Anyone can come up with reasons why something will not work, how it will fail and why it can't be done. Step out of the crowd and come up with possible solutions. This takes the ego out of the equation and instead, empowers your brain into thinking solution rather than problem. 

Leave the problems at work: Change your thoughts by changing your beliefs and staying focused on the positive. Make a mental decision to lessen the affect of stress in your life by telling yourself that when your hand touches the door handle when you leave your office, your work stays in the office. All of it. 

This has to be a conscious decision and it has to be repeated each and every day in order to reframe your brain into believing that work can and should stay at work. This is a skill, and as all skills, needs practise. 

Do not take it home. Do not let it interfere or take you away from your partner, your children, your passions, your life. Because it will. If you allow the job to follow you around like a dark cloud, the quality of your life changes. 

We spend one third of our lives at work, one third of it sleeping and one third somewhere else. Do not allow the one third of the work place to intrude on the other two thirds. It is not fair to you or your family. Disengage from work when you reach that door handle. Take a deep breath, float all those negative feelings out of your mind and let them go. 

Instead, focus on what you love, what gives you drive, what your passions are, and your health, your family and fun. 

Change your thoughts, change your beliefs and change those mental tapes. The best part is, once you change one, the others change as well. 

Stay positive, stay healthy, stay in the present. 

#mentalhealthmatters

#leadership

#thewildthingyoga

https://www.stress.org/workplace-stress/

Let's Talk, Ten Days Later

Stress has kicked up a notch and again, I did not put two and two together. I'm a simple girl sometimes. My left eye has been twitching up a storm for the past week and my right arm and hand are numb. IBS has come back with a vengeance. And all because I forgot about where I was 8 years ago today.

Mind you, the stress of the Year from Hell, 2017, helped as well. We shall never talk of that year again. I want a do-over in many areas of my life. But I did the best I could, considering.

September, nine years ago I started having weird headaches, localized over my left eye, old twitchy I call him now. September 13, 2008, I had this sharp, stabbing pain in that very same spot and the pain got worse with each heartbeat. Actually, it was in time with my heartbeat. And the pain grew worse with each pulse.

Took some Advil, Tylenol, Gravol a couple of muscle relaxants, and went back to bed. Called my doc, and made excuses as to what was happening. She decided I should get an MRI. It would take five months.

October 23, 2008, it happened again, only this time it felt like an icepick was driven into my head right above my left eye, and the left side of my neck was screaming. I remember not being able to shoulder check for almost two years because of the pain. To this day, range of motion has still not returned.

Did the same cocktail of meds, called in sick, called my husband and told him if the headache did not go away in twenty minutes I would get a friend to drive me to the hospital. And went back to bed.

I was drooling (still do actually, but now it's fun....) slurring my words, stumbling. Still did not make the connection. Intense pain will do that. Shortens the ability of the neo cortex to make rational decisions.

A couple more months go by and the pain would happen over my eye when I laughed, coughed, or sneezed. These are called exertion headaches. Only in my case, my brain was bleeding. I did not know this.

Had the MRI and a few days later got called into the Neurologist's office. He says, straight forward, "You have a brain aneurysm, now let's talk about those migraines." The way he said it,I thought, huh, no big deal. We're talking migraines.

He made a referral, to what I found out later, to the BEST Neurosurgeon in North America, who happened to be practising here in Winnipeg. Four days later, Dr. West had a miracle cancellation. I saw him over lunch. Again, I thought 30 minute appointment, discuss options, maybe see him in 6 months, get on with life.

Should have recognized what the word URGENT in big red letters meant across my folder. We talked. He asked questions. I couldn't concentrate on the answer unless my eyes were closed to reduce the stimulus. Apparently I gave all the right, or wrong answers, depending on your point of view and I had an angiogram within a couple of hours.

I still assumed I would be going home. I didn't. Was hospitalized and bumped 19 neurosurgeries, the only exception being a pregnant women.

Even while being in the hospital, it still did not occur to me what was going on. I blame it on the bleeding in my brain and not my lack of medical knowledge or mental capacity. My brain had been bleeding off and on for five months.

The anaesthesiologist came in at 11:00 am. And that's when it hit. I was going in for brain surgery today. Not six months from now. Today. In a matter of hours.

What should have been a two hour surgery took five and a half hours. No one bothered to let my husband know. He was told two hours. I cannot imagine the hell he went through, the questions he had the sheer terror of not knowing what was happening, if I was even alive.

It would be another two months when Dr. West told me I had a 15% survival rate. If this had happened five years earlier, I would have died. Had I not gone to the doctor and her insisting upon an MRI, I would have died.

In 2008, all I knew of brain aneurysms is, if they rupture, that's it. Game over. You lose. I had never heard of anyone surviving a rupture. I survived two. Don't know why. And I still think about that. Why me? It's not survivor's guilt, because I have no guilt, just a curiosity about why I survived. Timing, the right place to be, the best neurosurgeon, a great call by my doctor all came into play.

The next 18 months were bliss. I was at peace. I was calm. I had intense lucid dreams, and intense spiritual experience and I was happy. Then August of 2012, I was diagnosed with a daughter aneurysm, one that shares the same artery and wall as the original. And my world blew apart.

I already had severe PTSD from a soul crippling childhood, now it kicked into overdrive and became C-PTSD, C for complex, compound PTSD. Six years later it still has not diminished.

I have, however, learned to tame it.....to an extent. Old twitchy reminds me, my numbness in my arms reminds me, and now my chronic IBS reminds me. Any kind of stress is bad. Yes, all you fitness and doctors that espouse eustress is good, I'm here to tell you, it's not.

Meditation, yoga, walking, talking, music, being alone, driving fast, and Netflix binging all helps. Some days, however, life is a Bittersweet Symphony. A myriad of thoughts run through my brain on any given day; how long till I die, when should I retire, should I eat today, what's the point, hey, that's a really great car, damn I love Olle, I need a Boston Terrier named MonkeyPooper....did I mention I also have ADD. Or as Olle calls it, Another Damn Day.

So, let's talk. One in 50 will develop a brain aneurysm. Out of the 50, 20 will rupture. Out of the 20, 16 will die.

Hospitals in Winnipeg are terrible for diagnosing brain aneurysms in women. One died on the floor in the ER at the Grace a few years ago. She was screaming, lying on the floor and no one took her seriously.

I was at the ER a few years back, waiting in the hallway, when a doctor in his mid thirties sarcastically announces to the nurse sitting behind the desk, that a woman walked in complaining of a severe headache and he "Kicked her out, like a boss," while fist pumping the air, and I thought you stupid bastard. I wonder what happened to her.....

November 16, 2017, a senior woman almost died in St. Boniface after waiting in the ER, with a severe headache and and eyelid that drooped. They gave her two CT scans, one with dye, and told her she was fine. Four day later, she could not open her eye, went to Misercordia Hospital, and gave her another couple of CT scans and told her she was fine. Thankfully, she called her family doctor who told her to immediately go to the Health Sciences Centre and they found the aneurysm. She had surgery and made it.

So I guess my question is, why are ER's so bad at this? I always assumed to be an ER doctor, you had to know your stuff, you had to be aware of all the terrible things that can happen to a human, and now I am wondering if the reverse is true.

I am also wondering if men are treated differently than women (saying that sarcastically) and why women are still being ignored when coming in with medical issues. Curiously, I haven't heard of anything like this happening to men in Winnipeg. Yup, they did CT scans and the CT scan came out clean. Makes me wonder if maybe CT scans are not all that wonderful for brain aneurysms. Considering 1 in 50, that terrifies me.

I wear a medic alert bracelet that says TAKE ONLY TO HSC because I do not want to become a statistic. 

I also let others know what to look for, where to go, what questions to ask and what resources are out there. When this happened 8 years ago, there were few places in Winnipeg and even less resources for information. I walked out of the hospital with a one page paper telling me to take Aspirin for 8 weeks. Nothing else. Nothing on when I could work again, drive, what to look for, what I should avoid, what was normal, what was critical, nothing. 

Now at least there is information for people that want answers, and research. 

Does life get better? I'm going to say yes. At least I hope so. So today will be meloncholy, and tomorrow I will move on. 

Check out the link below for more info. 

Peace, Love and be good to yourself.


https://www.bafound.org/about-brain-aneurysms/brain-aneurysm-basics/warning-signs-symptoms/

Let's Talk....The Redux

January 31, 2018 is Bell Let's Talk Day. Every day should be a Let's Talk Day. Or at least a Let's Be Open-Minded Day. Being a horror writer has been a blessing for me. It kept me sane, grounded and allowed me to disappear within a world I had control over, where no one could touch me and I was safe. It is that same refuge for me today. I am one of the lucky ones. That does not mean my life is easy or that every day is a picnic. Dealing with a brain injury that caused brain damage juxtaposed with depression, compound complex PTSD and three or four auto-immune diseases has been...interesting. And that's okay. It just means I get to read the same book 12 times and still be surprised. And I get to sit in the new bathroom for hours watching the beautiful floor and backsplash.

In the horror community, there are many of us that struggle with depression, severe, crippling, clinical depression. There are others that battle BiPolar issues, PTSD, mental illness brought on by chronic illness and pain and sometimes, all of the above. Some of us give up. Some turn to drugs or alcohol. Others sabotage themselves so they can beat themselves up and say, "See, I told you you were a loser."

Mental Illness comes from a variety of issues; some are chemical imbalances, others are herediatry and some are brought on by severe childhood abuse, trauma, and soul sucking treatment by the hands of those that love us. Does this make it any easier? Nope. But maybe, just maybe if we stopped treating children as throw away, disposable items while we only think of our own selfish needs, such as drug addictions, pedaphile addictions, alcohol abuse or parents that create kids and bail, we wouldn't need a Let's Talk Day. 

I bet that if child abuse ended today, and we really believed for one minute that children are the future pap, most of our mental health issues would disappear overnight, along with the majority of stress related diseases like fibromyalgia, and IBS. Yes, mental illness would still exist because of genetic issues, but I truly believe the majority of us were broken as kids by people who 'loved us'.

If 90% of all medical, physical illness is caused by stress, I believe that 90% of all mental illness is caused by child abuse, childhood trauma, or situational trauma.

Superbowl Sunday is coming up, or as I call it, the best day of the year for human trafficking. How many of those kids are dealing with mental illness because someone is making a buck off of their backs? Most of those kids will be lucky to make it out alive, let alone, whole.

Mental illness is just as debilitating and just as challenging as living with Crohn's, diabetes, or Downs Syndrome. Sometimes even more so. But, unfortunately there is a stigma to mental illness that doesn't transfer to any other condition.

Mental illness means you are weak, pathetic, stupid, lazy or violent. Mental illness makes you less than a person and more of an object of scorn. People who commit suicide are selfish. Cops, soldiers and others with PTSD are not to be trusted. They could snap at any minute.

Isn't it incredible that you can break your leg and people will support you, open doors for you, run errands for you, but break your mind, and your world empties of people you thought loved and cared for you.

How many times have you heard, "Snap out of it; get some exercise; quit feeling sorry for yourself; if you really wanted to (______) you would, you're just lazy"?

We would never dream of saying these things to an Autistic, blind or deaf person, but feel it is justified in attacking the mentally ill. I often wondered why? Is it something they think is contagious? Does it make them feel superior that they have never suffered from a 'weak mind'? Or is it coming from a place of anger where they feel the person struggling with this is seeking attention?

And on the contrary, people with a mental illness have a strong mind. A very strong mind that is trying to protect them and keep them whole. There is no weakness with mental illness except for those that use it as a crutch. And yup, they exist. Just like some people with disabilities use it as a crutch for why they cannot perform their job. They exist as well. Fortunately, those people are in a very tiny minority.

So, on this mental illness let's talk and be friends day, I say share embrace your pain, accept your darkness, live in the moment. If you feel like crap, accept it. Think about it mindfully for five minutes. Really feel what it is like to be you, instead of trying to smile and put up with it. And then, after five minutes of examining your emotions, tell yourself, "I accept this about me and I am still a good person. I will do everything I can, regardless of my demons because I get to win."

Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Meteroite Strikes

Wow, another world wind of a week, month, life. I know we all deal with problems and we all feel alone when we are in the midst of anything troubling in our lives. The past couple of weeks has been no exception to this for me and my family.

We struggle with mental illness. At some point you will meet someone, love someone, give birth to someone, parent someone have parents, brothers, sisters, in-laws etc, with a mental illness or a multitude of mental illnesses. Life doesn't stop and you do not get a do over card. The line has been crossed from normal, everyday life to crisis in all of a few moments.

How do you respond? I know as a parent, I did not do well for a multitude of reasons, my own state of mind, my own physical illness and lack of energy, and just having enough to deal with on a day to day basis by having three children within a three year life span. All you moms out there are nodding your heads. You get it. You work full time, have three kids you love beyond reason, you may be struggling with depression and Fibromyalgia as I was, plus you still have a home to run, appointments to get to, school work to monitor and teach (more about that later), family commitments, trying to sell a house and BOOM.....one child struggles and starts acting out, another threatens to run away from home and the third is dealing with his own hell because of Autism.

It was a low, low point in my life. I struggled with anger, frustration, compassion, and right back to anger again. My husband and I both came from abusive backgrounds in our childhoods. Mine more so than his, although abuse is abuse and the effects never go away. Ever.

When we met, we swore if we had kids we would treat them with respect and love and teach them values and have open communication with them. And we did. We had the family suppers (my husband rarely had experience with that growing up), I walked the kids to and from school four times a day, made lunches, and we talked, we had love and hope and things seemed normal. At least to me. We struggled with money (who doesn't) but we never tried to let that affect the kids. We gave them what we could. I took up knitting and sewing to save on clothes. Our house was the house in the neighbourhood that was always filled with kids. We had enormous sleepovers and friends coming through and I thought it was fine. Except it wasn't. I had no idea the the normal teenage hormones and moodiness was not normal, but actually depression. I misread the signs. I thought the acting out, the over sensitiveness, the temper tantrums were a normal reaction to what was going on in the teenage body.

At the same time, the kids grew more distant and relied on their peers for guidance and advice and turned away from us, as parents. Wow, did that hurt. And nope, I did not see that coming. I was under the misguided impression that if you raised your kids right, showed them love and respect, that everything would turn out great. I know from my own childhood of severe, daily chronic abuse, lies, deceit and humiliation, that that was not the way to raise healthy people. So I fought my own demons, while trying to raise our children in a healthy manner. That is where the anger kicked in. Our children had a family that loved and respected them and still it was not enough. Where did I fail? How did I not see the inevitable train wreck that was in the forefront all the time? How did I miss the one moment that could have changed a loving family into one that wasn't speaking to each other? Where was the village to help me raise my child?

The schools offered no help whatsoever. Neither did the psychiatric profession, when we were finally able to access their services. And the police were the catalyst that got my son into a treatment facility. That went okay for about a minute. And then life just spiralled out of control. My depression came back a thousand fold. I could not help myself or my children and I felt like a complete idiot for not knowing what the next step was, or even where to find the damn portal to the next step. I was angry, frustrated, sad, disappointed and deeply hurt.

My husband turned to silence. It was the only way to reign in the anger, because if he spoke, he would lose it. So, instead of causing further damage and for fear of having our children run away from home, we walked on eggshells around each other and them. We hardly spoke, I cried every single night trying to rack my brain on how to fix THIS. But, there was no fix. There was no amount of talking, therapy, medication or intervention that helped. All there was, was time. Awkward, angry, stress filled time that lead to more damage and more ruined moments.

Jump ahead three decades and we are right back to that spot. My granddaughter deals with depression and suicidal ideation, and I feel like I have learned nothing, and I feel like I will never have a normal, happy life. It's all one big train wreck waiting to happen all over again.

The anger came back, the fear, the frustration. I have always said I have wanted to run away more times as an adult than I ever did growing up. And I thought about that daily.

We, as a society have failed miserably over the past four decades at raising strong, healthy people. Our mental health system is a failure. Our Justice system is a failure. And our medical system is a failure, and our education system is a failure. Not to mention our own families.

Growing up in a small town or village, everyone knows everyone else's business. We were like that growing up on military bases living in PMQ's (Personnel Married Quarters). It was our insulation from the world. We had an entire community looking after our kids. And then the PMQ's were sold and became privatized. One connection and link that brought everyone together was now severed.

We moved into civilian life. We went from a social support system to a place where no one knew who we were or cared. The schools placed more work on us by having our already strained times together now a battle field where we, as the parents were expected to teach our children what the schools did not have the time or the resources to teach. Guess what? We didn't either. We neither had the skills or the education to teach what our kids needed to know.

The mental health system could not fix our problems because the acting out and threatening to run away was not a priority for them. And it took months to get any kind of help. By that time the damage had already been done. We did not have grand parents or aunts and uncles to help. We did not have the school support, and now mental health services was no option. What little they did provide did nothing to help the brokenness we had become.

The inevitable happened and things became so much worse. Our children derailed. And I felt like a trauma surgeon in the desert using string and gum to stop the hemmoraging while another patient lay dying on the next table. I felt like the universe was one colossal joke right from the start.

BAM, here have a severley abusive stepfather and helpless, non-existent mother. BAM, get torn from your native land and move to a foreign country, lose your native language, learn English and forget about your culture and lose all your family back home. BAM, deal with severe sexual childhood abuse from the age of three to 18, and have zero support or help, but maintain your grades and keep that smile on your face or the beatings will continue. Run away from home at 17. BAM, here now you are pregnant at 20 (by choice) but now this is going to kick in your fear, flight and fight response into overdrive because of said childhood, but you had no idea this was going to happen. BAM, have a mental illness that you cannot climb out of for any amount of want or wishing. BAM, throw in a military move to the very community where your abusive parents live and they want access to your little girl. BAM, throw in severe post partum depression following the third child.

Life coasted until the kids hit puberty, then the meterites struck once more. BAM, your child is Autistic and will never be a fully functional adult. BAM, your other child has severe ADHD and we cannot help him. BAM, your third child is going through PUBERTY FROM HELL, but carry on. BAM, one of your children is being beat by their partner. BAM, have fibromyalgia, BAM, teenage pregnancy, BAM another teenage pregnancy, BAM, have another child turn to alcohol and become self destructive. BAM, lose your job.......coast....BAM have a brian aneurysm. BAM, son is now in an abusive situation with his partner......BAM, raise two more children after thinking this was your time togeher with your husband......it never ended.

I fought every single day for myself, my children, my marriage and my sanity. I was rushing from one fire to another, one trauma to another, and I felt I was doing it on my own. There was no outside intervention for me. My child who was being abused by their partner was told to have a restraining order. We all know how that works. It doesn't. Every two hours, another women is murdered while having a restraining order in her purse. Every two hours. Around the clock. Thankfully, my child survived that horrendous ordeal. But then my son was in an abusive relationship. He fixed that after years of trying, to no avail, to fix her and himself. Countless hours and time we would have one or both crying on our couch, at the same time they were going through therapy. The marriage ended. He moved on. But he also moveed onto another abusive relationship. I lost him three years ago.

Now, here today we struggle with a 15 year old who wants to die. And it kills me. Every square inch of my body feels like it has been scraped raw with a serrated knife. But something positive has happened. I have learned a lot in the past five decades. I have studied and taken courses and worked with mental health issues to help others. And while I am tentaivley hopeful, I am not 100% safe. I do not think I will ever be safe. Or have a life where I wake up and feel, hey this is okay. It finally took the help of medical science and natural drugs to get to a point where I am no longer depressed on a daily basis, but that was a short lived, three month reprieve. With this new generation of mental illness, I am not depressed, but merely surviving. And waiting.

I talk with my grandchild. Give her coping skills I never had to give to my children, and she is staying with us. We have mental health intervention...in a month. Wow, nothing has changed. And I hang on by my fingernails waiting for the next meteor to strike.

A few things are different. I am much older and much more tired. I am much stronger. I have many more skills. But I wonder if this will ever become the fairy tale life I envisioned. I am beginnig to lose hope. I think my fairy Godmother is drunk, or on Meth. My Guardian Angels are watching movies and binge drinking, and the Universe has told me, quite plainly, that this will be as good as it gets. The good things are my amazing husband, my dogs, I am employed, I have a house, I have food.   And I need to remind myself every single moment to never lose sight of the important things in your life. Your love, your kindness, your compassion.

The other side of this though, is the impact on my work/life balance. Because I need to be so hyper vigilant and sensitive at home, at work, I do not have the pateinve to deal with issues and problems in the workplace. I struggle. I do not suffer fools in the workplace. Or excuses, or laziness. I have zero patience for stupidity or endless reasons about why you cannot finish a project on time, on budget and on scope. My life at home leeches into work and I am all out of spoons. I know I need to get a grip on that, and I fight every single day not to give in the "What the hell is wrong with you" speech that I say it in my head.

Fortunatley I had the amazing opportunity to take a course about difficult conversations. It was an incredible experience and will give me more tools to reign in the monster that demands perfection at work, but more so, it gives me the skills to adress important issues without resorting to violence. No, not the stabby kind of violence, but the violence as in sarcasm, frustration, abrasiveness, and low tolerance for bad behaviour. Instead, it allows me to speak to individuals about issues I see, and about accountability.

This is a real coup. Because of the way I was raised, I can smell BS a mile away. I can see behaviours that others write off as benefit of the doubt. I can read the body language of manipulation and, hopefully now have a way to adress it without the other person resorting to the coping skills of their childhood. The benefit of this course is you are the only one that needs to take this in order for it to work. And I think this will pay off in spades. I used it with my grandchild. I will use it at work, and I use it in my practise with trauma survivors.

All I know is we are all alone. We may think we are together and have support systems in place, but in the grand scheme of things I have learned we are born alone, we live with mental illness alone and we will die alone.

Today, I am okay with that.

Peace

Grief is a Spiral

Learned something valuable today, which I should have guessed at because of my education, but still managed to catch me off guard. After being estranged from my son for 14 months, I ended up back in the same city where, three years ago we had an amazing talk about his life moving forward, my past, our lives growing up together. I was a young mom and I am still waiting to grow up, so I think of my time as a parent of young children as growing up with them. It was a blast! We had tons of fun and I remember making up stories about them, where we had great adventures and saw magical things; the fabulously, crazy birthday cakes and parties and running with them chasing soccer balls. I loved having kids and being with them. The innocent times were care free.

Now, back in the same city, I broke down and sobbed for all that I lost. I have told my husband that this rift between us feels to me like he has died. Two months ago on the anninversary of this tsunami that tore through my life, I did a ritual to let it go or let me deal with it so I wasn't such a mess. It worked. I felt lighter than I had all year and I could rationalize the pain and the anger.

Being here broke that illusion. I remebered being with him again and all the great times we had together. He is very silimar to me in personality, music tastes, bad sense of humour and the the dark things we find funny. Losing him in this way makes no sense to me, emotionally or psychologically. And the damn broke. 

After dealing with the fallout of a horrific, soul crushing childhood, I learned that dealing with grief and anger was a spiral. You deal, you grieve, you get angry, you get depressed, you coast and you start all over again.

This has been the same way. And, Ironically, the course I was on was dealing with critical incident stress. So I learned this is normal, this will change and this will ebb and flow as I go on. I knew that from my psych nursing days, from all the self help books and from my own couselling days, yet this still hit me like a bomb blast. 

I guess this is what makes people resilient. And what makes life hard to endure and painful. One day I shall move past this. One day the cuts to my heart will heal. I know that. It is how I choose to journey there that will make the difference.

Peace. 

Chronic Pain, Life, Dying

I saw the article from the neurosurgeon who wrote upon reflecting what it is like to know you have a limited lifespan. He started out a fine young man, went to University, became a doctor, specialized in neurosurgery, saved countless lives and then was diagnosed with cancer and told he had six months to live.

It was a beautiful piece, knowledgeable and intelligent upon which he reflects upon his life and what he has learned. He has a baby daughter and he wonders if she will remember him.

I read that piece with intensity because I wonder how much time I have left. I do not have cancer that a doctor can say 'You have six months, a year, etc.' I have a time bomb in my head that can go at any time. I can drop dead tomorrow or in 45 years. It's a crapshoot. I truly do not know which is worse: Knowing you have six months and needing to fill in the time or take it slow, or knowing today could be your last day.

I grieve the person I lost. I grieve what I have been robbed of and I mourn what is ahead of me. Each day is special, blah, blah, blah. Life is a gift. Be happy you survived this long. Be positive. I can do that up to a point and then I drown in my own pre-ordained death sentence and fall apart, sobbing to the ground and wonder why this is the way it has to be. My husband picks me up, and tells me he loves me, and I sob until I am hoarse and wish I could disappear.

I have PTSD, actually Compound Complex PTSD between my childhood and this thing growing in my head, that sticks by me as my shadow and follows me around, constantly telling me, don't laugh too hard: Pink Mist. Don't cough. Do not stress. And all that does is increase the constant terror that has become my life.

I have become a hermit, locked inside my own diseased mind and all I can do is read and watch horror movies, the bloodier the better, so I can forget, for one hour, one day, that I am dead.

The fear is overwhelming. The anxiety is like having a too big a piece of food lodged in your throat that you cannot get rid of. And what really, truly sucks, is that some people that know me, think I should carry on and continue being the rock and the hand that rocks the cradle, and forget about it, but concentrate on their perception of life.

That has made me re-evaluate everything. I do have severe clinical depression thanks to my step-monster, along with many other invisible scars. And I bet if you sprayed Luminol on my soul, you would see each and every one of them: The childhood torture and rape of my spirit, the mental and physical illness it created, the stress, the brain aneurysm, the pain of having a family, the pain of needing a family with the realization I will never have one that I crave.

No, today is not a good day. Tomorrow, who knows.