Living With Trauma: The Healers, 50

The important thing when you've been living with a mental health diagnosis is to get to a place where you can begin to find your voice and start using it. This is the really hard part. Every one of us who has been through a mental health diagnosis and the mental health system has been through their own private hell. It has taken different combinations of different supports and therapies to help us move forward. I am one of the few, if not the only ones I know, who has never been on medication nor hospitalized, but medication and hospitalization very much constitute the norm or the common experience for people living with a mental health diagnosis. Notice that I don't use the word "illness". This is intentional. There is so much negative and destructive baggage associated with that word that I will not even think it. I have always refused to define myself as ill or sick. Exhausted, tired, upset, traumatized, yes. But those are part of the natural spectrum of human experience, as are almost every single facet of a mental health diagnosis. The only thing that makes us different from the rest of you is that we have been labeled, branded as it were, and it is for us to cast off this label and heal the scars left on our souls from the branding. And of course, the primary goal of the mental health system isn't to help us to heal, but to make us socially acceptable, or at least to help us to conform well. In the meantime, getting to a place of relative wellness is no cakewalk. Many never get there, and often for very good reasons. I think the ones who are worst off are the older consumer-survivors who have long lived as "professional mental patients." These, usually men for some reason, were diagnosed, generally with schizophrenia, while teenagers or young twenty-somethings. The medical model was very strong in those days and they have lived most of their adult lives in some form of institutional care. Some have lived experience of homelessness, from being inappropriately released into the community and without sufficient supports to help them maintain themselves. I cannot judge any of those people. From the very start they have been at a huge disadvantage, and often opted to cave, to give in and accept that they are sick, in need of care, and will never lead normal or enjoyable lives, that they will never feel even slightly in control of their own lives. This is a very sad and particularly tragic form of soul destruction that usually has never been caught early enough. I am not suggesting that it is too late now for any of those long-term sufferers, but the window of opportunity is very narrow, very highly placed and usually sealed shut to them. Everything has always gone wrong for a lot of these guys: lack of caring, supportive family and friends has often been an issue, though not always, but in many cases, even with family involvement, loved ones have often felt so alone, frightened, uninformed and frustrated that there is little real support they have been able to offer. Friends are almost always nonexistent. Likewise adequate housing. And because of the scant government support for people on disability pensions, they have lived always in grinding poverty. They have usually been too hobbled by their condition and the lack of support and proper care to care properly for themselves: unable to budget or handle money responsibly, unable to procure groceries for a balanced and healthy diet, or prepare food for meals, often neglecting their personal care and hygiene, making them particularly unattractive to the general public. They go through their lives like zombies, imprisoned by the same medicated fog that makes them seem less of a threat to the public and less frightening to themselves. They are almost all heavy, chronic smokers, even though they can least afford this expensive habit, and spend much of their time procuring cigarettes, scavenging butts off the pavement or bumming smokes from each other or strangers, or buying cheap illegal cigarettes if they have the money available. Some make friends with other consumers they meet in the drop-in centres or scheduled activities and meals. My guess is that, had each of those people had one, ideally two friends at the very beginning, persons dedicated and loyal to them with access to help and support and a certain skill set for providing ongoing support and care, had their been people present in their lives who truly loved them, unconditionally, and had adequate supports and structures been already in place to help facilitate and nurture such friendships, my guess is that most of those people would be recovered, or on their way to recovery, but leading now very different and quite fulfilling lives. Yes, medications and at times hospitalizations will always be necessary, for some people anyway. But for everyone with a diagnosis? I don't think so. But popular thinking is always so slow and changes at a most staggeringly glacial pace.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 49

Fighting for our rights is never going to be easy. Especially when you belong to a population that has been already traumatized and marked by stigma. A population that was once deemed beyond hope or redemption. Persons who were chained and locked up in sanatoriums where they were tortured, brutalized, put on public display for entertainment, and generally lived very short and horrendous lives. Then they discovered psychotropic medications that put us in medical straight jackets. Then we were released, without adequate supports into the community, where many became homeless, wandering the streets unmedicated screaming and yelling for all to hear our psychotic horrors. We have come a long way since those days forty years ago. There was for a while a movement towards self-empowerment for mental health survivors. We have now community mental health teams (the industry where I work) and recovery sometimes brings to the fore peer support work. We have been somewhat integrated into the profession of mental health care delivery and it would seem at first blush that we have come a long way already. And really, I think we have. Which isn't to say that we haven't a lot further to go. I think we have two major obstacles to surmount. One is the intransigence of a mental health system that is obsessed with fiscal austerity and moves at a glacial pace towards change and reform. The other is the internalized stigma of many mental health consumer-survivors. I think that we are seen as fragile and unstable for the simple reason that we have come to see ourselves through that lens. We are encouraged, if passively encouraged, to use mental illness as a bargaining chip. I have seen a lot of this with other peer support workers, as well as clients. I bought into this kind of thinking myself for a while. Every time things went wrong I would blame it on PTSD. This isn't to say that I don't get triggered and that things can at times get out of hand. Rather, it is to say that this doesn't entitle us to use a mental health diagnosis as a get out of jail free card when things begin to go south. I went through my last major trigger almost a year ago. It started with a foiled dog attack, and then things really went sideways from there. Instead of soldiering on and just getting things done, I wallowed and even had my own little drama about it. This reinforced the trauma, and led to the next thing that went wrong, and yes, I was up against some unusual challenges that month. I have since come to believe that had I not pathologized the incident, had I simply accepted that I was really frightened and upset but would quickly get over it then likely I would have felt better sooner. But in contemporary therapy-speak there is this huge trend towards encouraging self-pity and self-indulgence and escaping personal responsibility for the way we respond in times of crisis. I think that mental health consumer-survivors really need to get this back if we are to truly gain resiliency and the kind of emotional toughness it is going to take to successfully advocate for ourselves. This doesn't mean it's going to be easier, but we have to learn to hit the ground running, accept that we are going to fall down at times, then get right back up again and continue the race. We have to stop using our diagnosis as an excuse for not moving forward. We have to ditch internalized stigma, because if we don't, then we are not even going to believe in ourselves, much less expect others to.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 48

Anyone remember the short comedian, Rodney Dangerfield? Neither do I. I don't think I ever saw or heard him but he was famous for one particular little line. "I get no respect." I have often thought of making that our motto as peer support workers but none of our bosses like the idea. It cuts too close to the marrow, I would imagine. We have been ill, you know, and now we are seen as damaged goods. Yet from time to time they dust us off and cart us out and heap tons of praise on us, since this is all great PR and suddenly we are feted as the greatest thing in therapeutic interventions since psychotropic medications. Then, when no one's looking again, they shove us back into the closet and try to forget about us. But paying us a decent and living wage? What would we do with all that money? I mean besides enjoying housing options that aren't always government subsidized, being able to pay our rent on time every month, eat decently, have grocery options outside of No Frills, or the Food Dollarama, as I like to call it, have a bit of a life, a savings account, travel options for vacation time, decent and professionally presentable clothing, access to affordable dental care, all kinds of little things that our decently paid colleagues take for granted and don't seem to want to share with their poor damaged, not entirely well peer support partners. If our employers ran a delicatessen they would very quickly go out of business, and you know why? Because there is only so much that can be done with chopped liver. We, the peer support workers, are the chopped liver of the mental health profession. This is not an indication of how bad we are, by the way, but an indication of how good we are. They despise us for one simple reason. They are threatened by us. We do the job so much better than our professional counterparts despite all their many years of education and clinical training and for one simple reason. This job, to be done well, requires empathy, and lots of it. And empathy cannot be faked. When you have lived it yourself they know it and they accept you and you are comfortable with them because you know each other as peers. The professional staff? They could become actual peers if they are willing to learn a little humility and this sometimes does happen: frequently for rehab therapists and case managers; sometimes for psychologists; for psychiatrists? Almost never. The less power you have the more capable you become of humility. When you have lived with disempowerment, you have lived with real humiliation. You're in. But you will never get the respect you deserve. That is for perceived equals and superiors, and no person who is perceived as ill or damaged is going to get that, and no matter what we do to fight for it, we will be written off as irrelevant, contentious and difficult, and not otherwise listened to. And this is the real kicker. This is almost never consciously intentional. This is where our most primal humanity keeps getting in the way of our developing humanity. Even people who set policy that discriminates against perceived inferiors are often being motivated by forces and fears and lurking collective shadows that they have no clue of. They just go ahead and do what they think is best, and if it saves tax dollars, then so much the better, and whichever government is in power will likely still get voted back into power, not for being compassionate, and only partially for saving our hard-earned money, but for keeping damaged folk like us in their place and not wasting a single nickel more on them. Not all the logic and reasoning in the world is going to persuade them that simply by saving the government millions every year in patient hospitalizations, that peer support workers should be compensated by a wage that is worthy of our hire. Our government, our bosses and the general public are all hobbled by stigma and shame, and if learning how to recognize and battle against this shame and stigma isn't factored into the training and educating of future case managers, social workers, occupational and recreational therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists then we are never going to get anywhere in learning to treat and compensate and respect as full equals the hard-working peer support workers in our mental health system. Saving money isn't the issue. our health care system is already irrationally obsessed with cost cutting to the point of borderline psychosis. This I believe is where peer support workers really need to find their voice and start using it, instead of waiting passively and politely for someone else to fight our battles for us.

Living With trauma: The Healers, 47

So, one might ask, Gentle Reader, why those who are most gifted as healers of our traumatized humanity are often the least likely, and the most sidelined, and the most marginalized of people? There are several approaches to answering this question. I will begin with what to me should be the most obvious, but people often seem rather dense and obtuse to the concept. It is precisely because we are the least likely, the most sidelined and the most marginalized that empowers us as healers. There is power in rejection. Yes, I know that this goes completely against popular thinking about the damage that is caused by bullying and social exclusion, but hear me out for a moment or two, please. There is something perverse in our human nature that hates weakness and damage. We are like the proverbial chickens in the flock that will attack with our sharp beaks and claws the wounded or weakest member. There is also a perverse tendency in many of us to hate those whom we harm, or one could say, I hurt you therefore I hate you. I am thinking right now of a girl who was ruthlessly bullied in junior high. I didn't know her, and I tried not to participate in the frenzy of undeserved hate, especially given that I had also been a target for bullying. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this girl. She wasn't pretty, but didn't stand out for any reason. She was quiet and shy, dressed very plainly, and lived on a farm. Likely a simple and beautiful soul, but who's to know. I remember one day seeing her weeping uncontrollably at her desk after the final verbal jab, her head on her desk and her arm shielding her face in humiliation. I can't remember the fallout, but she was left completely alone after that and, yes, we were thoroughly ashamed of our behaviour towards her. I include myself because, even if I didn't participate in the abuse, I did nothing to defend or protect her from the others, making me an accomplice. I don't know what happen to her, she kind of disappeared after that. Neither have I any knowledge of how she ended up. But kids like this girl often end up going through mental health and addiction crises, as a way of coping with the abuse suffered from their peers. Having suffered similarly, myself, I know that my own outcome was neither promising, nor particularly nice. The already weak or fragile member becomes the scapegoat of our individual and collective self-hatred so we attack and harm all the further those already damaged. I think we are fortunate in that this particularly gruesome trait in our human nature is finally being addressed and recognized and that measures are being taken to combat this, especially regarding the way marginalized people, such as gay, lesbian and transgender, and refugees are often treated, though those same people are still in other countries treated like garbage. Being wounded by life, being scarred, acquiring the Horrible Knowledge of Life and its accompanying Terrible Wisdom gives us a cachet, a power and a strength that often appear preternatural to the uninitiated. We are a silent and secret fellowship of wounded healers. We represent the passion of Christ, the way of the cross, no matter what we believe in, because this is the blueprint of our human redemption. The more we are abused and mistreated the stronger we become, though there are many who end up irreparably crushed under the wheel. For those ones, we who have survived and triumphed can offer the kind of healing and peer help that highly paid professionals cannot. But there is a high price to pay for this privilege...

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 46

Before you start, Gentle Reader, please be warned, this blogpost is going to be most blatantly Christian and I am not apologizing because these are things that need to be written, read, pondered, and inwardly digested. Throughout this series I have been writing about the healers of our collective trauma: who they are, who they are not, what they can do, how it could be done, what needs to be done, and my what a horrendous, sticky and stinking black mess we are all swilling in. The wealthy are not going to come to our aid. The process of getting rich turns people into rapacious beasts, their conscience hung out to dry, their soul bartered for a mess of wealth and earthly possessions. They might give back millions (for them, pocket change) in philanthropic donations and set up benevolent foundations as tax shelters and tax write-offs, thus protecting them from paying their share to the public purse and for the public purse. But, seriously, if there are going to be any billionaires in heaven, they probably were let in through the back door, by accident perhaps, but who am I to know or judge? I don't think we will be seeing a lot of politicians up there, either. They often begin their career with the highest aspirations and the most noble intentions, but remember that little bit of folk wisdom? Politicians are like diapers, because they need to be changed frequently and for the same reasons. It has been noted, by the way, that three of the attendees at the Shermans' memorial service, were the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, Kathleen Wynn, the premier of Ontario, and our own Junior, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They're all in each other's pockets, and they're all sleeping in the same bed. Don't just change those sheets, burn them! I don't think that we can expect a lot from the military, since their job is killing people made legitimate targets of their violence by being put under the designation of "the enemy". Neither is there a lot that can be expected from most of your average middle class folk who are too busy trying to keep their financial and social cachet in order to have much time or interest in helping the losers of the earth. How about the medical profession? But that is so full of corruption and greed as well as being a Kafkaesque labyrinth that will likely damage further the already damaged than heal them. I am thinking here particularly of the psychiatric industry. And yesterday, writing about the untimely deaths (likely homicide) of Barry and Honey Sherman) we have touched already on Big Pharma, those billionaires less interested in seeing people get well and more interested in profit margins and tax shelters. There are good psychiatrists around, as well as psychologists, social workers, occupational and recreational therapists, employment counselors, doctors, nurses and others. They have all kinds of training and education to their merit, and I think their hearts generally are in the right place. But even if they themselves have been somehow hurt by life, they are discouraged from using their own lived experience of pain as instruments of healing. Mental health peer support workers have a particular edge in the healing professions. We have the lived experience and this lived experience gives us a particular gift, a charism if you will. It almost defies logical expectations, that people who have suffered and who often have to live with social stigma and do daily battle against internalized stigma, should also be so gifted as healers. But we are. And here, Gentle Reader, is where I heavily weigh-in on the Christian essence of this message. God could not fully save us from ourselves until he became one of us, one with us, and suffered every bit the horrors of our traumatized existence that many of us have to live with every day of our lives. So, he came to us as Jesus, born in absolute humility, in a barn, of poor parents and of dubious paternity. The power of his message was only fully released and unleashed in the world when he was ignominiously nailed to a cross as a common criminal, following a false trial in a kangaroo court, torture and beatings. We believe that as God he couldn't stay in the tomb and so he rose from the dead, not in pomp and splendour, but silently, with great humility, as he revealed himself to his faithful then was taken up into heaven. Then he sent his Holy Spirit, empowering his followers to spread his message of love throughout the earth. He was not like Mohammed, who became a political leader and a military tactician with not a little human blood on his hands. This was not how God chose to reveal himself, and as much as I respect Islam and its many adherents, the life of Mohammed does not represent the way of God, but the very human way of securing power. This doesn't mean that I don't believe that Islam is relevant, I simply have doubts about the use of force and bloodshed for spreading a message of love. But in Christ, who accepted humility and humiliation as the way to secure us to God, we have this approach, this access to God, not through strength, power and dominance, but through humility, brokenness and servanthood. I am happy to add, by the way, that regardless my opinion of the prophet Mohammed, I believe many of the adherents of the Islamic faith to be genuine and authentic people of God. I even believe this about a few Christians!

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 45

I am going to paint is some broad strokes of black and white here, Gentle Reader. Even broader and more contrasting strokes than you are used to seeing on these pages. Jet, midnight, raven's wing black, and the purest, snowiest, never been trod on, never been driven on and never been peed on tones of white. I was reading in this weekend's Globe and Mail about the untimely deaths of billionaire couple, Barry and Honey Sherman. They were billionaires, which is to say, not merely members of the privileged one percent, but of the hyper-privileged, and obscenely entitled .01 percent. They made their billions in pharmaceuticals, a Jewish couple famous for their philanthropy. They were friends of the prime minister, and their memorial service was attended by six thousand, among them members of the Canadian political and financial elite. Hearing about their deaths on the radio one would imagine they were wealthy saints, Mother Teresa with Louis Vuitton. The Globe and Mail featured a two page spread about them. I don't feel much the wiser about Honey Sherman, except that, seeing her photo and how preternaturally young she must have looked at seventy, she surely collected Air Miles from her cosmetic surgeon. Barry came across as looking particularly bad. A rapacious, ambitious, merciless competitor, who cared not a straw who he hurt or damaged in order to get ahead in the game. He would foreclose on the mortgages of his cousins if they weren't able to pay what they owed him. He would have his private detectives go through the garbage cans of the competition to find evidence that they were spying and stealing his ideas. With all the tax shelters and loopholes to keep their billions up as high as they could stack them, they did give back, in philanthropic donations, millions to causes they approved of. Had they paid their fair share of taxes, then I would imagine that their funds would have been funnelled into the general revenue and, the corrupt and bureaucratic monster of Canada Revenue be damned, there might have been a greater likelihood of more money going to where it is most needed for the public good. I don't know what to mention here about Big Pharma, except, seeing now the (almost) human face of one of the big corporations, then is it any wonder...? Just a few pages away in that same edition of the Globe and Mail I also chanced to read about a young man being publicly feted for bravery and heroism for having rescued a man who fell in front of a commuter train in Edmonton. He was given only half a page. The article went on to explore the not really news about how poor and low incomed people tend to be much more empathetic, kind and compassionate than the wealthy. Except the wealthy, when they die, and also while still alive, are admired and praised and treated like little gods. The rest of us get nothing. I do know that if I ever find myself falling in front of the Sky Train and there is someone standing nearby, that that person had better not be a billionaire.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 44

It is Christmas morning, and I have been already up since the obscenely early hour of 4:45, or so. I did have the CBC Radio One on till just now. They were playing lovely classical music, much of it Christmas themed, but now it's just past 6, it is regular Christmas programming and they're playing garbage, all jazzy and pop Christmas mall style schlock. Of course, they tend to still have at the CBC a huge irrational hate-on for classical music, since removing it from most of their programming, and when they play it, they want to make sure it will be during a time that no one will be around to listen, like in the very early hours of Christmas morning. Merry Kitschmas from the CBC. So, it's quiet again in my apartment, which seems appropriate for this very sacred morning, though for many there is really little or no religious significance, but there are a lot of spiritual but not religious folk around these days for whom there remains a germ and patina of the Holy about Christmas Day. Atheists get nothing, but that's what they believe in, so that's what they get. Nothing wrong with atheists, mind you. I simply avoid getting into arguments with them for one simple reason: it is a complete waste of time and energy. The choice to believe or to not believe is something very individual and very, shall I say, private and personal. I think that we can only really believe in God when we feel certain that he has revealed himself to us. If we don't have that certainty, or even come to believe that such a certainty is an absurdity that cannot exist, then who am I to tell or persuade otherwise? It would be disrespectful, just as disrespectful as someone telling me that I believe in a sky fairy that I read about in the Bible. But, to quote the Sufi poet, Rumi, let's leave those asses to graze in their pasture. I've done an extraordinary amount of baking this Christmas: triple batch of shortbread: half pound butter, one cup brown sugar, teaspoon vanilla, teaspoon lemon juice, half teaspoon of salt and two cups whole wheat flour. Blend softened butter with brown sugar, and afterward lick the residue from the spoon or blending apparatus, but don't lick anything else, we want to keep things hygienic. Add vanilla, salt and lemon juice. Stir with (clean!) spoon, while gradually adding in the flour. Then, further mix and knead it with your scrupulously washed hands until it's all a uniform mass. Roll into little balls and place on cookie sheets, then flatten them with a fork and bake for ten minutes at 350 F. Made with whole wheat and brown sugar gives the cookies an earthy and butterscotch deliciousness! And they're a little more nutritious this way, too! Last night I did a huge batch of forty chocolate chip cookies. Blend with a spoon or masher one quarter pound softened butter with one and a half cups of brown sugar. Add three beaten eggs (or just beat them with the mixture), add one teaspoon of vanilla extract and two tablespoons lemon juice, one tablespoon milk and mix. Gradually add in two and one quarter cups whole wheat flour with a half teaspoon of salt and mix. Then add as many semi-sweet chocolate chips as you can get away with. Drop from a tea spoon onto ungreased baking pans and bake twelve to fifteen minutes, or when they appear done in preheated oven at 375 F. Last night I also prepared the mass for the bread pudding we are having for breakfast this morning. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it and a lot of the baking is going to be shared with others or given away as gifts. For me this also helps me appreciate the hard work my mother and a lot of mothers for that matter, put in to make it an enjoyable Christmas for family and friends. Men generally don't have a clue and I don't think it would kill some of us to find out first hand what it's like and how hard the women in our lives bust their asses for our families. As for me, I've always been on my own, but really, in order to get any value out of this season then one really has to start being an adult and actually get to work at doing things for others. There is something very selfish and entitled about the way we raise our children to think of Christmas with Santa Claus and presents and toys and goodies and stuff. I think that children are really damaged and harmed this way. I think that had I had different parents, generous, kind and community minded people, preferably Christians, then I might have escaped from this kind of toxic spoiling. Had my parents at an early age taught my deplorably selfish brother and me the value of volunteer work, of giving to others, of giving back, of helping the less fortunate in our community, and to share our bounty and our Christmas dinner with people who were really unfortunate and vulnerable, had we included them into our lives as friends, then I think that Christmas and life itself would have taken on a vastly different and far lovelier meaning in our lives and we would have been beautifully transformed by this. Unfortunately, my brother turned into the sort of person I would rather not write about on this blog, and I was able to change thanks to the divine interventions in my life that began early in my adolescence. Unfortunately the selfish and entitled damage from my childhood Christmases has lingered on like an odour of cat pee on a raincoat, and only now, in my sixties, am I finally shaking loose from this vile selfishness of consumer-mas. It is just past seven, Gentle Reader, and I intend to take a good two hour walk before putting the bread pudding in the oven. A happy Christmas Day to all of you!

Living With Trauma? The Healers, 43

Here in Canada, Christmas is really the Great Grandmother of First World Problems. Here are some of the most common questions asked around Christmas: Should we cook a turkey this year? Maybe a roast or a ham, maybe a goose instead this year. What kind of booze? What kind of tree? Real one, artificial? Decorations? Too many lights on the outdoor display? Are we out of debt yet? No? Then just keep that line of credit going. Christmas is too commercial. Christmas is too Christian. It`s Winter Holiday, it's the Solstice holiday, we want to be inclusive. And the beat goes on. I've basically given up Christmas. It is a lot of First World nonsense with a huge Christian infusion at one level, and a gigantic orgy of greed and hedonism and spending on quite another. I didn't grow up in a Christian home and it was all about Santa, gifts, eating lots of rich food and getting drunk. We can't escape it. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. If you have close family and friends and if you're all relatively well-off financially then Bob's Your Uncle and it's going to be a lovely traditional meal, with fancy tree, gifts, lots of good food and booze and people silently hating and resenting each other as old wars and feuds continue to simmer. It's also all very neurotic because there are always those who are burdened with all the work, usually the women in the family, and they are the ones who make it Christmas for everyone. If you're poor and on your own, then you do what you can. You are likely to be alone and forgotten because no one wants to know we exist, except in cases of charity so they can feel good about themselves. You hope that you'll be invited somewhere, but that often doesn't happen. So you do what you can to cope. Maybe do volunteer work, since there are still going to be others who have it worse than you, and if you already have a home and no one to celebrate with, how about celebrating with the homeless? This is also a great way of really becoming an adult and getting over the expectation that others owe you anything. To become Christmas for others. All the hype and the piles upon piles of expectations and expectancy of this time of year make it very difficult to cope alone, though some manage somehow. They say they're okay. I think they're all lying. There are too many deep and unconscious ties that bind us to the holiday. We do what we can to get through it, even those who appear to have all the makings of the perfect Christmas with family and friends, year after year. Christmas has many meanings, and no one can get away with claiming that it means nothing to them, because this holiday is so deeply branded on our deepest unconscious and on our deepest memory. Even though I hung Christmas out to dry, and hopefully die, a couple of years ago, it keeps rising in my throat like undigested plum pudding, or it keeps rising from the dead, a fat vulgar Ghost of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet To Come, that simply will not go away and cannot be bribed into leaving us alone. I have decided to give it token acknowledgment. I no longer go to church, or not much anyway, and really, I already feel and sense Christ's presence every day of the year, making this sacred annual occasion for me somewhat anticlimactic and redundant. My parents are dead and my brother and I likely will never see each other again. I have still a few cousins and maybe a couple of surviving aunts or uncles but I have had no existence to them for many years, and I don't feel that they owe me anything. I have friends. They are usually not available for a visit at Christmas, which is annoying because this is one time of the year that you do not want to feel abandoned. But there are still things to do. There are still those friends who are also at loose ends, or have some time, or are not too proud and self-pitying to want to be available to you (you know who you are, and yes, I am referring to YOU!) Those are the most annoying friends. Usually they're single males, alone and absolutely miserable at not having anyone to see or anywhere to go, but they still lie through their teeth, tell you they're okay, refuse to see you and you simply want to end the friendship and not have to think of them ever again. I have some friends like that, one or two anyway, and it is only because I am a forgiving person that they can still wait till next Christmas to reject my offer of hospitality again. Toxic masculinity, anyone? I will be seeing a couple of friends this Christmas. One is coming for breakfast Christmas morning. Every Christmas morning I make a huge, fancy bread pudding for breakfast, and if anyone wants to come over and have some with me, they are most welcome. This is my Christmas dinner, even though it's breakfast! The other two I will be visiting this afternoon with gifts of homemade shortbread. That should be enough. I do hope that my proud toxic male friends will swallow their pride enough to get in touch with me, if their masculine pride permits it, though I am not holding my breath. In the meantime, I will continue as usual, refusing to feel sorry for myself and making myself available to others. For me, Christmas is a reset button that needs to be pressed every year and to reset the pattern of love and giving that really must mark, not one day, but every day of the year. Politically correct nervousness aside, Merry Christmas, Gentle Reader!

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 42

We're all screwed. I think this goes without saying, but I thought I'd say it anyway. We are all terribly damaged, defiled, ruined, incomplete, wounded, and you know something else, Gentle Reader? We're such bloody, shameless liars about our sad and sorry condition. Ever since our ancestors left Africa, we have been ruining the planet, other species, and by extension, ourselves and one another. There really seems to be no end to our hubris. Moving back from the macrocosm to the microcosm I would like to comment on some recent events in my work as a mental health peer support worker, namely, my communications with the government about securing a raise for people in my position to a living wage. I finally did get an answer but first I will copy here in full my recent email to the minister of health: "First let me say that I am very disappointed that you still have not responded to any of my emails about the need for raising the wages of mental health peer support workers to a living wage.  Your silence suggests that this is not a particularly important issue to you, and perhaps there is some underlying stigma there against people who live with mental health issues.  As we are now rolling into Christmas I would like to inform you that as a contract worker, I am not getting paid for Christmas or Boxing Day.  Yet, I am still required to take both those days off, while losing income, at a time of year when one least wants to or should be expected to have to find themselves short of money.  It is like this for all statutory holidays.  We are not allowed to work.  And we don't get paid.  Neither do we get coverage for dental work or other medical benefits.  And vacation pay? Don't make me laugh.  There is a modest provision for sick pay, but that is up to the discretion of our supervisor, and not all our supervisors in mental health work are equally compassionate or understanding.  May I remind you, that we have been stuck at this miserably low wage for the past nine years.  Vancouver is an obscenely expensive city to live in and not all of us have the benefit of government subsidized housing.  I have coworkers who have to subsist on market rents at the mercy of unscrupulous and greedy landlords.  There are others, like me, who have to rely entirely or almost entirely on our scant earnings as peer support workers in order to stay alive.  For us this is barely survival work. I feel disappointed and betrayed by you and your government.  I doubt that I will ever support the (your political party) again, under any circumstances.  I hope that my disenchantment will not discourage you from looking into our situation and doing what you can to persuade our employer, to start paying us a living wage, especially considering that now we are being paid but sixty-five cents above the minimum. Peer Support Workers give better than bang for the taxpayers` buck already, given the essential role we play in people`s mental health recovery, and the millions of dollars in hospital care that we save you people, by helping our clients stay well and stable. It is time to pay us what we are worth, and that is going to be considerably more than twelve dollars an hour. I am counting on you to do the right and ethical thing. I expect to hear from you soon." I got a response the next day, not from the health minister but from their assistant. I was congratulated for sticking it out, reassured that the government is looking into the way peer support workers are trained, paid and integrated into the workplace, then told that I should not be talking to them, but to my employer about a pay raise, or, "Go ask your mother." My Reply? "Thank you for your reply.  First off, level and quality of training should only be used as a measure for remuneration up to a certain point.  However, when the pay is as low as twelve dollars an hour, this needs to be attended to as soon as possible, and should not have to be indexed to training or education but to a just and living wage, or to put it succinctly, we also have to live.  In terms of addressing my employer, I am in regular contact with one of my supervisors, who is also communicating to their superiors, and they are also supportive of my communicating these needs to the health minister.  I agree that further training and education would be beneficial to peer support workers, but a living wage needs to be in place, as a  matter of justice and simple logic as we will be better equipped to take care of our own needs, making us better and more effective workers. thank you for your prompt reply and have a merry Christmas" and " There is one other detail I would like to mention.  I have been addressing my employers about our pay situation for several years now, without result. and lots of excuses, stonewalling and even threats to my employment.  This is why I am resorting to talking to the ministry.  As a token of their concern, the Ministry of Health might consider taking action on this important matter as it is not helpful to be left feeling that the buck is somehow being passed.  I do hope that you people show that you care about this.  Thanks." Now, Gentle Reader, tell me please, again, what is the difference between the health minister and his lackeys, myself and other peer support workers, our clients who are still suffering from mental health diagnoses, and the union staff I work with? Absolutely nothing. We are all human, which makes us equally damaged. Some are more socially acceptably damaged, others less so. There is still no difference. Only stigma. We're all screwed. We all have a role to play in our healing.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 41

So then a lot of the problems we have caused ourselves and the planet could be traced to our insistence, ancestral and present, of having to live in climates to which we are not biologically suited. This has panned out rather favourably in some ways. The stress and hardship of living in a cold climate often causes people to pull together because individual survival is that much more dependent upon collective endeavour. In Canada it has often been noted how much friendlier and more generous are Canadians who live on the prairies and in other colder parts of the country. This is from the communitarian traditions made necessary by having to survive in a harsh and unforgiving climate. It would also seem that the need to work well together also has encouraged the kind of industriousness and industry that produced the many scientific discoveries and technological advances that can be traced to Europe, North America, and in an earlier era, China. By the same token, the tropical regions have very little to show for themselves, perhaps outside of the advanced civilizations of the Maya, Aztec and Inca of Latin America, though they were all but exterminated by technologically more advanced Europeans, in this case the Spanish. My guess is that the relative ease of life in warmer countries makes survival easier and people aren't as likely to be that aware of their mutual need of one another, except perhaps in hunter-gatherer societies where basic survival is always at a premium making life outside of the collective unworkable and unfeasible. This is, of course, a very simplistic rendering. For example, the very technological and industrial achievements in the northern countries have so fouled the environment and set in motion the whole dreaded advance of global warming and climate change that we have clearly become the arbiters of our own destruction. All of our advances in technology, it seems, are but the bitter fruit of our insistence not only on having our rightful piece of the planet, but complete global dominance by the human species at the cost of the loss of species diversity, fouled oceans and air, and accelerated warming and climate change. Add in that many of the technological advances have been purposed to make it all the easier for us to bomb one another and the rest of the earth out of existence and it doesn't take a genius to wonder if something might be seriously wrong with our species. In redesigning this planet to conform to our own needs and wants we are rendering this earth useless to all. Love, compassion and empathy, the qualities that must be the most central and strongest in our human nature, still remain in the shadow of our greed, fear and hatred of one another. We have become like little gods, but almost entirely void and empty of that single principal that would make us truly divine: Love.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 40

Most humans beings live in climates that we're not naturally adapted to. Lacking fur or blubber, people have to depend on thick heavy clothing and indoor heating to get by during the ghastly winters of Canada and northern Europe. Yet we live there. For thousands of years people have lived in inhospitable climates. Even in the more temperate regions with perhaps two months of winter, it is not natural to our biology to live in such climates. Our insistence on living in cold climates has done a lot to devastate the biosphere. Vast tracts of Europe were deforested over the centuries, notably the British Isles, because of trees being cut down for fuel and building materials. Even before the Industrial Revolution London was a badly and dangerously polluted city. We really belong in the tropics and had we stayed in Africa, or didn't trouble to migrate much farther north than the Tropic of Cancer, then maybe we wouldn't have needed to develop the heating technologies using fossil fuels. Maybe the earth would have remained a healthier, more pristine planet. If any of you are having doubts, then may I suggest one little visualization? Imagine that summer has finally arrived, and what do people do? They take off as much clothing as they can legally get away with and, Ooh-la-la! Or, Oh my God!, if you didn't do well at fitness and weight loss. We are naturally adapted to warm weather, and that is our natural habitat. I have friends from Venezuela and Peru, respectively. They grew up living in tropical climates. Now that they are living here on the West Coast of Canada, which is still considerably less brutal for winter than other parts of this country, they complain bitterly about the cold weather and the impact on their health. When you consider how easy it is to adapt to living in a warm climate (not wretchedly hot, mind you, but warm)if you're from a colder region, then what more need I say? It is hard to know what further to say, given the restless exploratory instinct of our species, our ancestral hubris, and our evident drive to conquer and colonize, not only parts of the earth we have no business inhabiting, but even the prospect of other planets that cannot sustain life! I don't know whether we are stupid in our arrogance or arrogant in our stupidity. This need to colonize and dominate has made us the most destructive and pernicious species to crawl on the surface of this earth, and our superior intelligence has turned us into a particularly dangerous viral infection to this planet. We have not only been preoccupied with survival, but dominance, as though our overweening mentality is to compensate for our physical weakness and fragility. Rather like the way a small dog, for example, Chihuahua, takes on an attitude and ferocity more appropriate to a dog many time it's size (Honey! I shrank the pit bull!) Napoleon Complex, anybody? Our species does have an enormous capacity for good, to be good, to do good. But we are still way too stranded and entangled in the old, primal mentality of survival through dominance at any cost. Not co-existence but domination, control and the extermination of all opposing parties. Meanwhile the earth languishes under our misrule. We are very slow at coming to terms with this. There are many powerful interests and parties in the world who prefer the old way, resist change, and through their fear, stubbornness and greed are continuing to imperil the rest of us. These next few years are going to be pivotal to our future, all of us. Regardless the outcome, we are going to have a long, hard and very difficult struggle ahead of us.

Living With Trauma; The Healers, 39

We really are a backward species. Our brains appear to have evolved way ahead of our hearts and souls, and this most important part of who we are, this very essence of ourselves has light years of catching up to do with our allegedly rational minds, if we are to become complete human beings. When our earliest ancestors emerged out of Africa, when the first aboriginal peoples of the Americas set foot on present day Alaska, those were people struggling for the very elements of basic survival. It was all about staying alive long enough to pass on their genetic material for future generations, though they probably didn't think of it that way. Or maybe they did. The instinct and the very notion of continuing and perpetuating our survival through our descendants has been with us for a very long time. There was very little incentive to develop a sense of compassion for competing and enemy tribes and bands while trying to secure food, territory and security for your own people. Survival was the daily grind and any developing culture was hinged around this very basic fact of life and existence. There were animals to kill for food, others to be killed or avoided so they wouldn't make food of humans. The weather and climate were generally harsh and unforgiving. This was especially essential for our tropical and subtropical species. Even after thousands of years spent adapting to some of the most extreme climates on the planet, we are still not naturally adapted to living in an environment colder than the Mediterranean. No self-respecting Inuit would wander naked into a snowstorm, and not simply because of modesty. It would be suicide. The hapless bastard would be dead within minutes from frostbite and hypothermia. Unlike polar bears or musk ox we are not protected by a thick layer of fur. Unlike seals or whales we have no insulating blubber under our skin. We are the only species alive that has to cover itself in order to be adequately protected from the cold. We do not belong in a cold climate. We are a tropical species. So, how did we end up leaving the comfort of the African sun? There was all kinds of climate change, but I haven't done a lot of research on this. I am going to hazard to guess that it was especially drought and possibly flooding from intense rains that made Africa uninhabitable. Early humans already had the fully developed brain we take for granted. It didn't take them long to figure out how to cover themselves with animal skins as protection from the cold, especially with much of Eurasia lying frozen under thick sheets of glacial ice. They knew how to make and use fire. This kept them warm and gave them light at night as well as cooking their meat for them. The need to survive in a strange and hostile environment also necessitated the instinct of dominance. Kill or be killed. Our early ancestors were not going to be cowed by anything or anyone. They went forth conquering and to conquer, without even the remotest sense of the importance of love and compassion. Those luxuries would be reserved for their mates and their own offspring. In the meantime, they came to thrive in a cold and hostile climate to which they were not adapted, a climate they would be in perpetual battle against, contaminating and destroying at a measure and rate that has increased exponentially and astronomically. We live and thrive in the hostile climates of Europe and North America where we have unleashed the greatest wonders of our human genius, since necessity will always be the mother of invention. And our mother is now about to turn on us and devour us.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 38

People who live in this country, Canada, come from all over the earth. Even our aboriginal inhabitants are relatively recent arrivals, having come here some twenty thousand years ago from the Asian continent. The Americas did not cradle the origins of our species. Life on these continents, North and South America, until the beginning of the last twenty millennia, developed and evolved untouched by human presence. This makes the Western Hemisphere somehow special, and somehow tragic. Our human species had already been set in motion for almost two million years, and in its then (and now) current form, for well over one hundred thousand years, when the first invaders from other continents set foot on this side of the Bering Strait, or on any Pacific Coast of these continents. Even in pre-civilization our species was a force to be reckoned with. While physically vastly inferior in strength or acuity, we had the larger and superior brains. Even in our pre-civilized "innocence" we were wreaking havoc everywhere we trod, bringing on species' extinction and environmental destruction. Our knowledge of fire and need for fuel sources already gave us a head start on deforestation and contaminating the air. What our ancestors had to their advantage was their lack of numbers and technological advancement. It only took us a few thousand years to develop so in numbers and in technology as to pose a major and mortal threat to all other life forms and the future viability of our Mother Earth to continue sustaining life. There has always been something wrong in the way we humans are wired. We are too intelligent for our own good, yet far too stupid for the good of our planet. Much of the earth was still in the grip of the last ice age when the first humans crossed over to what is now Alaska. That was when large mammals roamed the earth: woolly mammoths and rhinos, giant bears, and much further south, giant sloths and giant armadillos to name but a few. The new human arrivals, evidently, took them all. There are several different theories around this mass ice age species extinction, and even if our kind was not entirely responsible for their destruction, it can easily be argued that they played a not insignificant role. What I am arguing here, Gentle Reader, is that if ever there was a Golden Age of Human Innocence, it is likely so removed in the most distant past around the time of the very origins of our humanity, that it can only be guessed at. That such an epoch of original innocence ever existed is more than likely, given how encoded this primeval myth is in our collective unconscious. We generally look to the creation myths and stories in our religions and cultural belief systems for this. Even if there was no Adam and Eve in a Garden of Eden, we still have in the Biblical Creation Story a kind of an idea being sketched out about what may have happened. Even if you don't believe there is a God, something must have happened very early in our prehistory that would turn us into such extremely smart and oh, such destructive little monsters. Suffice to say, when our first parents ate of the forbidden fruit, they became conscious and intelligent beings. They also developed a sense of shame over their alleged nakedness, or perhaps of their human vulnerability. Needless to say, they were expelled from the garden, smarter but not necessarily wiser. So human intelligence has developed collectively as human civilization. All the achievements of civilization throughout the ages shine with the evidence of superior human intelligence: writing, metallurgy, art, music, literature, science, statecraft, religion, architecture, textiles, electricity, automation, computer technology. We became like gods condemned to death, and this because all our achievements, and all our successes have been wanting for one particular detail. Unconditional Love.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 37

We are now living in a world where people are treated like economic units. This is how they are raising their children, enrolling and registering them in educational programs and activities from the age of day care until they are ready for university. This is not to help their children grow into complete and fulfilled persons, but to make them competitive in the marketplace. Parents are desperate that their progeny not end up in the gutter, in low barrier shelters, or in low paying jobs, or all of the above, as global capitalism has unleashed on all of us an unrestrained monster of greed and competition. Parents are desperate that their children not be left behind. In order to make their kids competitive they don't seem to realize how they are destroying them. Fortunately there is a growing trend towards dolphin parenting, and free range kids, where children are given more freedom to grow and explore with minimal parental interference, but it might take an entire generation of this before the damage is reversed. In the meantime, all over the public sphere, we see the young casualties of this hyper parental angst. Young people are so stressed with getting into the right universities and the right educational programs and the right training and the right everything that will land them decently paid employment that still won't leave them with enough discretional income for a down payment on a house. So, in order to cope, everyone hunkers down and does whatever they can to staunch the angst: they turn into gym rats or they become otherwise obsessed with fitness, since they do want to live forever and make themselves as beautiful and studly as possible since everyone else is too shallow to take an interest in them that isn't somehow based in sexual attraction. They remain fixated on their phones and other tech toys, never parting their eyes from the little plastic screen, be they behind a steering wheel or in a passenger seat, on the sidewalk, the crosswalk, in the supermarket checkout, in the coffee shop, on the bus, or on the toilet. Their souls have become so shrunken by fear and heightened anxiety that this has become for many their little plastic window of escape or refuge. Or they get dogs, because people don't make reliable friends, being too intelligent and too difficult to control, and so in already overcrowded cities they unleash their barking shit-machines in public parks and other spaces, monopolizing them and often making the commons unsafe for others. This is really too much for us to handle. The World Wide Web with all our lovely tech toys and the brutal taskmasters of capitalism have really made the world a scary, nasty, and lonely place. It is hard to make friends, to keep friends and to build a sense of real community, in this city and elsewhere. But we are still going to try, because even though we are being treated like little more than economic units, we know that we are more than this and that we are better than this. I have hope for the future and I believe that our natural desire to connect meaningfully with others and with life itself is going to overcome this nightmare of corporate greed that threatens to disinherit us, and I believe in this current crop of young people who are now moving forward and coming into their own, the so-called Millennials. Even talking and being friendly with a stranger on the bus or on the sidewalk is a revolutionary act. It has nothing to do with money or economics and everything to do with fraternal love and solidarity: like the retired gentleman I say hi to and chat with on my way to work every Monday; like the pleasant and interesting older couples in one of my favourite cafes who like to stop and chat; like the young woman on the bus today who insisted on giving me her seat after I gave up my seat to a woman with difficulties. And the young woman and I got into the most interesting conversation about computers, phones, and her aging dad. These are small steps, but the more we take them, and the more people who take these steps to reach across the divide, to befriend one another, the faster we are going to bring down this cold, monstrous hating global greed that has already folded its python coils around our planet and us who inhabit it.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 36

I have nothing against jogging or joggers. I think it's great that people want to get in shape and be healthy. I do have an issue with their mentality of self-entitlement and narcissism. In this regard I have come to see the way people jog in Vancouver as a metaphor for what is wrong with people who live in this city. Early on this rainy cold Sunday morning in my city I took a long walk along False Creek. To my surprise there were people out jogging so early and in such crappy weather (I don't really mind the rain, by the way) but I was not surprised by their absolute lack of good manners and etiquette in negotiating space with ordinary pedestrians. Twice I was almost bashed into from behind without a word of apology or warning, and I let them know about it. They could probably much more easily run on the bike path or, if there's no traffic, on the road itself. They don't seem to know, much less care, that they impact, often unpleasantly, on those who simply want a quiet, contemplative walk. With athleticism often comes a me first, ablest kind of mentality. I often see joggers stupidly running on crowded sidewalks with the expectation that everyone has to get out of their way for them, but they are the ones who are in our way. Such is our culture of narcissism. This happens in other ways, two. For example with dog owners. This city is really too densely populated to accommodate a lot of dogs, especially larger breeds. But suddenly, almost everyone who isn't a cat person has to have their own four-legged best friend forever and our already limited public space, not even adequate for our collective human needs, is now further compromised by all these, often off-leash, dogs. But in a cold, unfriendly city such as Vancouver people are going to be lonely for companionship, and so much easier to be loved unconditionally by a dumb canine who has to depend on you for its survival than by another human being whom you cannot control and is not going to be available on your terms. I would also imagine that with not a few joggers, they are desperate to stay in shape if they want to stay attractive to others, since people in this city tend to be very shallow and self-absorbed and hard to interest on any level that isn't somehow concerned with sex. There is also our ongoing obsession with our electronic toys, and you see all these rather pathetic and soulless looking losers wandering around transfixed by their little smart phones, as though the people around them are somehow so hostile and threatening that they don't dare interact together. We are increasingly negotiating decreasingly available public space with the attitude that we are each here alone. Since we can't really bear the thought of being crammed so close with strangers so we try to pretend that we occupy a much larger personal space, whether we are jogging into hapless pedestrians, walking our doggies on extended retractable leashes, or too fixated on our phones to know that we have just stepped in a mound of their shit. I think this is key to what is really wrong with us. We don't care enough that we are all in this together. We are too frightened, too selfish and too isolated to care, and if we want to heal as a people then this is what is going to have to change. I make a point of making contact with perfect strangers. I say hi to people on the sidewalk, wish them a happy day. The majority respond well, there is the occasional self-absorbed snob who won't acknowledge. This is a start. And I am challenging you, Gentle Reader, to try this, to make a habit of acknowledging the strangers around you, and to open yourself to conversation. To those who complain about Vancouver being a cold and unfriendly city, we each have ourselves to blame. It only takes a spark to get a fire going.

Living With Truma: The Healers, 35

Like it or not we all have to coexist, no matter how much we disagree, and no matter how much some of us must hate each other. They really ran afoul of this sad fact of life during the Cuban Revolution. Fidel's and Che's solutions were brutal, simplistic and barbaric. Taking out and shooting the opposition did nothing to advance their cause and much to bring down upon the revolution international censure and disapprobation. They really had only themselves to blame for the misfortunes they unleashed on the Cuban people, glad to be liberated from the tyranny under Batista, only to be brutalized by their new Stalinist masters and overlords. Leftwing violence and rightwing violence have kissed and screwed and my what an ugly offspring. So here we are in pluralist, democratic Canada, where diversity rules and we are all expected to respect and appreciate our differences. Unless you happen to be poor, then you get treated like garbage, because the poor are the last remaining legitimate targets for social discrimination and publicly-sanctioned ill-treatment. Well-off middle class folk can still try to chase out and keep out shabby poor folk from their lovely neighbourhoods, because they are property-owners, or, the new ruling class. And no one bats an eye because we all have to get along. So, poor-bashing home-owners completely slow and stall the process for social progress, especially if it means imperilling their property values and putting a dent in their precious house-equity. No one is going to take them out and shoot them, or not yet anyway. It would be too costly in the long run. Remember what I wrote recently? When you kill one person, however you might think they deserve it, then, really, you have murdered us all. We must never forget the essential humanity that unites us, especially if we want to move forward. I was reflecting on this today while seated in one of my favourite coffee shops, a Bean Around the World in one of the wealthier districts of Vancouver. There was a whole swarm of weekend bike warriors. You must know the kind I mean: they all dress in ridiculous tights and corporate jerseys, a la Lance Armstrong Wannabe, and you can tell right away that they almost all must work in very lucrative corporate and executive positions. Their conversation sounds often like boardroom chatter, and they all appear to be well-educated professionals. In other words, they are people who likely have not suffered a lot in life. They did well in school, academically and socially. Had good parents and strong families, always felt like they belonged socially, were able to get into the best schools, none of them has ever been homeless or poor and likely has never known what it's like to be unwanted and unwelcome. Of course, I don't know any of these people and as one of the local church signboards currently says, "The more you judge people, the less you love them." So, really, I don't know any of those guys' stories. I am still going to err on the side of assuming that they have all had it pretty good and the shine of the silver spoon has not worn off yet. But in the long run, who really can tell? And I don't know what they do in their spare time, or if any of them does volunteer work or has an interest in social justice. Some just might. I would like to be able to engage with such persons as potential allies, and not as class enemies, especially given what their collective wealth and connections could do to benefit those who need help getting housing. I have never had a conversation with any of them. Some of us smile and say hi to each other, maybe because of the novelty of acknowledging me, the resident artist. But who really can tell? Even if it is a safe bet that they have all had it pretty good, who really knows what some of them must suffer in silence? Who among them might be struggling with an addiction or with an undiagnosed mental health problem? Perhaps an impending divorce? Even First World People have problems that aren't only First World Problems. Without compromising on the issues and the truth of the matter: that we have to somehow reset the balance in this country to restore a real and authentic social and economic equality, or at least to be headed in that direction. But to also address one another with civility and respect. This conflict and frisson between classes is inevitable, but I would like to see this harnessed as a creative force that can bring strangers and class enemies together to work together for a common cause. I am going to assume here that they are not all going to be corporate psychopaths. Being human beings also belies the presence of empathy and compassion, and we have to work harder at summoning forth the better angels of our nature. It is going to take a long time. And in the meantime, there are thousands going without the basic necessities, because of wealthy people who are too stubborn and too frightened of change to want to budge or move forward. We have to engage more with these people. Any ideas?

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 34

I'm sick of this. We're all getting sick of this. Those appallingly shallow and lying politicians who say that our economy has never been better or more robust, employment figures have never looked so good, and many of us are either homeless or living from paycheque to paycheque. They are so slow to address these real urgencies while wasting time kissing the asses of their corporate offshore bosses. And the rest of us are stupid enough to keep electing those clowns into power without considering that whatever we have of a democracy has already been sold up the river and us with it. But we still have to work together, even if the process is odious. We still have to make nice with our awful politicians because they are holding the purse strings. And we still have to dialogue, respectfully, of course. But I don't know how much longer a lot of us are going to wait. Revolutions and mass uprisings take place when national leaders remain deaf and impervious to the cries and suffering of the people who put them in power. For a long time it didn't seem like an issue. The vast majority did okay, more or less middle class, and those who ended up on the margins were of scant number and hardly noticed and it was oh so easy to blame the victim for her misfortune. But then, in the eighties, our governments shifted sharply to the right, and economies were restructured. Governments kept clawing back at social services and programs, at the behest of the multinational bankers and corporate CEO's. Secure union positions were obliterated and gave way to precarious and low-paid contract work. The disappearing social safety net inaugurated an epoch of homelessness, now of biblical proportions. Attracting offshore developers turned land and real estate into bargaining chips and owning a house went from having a home to having equity and investment. The new gold. Naturally, housing costs skyrocketed and now our own city is gradually hollowing out as people on modest and moderate incomes relocate to less costly suburbs, cities, towns or provinces. The only poor who can still live in this city are people like me, who have the good fortune of living in government-subsidized social housing. Poverty ghettos. This is the new apartheid, boys and girls. I have written already about the poor doors in mixed market and social housing developments. The ones paying the full bucks get all the goodies and their poor neighbours have to come and exit through the servants' door. Low and frozen wages is another issue, along with the strident whining of the business community that they cannot afford to pay a living wage to their minimum wage staff. In which case, either give a little more generously from your profit margin or close your business and move! The rest of us shouldn't have to suffer from a crap quality of life due to your greed and selfishness! So, this is our Canadian paradise, and neither Prime Minister Junior on the federal level, nor the premier of this province, nor Mayor Moonbeam here in Vancouver are doing enough to address the need for change. There is also the problem of the NIMBYs in reasonably well-off neighbourhoods resisting social housing developments in their communities because of their own uninformed fear and selfishness. If this city is to become livable again then there is a lot more that we are going to have to do. As a community. First, we have to rediscover community. This city is notoriously lonely, cold, shallow and unwelcoming. We have to see the healing of our wounded and broken humanity as something we need to address here, where we are. Yes, individually we are all to some degree or other wounded and broken, some more visibly than others. But if we are to really begin to heal and to find healing then we are going to have to pull together. There is going to be a lot of opposition, because our cities are populated by selfish and greedy individuals, often from ignorance, some are just sociopathic assholes. Some of them are politicians and CEO's. And obscenely wealthy. Regardless of how much we disagree, regardless of how some of us loathe and hate each other, we have to find ways of communicating and working together. This could be even more difficult than doing diplomacy with North Korea, but we have to start somewhere. Comments please, Gentle Reader?

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 33

Time is of the essence, if we are to make progress for the casualties of our housing crisis. While, admirably, our federal government has come forward with a new national housing strategy, nothing gets set in motion for another two years, giving our homeless two more Canadian winters to have to get through. This is outrageously slow and our Prime Minister Silver-Spoon-In-Mouth, having absolutely no clue what it must be like to have to live in anything less than three homes (or does he live in four?), is probably never going to get it. He is a privileged rich boy who will never understand what it is like to be poor, marginalized, and desperate. Like most of our elected leaders. They don't have a single idea what it's like to be on the margins. Had any of them our kind of lived experience then it is pretty unlikely that they would have made it as far as they have, though from time to time it probably does occur. Still, I don't know of one single politician who has ever had lived experience of homelessness, and or mental illness, and or addiction, though this latter could be a moot point, since alcohol and porn are also every bit as addictive as crack cocaine. But here I digress. No one seems to get that we are living in a huge crisis right now. This is a human rights emergency. All those people sleeping in low barrier shelters and on the streets really should have all had housing yesterday, last week, last month, fifteen years ago! our social fabric is shredded and torn in so many ways. Right now I am hearing something on the radio about people who are alone at Christmas, a huge elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, but after years of nagging the CBC they are for a change doing as I tell them and now they are talking about it. But it isn't just because this city is cliquey and full of narcissists but for one other reason. The social and economic inequality is beginning to resemble Old World Britain and Continental Europe. The aristocracy are the moneyed property owners, and we are the peasants and serfs. And it is the moneyed property owners who are running everything and calling the shots, even in our more progressive political parties. There is going to be a long and hard struggle towards social and economic equality in this country and especially in this rainy offshore paradise called Vancouver. In the meantime, we coexist, though many are leaving this city now because they can no longer afford to live here. We have to keep fighting. I think people need to be educated, that many of the well off folk, especially if they're recent immigrants, really don't have a clue about our social issues, and many don't want to know but this has to be shoved in their faces and we are going to stay in their face and we are going to continue to organize, struggle, resist and fight until we have regained every inch of ground that has been lost to the kind of corporate greed that is swallowing our nation alive and maybe one day we will achieve something that resembles social equality. In the meantime, the struggle. This will make us stronger and this will educate others, especially the young, whose idealism will only be an asset to our moving forward.

Living With Trauma: he Healers, 32

If you happened to read yesterday's post, Gentle Reader, you might sense that I am wrestling at times with despair: that there are people around like that unfortunate woman whom I quoted; that there are so many greedy and selfish people; that so many people hate the poor and marginalized and would rather see us dead than have to spend one precious nickel of their hard-earned wealth for our wellbeing. Neither do these people seem interested in owning up that they partly owe their wealth and success to all the people in the world , like us, they have been able to step on in order to get ahead. Without losers, there are no winners. Neo-Darwinism 101. Even harder to convince people like that that there is a better way of living, that it is actually a good thing to include everyone, that we are not simply disparate individuals but a community of interdependent beings, that none of us could even think of surviving without the others. Marxist revolutionaries of old-Lenin, Mao, Fidel and Che-had the simplistic belief that all you had to do was round them up and shoot them; take them out in the middle of the night, disappear them, exile them to gulags and re-education camps, throw them in prison, torture and shoot them. Fascist despots did the same thing: Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pinochet, etcetera. Want an omelette? Just break a few eggs. Oh, that it was so easy! When I heard famous folk legend, Joan Baez, here in Vancouver doing a benefit concert for Amnesty International (I was but a tender eighteen) and I heard her say that there is no difference between left wing violence and right wing violence, she helped me set my political beliefs in stone. As I have bored you elsewhere on these pages, Gentle Reader, about my opinions of Che Guevara and his murderous conduct, it doesn't really bear repeating here, but suffice to say that bumping off people you dislike or disagree with is no way to conduct a revolution. You have simply turned yourself into the enemy, since when you kill one human being, you have already killed us all. There has to be a better way, but we are going to have to lower our expectations of creating a perfect world, or at least creating a world made in our own perfect image. It will result in a lot of bloodshed, death, misery, oppression and tyranny, then along comes someone else to overthrow the barbarous nonsense that you instituted to replace the old barbarous nonsense with another barbarous nonsense that will in time be laid to rest by yet a future barbarous nonsense. It doesn't really have to work this way. People like the nasty poor-bashing immigrant I wrote about yesterday are going to always be an unfortunate fact of life. Even if they are not going to go away, or shut up, or change, we still have to work around them, with them, through them or in spite of them. They will always be testing our patience much as we will be testing their patience, because we aren't about to go away either, whether homeless people finding housing in their precious neighbourhood or baristas making their latte for minimum wage. Those of us who claim to have ethics have to make the first move, because the ones whose lives are based on fear, hate, greed and selfishness will only further retreat into their bunkers or lash out viciously when we insult them. They need to be continually exposed for the vindictive nonsense they are spouting off, if only to educate the undecided and unlettered. But, as human beings, they must also be handled gently, tenderly and with respect. Yes, Gentle Reader, you read me right. Each one of us has a story, each one of us is a story, and people who hate and fear and marginalize others also are themselves tales that need to be told. We have to find ways to reach across the ideological divide. This doesn't mean that we will be welcomed, neither should we waste too much time when we really ought to be reserving our pearls for worthier swine. A lot of it is about education. If we can continue to successfully reach the young, and future generations, to help them grow into a healthy and full ethical sense, a moral compass, to engender a generation that is kind, compassionate and well-versed in social justice, then I think we will have a head start, despite the nay-saying Neanderthals and right wing morons whose only philosophy and whose only ethic is based on fear of the unknown, fear of change, and the kneejerk instinct of wanting to live through the barrel of a gun.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 31

I would like to open this post with an unfortunate comment made by a very obnoxious person on a news website, and my rebuttal: all these entitled attitudes that you should have your own place and it should be in a good area, clean, convient, comfortable.. if you dont like it then move and leave. its a society of dog eat dog . lol nobody owes you anything and nobody going help you. why would they. if you cant afford it then work harder and get a 2nd job or upgrade yourself to get a better job. whats wtih these people exepecting 15 hour min wage and doing low end job and we all have pitch in and pay for you. forgot about it Like · Reply · Nov 27, 2017 10:34am Aaron Zacharias · With your vicious nasty and hateful mentality, you're the one who should move. We don't need people like you in this city. Leave!!!! I suppose that I shouldn't be particularly proud of my reply, though I still think she had it coming. Yes, the commentator is a woman, though her mentality appears to be totally seeping with toxic masculinity. Her surname is Chinese, and is also a slang English word for penis. Her first name is English and suggests the loveliest month of the year. Her rather halting written English betrays her as an immigrant. Even the well-off moneyed immigrants have help and support when they come here, otherwise they wouldn't have made it. Simply that they would be welcomed here to have a better life for them and their families should imbue them with a sense of gratitude and at least a benevolent attitude towards the less fortunate who were born and raised in this country and who have lived here for generations, and in the case of our First Nations poor, thousands and thousands of years. I am going to assume that the writer of this ignorant comment has had it pretty good since she arrived here from, say, Hong Kong? Her hateful rant, is just that. A hateful rant. She is protesting the building of modular temporary housing for vulnerable homeless adults in her neighbourhood, Marpole. Very convenient for the venting of her hatred against the less fortunate that the housing goes up near two schools. But this person's words don't indicate a concern for the welfare of children, but simply a venting of her hate for people whom she would deem as losers and parasites. Since her experience of life is "dog eat dog", likely thanks to her alleged experience of ultra-capitalist Hong Kong, or wherever. Or, could it be suggested that this is the kind of person she has morphed, or devolved into? A greedy, super-competitive and selfish psychopath who cares not a straw for others and is motivated only by accruing wealth and power. This is the class of immigrant that our previous Conservative government under Harper wanted to attract to this country. Given that there is absolutely no sense of ethic in economics, especially in right wing or supply side economics, no consideration is given about attracting immigrants with ethics, compassion and a good communitarian sympathy. Money, money, money, money, money. While I'm glad to say that this woman isn't typical of all immigrants, there are still plenty like her in this country, and even more people with her lack of ethics and her hatred of the vulnerable who were born and raised here. But for an immigrant to express publicly their hate of poor people who were born here is even worse, because it makes for a particularly nasty optic and others are more likely to paint other immigrant Canadians with the same brush as poor-bashers. If this woman and her ilk are even remotely likely to think before they form an opinion they might learn that this is not an entitled attitude, but that unless a person traumatized by homelessness and poverty has certain supports in place, such as living in their own place, in a safe and decent area they are not likely to do well at even having one job (and some of them are currently working)they are never going to climb out of their hole, recover, find decent employment, training and education, they will never be able to offer their potential for the wellbeing and the betterment not only of themselves but the very society that will benefit from their doing well. We all need one another. This has nothing to do with entitlement, and the mentality of selfish individualism is simply the psychopathic face of capitalism. Likewise this sneering attitude towards minimum wage workers. The person making your latte, cleaning the toilet in your office building, stocking the shelves in your local grocery store, or who works side by side with people struggling with mental illness, has every bit the right to a decent quality of life as you do, you selfish and hateful woman, and denying us a living wage simply means that a lot of us are going to have to leave this city and that you are going to have to make your own latte, clean the toilets in your office building, stock your own grocery shelves, and good luck working with people suffering from mental illness because your ignorant attitude and total lack of compassion for others will simply send them into relapse or cause them to run away screaming or both. Like it or not, Bitch, you need us even more than we need you. Live with it, and shut up, or go live somewhere else.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 30

"Each man kills the thing he loves." Yes, those dreadful words from the song I heard sung by the legendary Jeanne Moreau in the French film Querrelle. This is key to understanding what is wrong with us, because this is the very essence of toxic masculinity. I have seen this over and over again and I have seen this in myself. And you know something else, Gentle Reader? Neither are women immune to this destructive and perverse trait. But regardless of the gender of the person embodying this characteristic, I believe it to be essentially masculine. So, we have throughout history this drama of love and death, love and death again. In Ancient Sumer and other parts of pre-Christian, pre-Muslim Middle East, parents were expected to sacrifice their first born child (usually a son, I think), and bury him under the foundation of their house or the city wall. In Aztec Mexico it was often the strongest and best warriors and prisoners who were sacrificed to the gods. The Aztecs must have lived in a state of chronic and permanent collective anxiety given the perfidiousness of their gods who always seemed poised to pull the plug on the universe if they didn't get enough human sacrifices to satisfy their hunger. I think that this sense of anxious unease is characteristic to our most ancient humanity. Rather than receiving and accepting life as a gift, it seems that our earliest ancestors must have grasped at life as an entitlement that could be snatched away from them at any second. They weren't going to give up that which they could never have given themselves. if they loved anything, it was as possession and food. It was somehow to be disempowered and killed in order to be possessed and eaten. A lover of birds, myself, I have often felt horrified and creeped out, that until very recently, naturalists, ornithologists and bird artists always shot and killed the birds they wanted to draw, paint or study. They didn't seem to think they were doing anything wrong, so embedded in human nature has been this instinct to kill, possess and consume. This of course spills over into our relationships with one another. The stalking male, the abusive boyfriend, the guy who murders his wife, these are all playbacks of this archetypal disease in our human nature. But this does not have to be our destiny and I think that we can confront and reverse in our natures this force of death and destruction. As an old friend said to me once, our huge problem as human beings is that we hate ourselves. I think that knowing and understanding that we hate ourselves is key to overcoming this hatred, of ourselves, and how we project it onto others, thus creating the enemy. Our work as healers begins always with ourselves: recognizing our smallness and our brokenness; accepting that we are not gods; accepting and celebrating that we are weak and small while embracing in a spirit of glad humility every opportunity to grow and improve. Accepting and celebrating life as a gift, not an entitlement, but a beautiful gift from a giver who loves us, who is himself and herself, love. This is a lifelong work, but it has to begin somewhere. Let it begin with me.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 29

I am going to focus today on one particular house I lived in for two years, 2000-2002. It was a crash course in toxic masculinity. No, there were no wild frat parties and no group sex nor mega-belching, fart tricks or dirty jokes on tap. This was even worse. This was a household of low-income and disempowered males, several with mental health issues, I think all of us on some level or other traumatized. I was living with undiagnosed PTSD, was really conflict-averse, and tended to hide in my room when I wasn't out. The kitchen, and one bathroom, were shared between five men, making some interaction a necessary evil. I made a point of being polite and accommodating, a lesson badly learned on my first day. I was waiting for the bathroom twenty minutes that morning with a very full bladder and the fellow occupying it got very angry when I knocked on the door and he yelled at me on his way out. Such a welcoming soul! Being already traumatized from a lot of other stuff, I of course withdrew all the more. The tenant who assumed the role of house dad was a man in his fifties with undisclosed mental health issues. He was quiet, controlling,intense and sometimes very angry. We did chat a bit from time to time but always there was a sense of mutual guardedness, and I quite frankly found this guy frightening, which isn't saying a lot given that, at that time I was afraid of almost everyone. He and another fellow, a recovering alcoholic who worked sporadically, had lived there for around ten years. They hated each other, talked only when absolutely necessary, and otherwise maintained a very cold civility with each other. The recovering alcoholic was quite friendly and more disposed to chat. He was also very judgmental and had nothing but loathing and invective for the two mentally ill individuals living in the house. The fellow who yelled at me about the bathroom was an auto mechanic who seemed chronically angry, though the recovering alcoholic seemed to like him because he didn't have a mental illness. The fellow next door to me upstairs was very mentally ill, reclusive and had a violent temper which I was on occasion on the receiving end of because I made too much noise unlocking my door. Everyone did their own thing and, of course, no one ever ate together. This was a rooming house and the tenants were always handpicked by our Pakistani slumlord, or scumlord, and he of course wasn't at all interested in whether the tenants liked each other or were compatible or not, he was only interested in paying his mortgage and skimming a profit. I am blaming this dysfunctionality in our household on toxic masculinity, rather on poverty or mental illness, and for one simple reason. Not one of those men appeared interested or capable in harnessing the feminine side of their nature. No one communicated, on any level, beyond the necessary and superficial. Each was hobbled by his own sense of independence, each was swallowed up in his isolation, which is a very succinctly masculine behaviour when it comes to dealing with disempowerment. Instead of reaching out and trying to form healthy connections and bonds with other men, each retreats into his personal man-cave, and even more so for having to live together at close quarters. I see this as a primarily cultural problem. Not all men, regardless of their sexual orientation, are going to isolate like this from one another. In North American culture, anyway, with its background in hyper masculinity and rugged individualism, this is a huge problem and among our males anyway, it is creating generation after generation of emotional cripples who happen to pee while standing. I think that had we managed to sideline the Pakistani slumlord, chose our own housemates, balanced the gender ratio by inviting a couple of women into the house, and actually shared some meals together, who knows? We might have ocme into a healthier or at least less dysfunctional environment. I don't think that sex or sexual tension would have been a problem for the simple fact that I had male roommates in that house hitting on me or trying to sexually manipulate me, and none of those guys were out as gay men. Certainly had the men living there had a healthier approach to the feminine side of their nature, and perhaps had I been less frightened and more well at the time in order to be present to help mentor the willing, we might have also pulled together more. Who only knows?

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I have been thinking, Gentle Reader, about toxic masculinity, and the huge havoc this dynamic has wreaked upon our history and our collective wellbeing. Yes, I know, we have largely men (but also not a few women!) to thank for our many advances in our civilization, in culture, the sciences, you name it. Men are largely credited for the development of metallurgy, writing, art, mathematics, astrology, the sciences, religion, languages, architecture, and the science of war (not a good thing, if you must ask), all attributes associated with culture and civilization. The soft sciences and the nurturing, healing arts have long been the province of women, though now these things are employed and applied, shall we say, cross-gender? But men, from prehistory, have always famously abused their testosterone, and war, pillage and murder have drenched our history with our red human blood since the first man killed his brother. This isn't to say that women haven't been equally capable of committing atrocities, but this has long been the dominion of men for the very power and status they have imbued themselves with. This dynamic is changing, though it is still a man's world. Women are making tremendous gains and advances in all avenues of life: politics, the legal and healing and educational professions, business, commerce, sciences and technologies; and men conversely are entering more into traditional women's professions, particularly nursing and early childhood education, though not as many by any stretch. With this growing empowerment of women we are also seeing the disempowerment of men. Not necessarily a bad thing, but, oh, how the mighty are fallen! Men are more likely than women to be unemployed and homeless, now. Instead of rising to the challenge and learning from women, or at least taking cues from women, about changing or modifying some of the more toxic masculine behaviours, we find a lot of men, especially young males, curling up into themselves, isolating, obsessing with the most antisocial activities (online pornography, constant online gaming, online everything), but basically withdrawing and, could I say, pining? Or mourning over their vanishing grip on power? So shameful it is to lose power, position and privilege (sorry about the alliteration but those successive p's can be a delight to pronounce), and so lacking are many young men in healthy male role-modeling and mentoring, they just become depressed, anti-social, nonverbal zombies. They will not emerge out of their parents' basement unless they absolutely have to, even the good-looking ones become complete losers at finding girlfriends, and some of them turn into violent sex-offenders because the suppurating misogyny must be something to write home about it. As a disempowered male myself, I have seen a lot of this around me. First a word about myself: I have managed to avoid almost all of the aforementioned pitfalls, even if I have always been poor and having to deal with some sort of social stigma or other. I owe this partly to my Christian faith, as the sense of God's bolstering and protecting presence benefits me enormously; and also to the fact that I do not identify with conventional masculinity. I have never accepted capitalism, or hierarchy, and I have always identified as androgynous, which is to say neither specifically male or female, but both, and, and neither. However, having made many observations while living and working among other disenfranchised men, I have seen in spades some incredibly self-destructive and antisocial behaviour which can only be ascribed as traditional male dysfunctionality. Men, having been long accustomed to power, are not going to easily relinquish their power, and when it is gradually taken away from them, many are not going to adapt well. Unless they are willing to learn from other disempowered persons. Especially from women. I will explore this idea further tomorrow, Gentle Reader.

Living With Trauma: The Healers, 27

If we are going to produce a generation of healers then there is a lot that we are going to have to change concerning how we perceive gender. I have always been a feminist, even before I knew the word. Unfortunately, my involvement with the fundamentalist Christianity of my teenage Jesus Freak days made this rather difficult. I was surrounded, and influenced by, braindead Biblical literalists who believed firmly everything that Paul the Apostle wrote about women's roles as being subservient to men. I still struggled with this and at the end I had to discard it. When I was twenty-three I was simultaneously living next door to my good friend, a radical lesbian feminist, while attending a radical Mennonite house church where we were exploring feminism and gender roles and equality. Here is what we figured out: that it isn't simply a matter of women having equal rights, equal pay for equal work and having all the opportunities in the world for turning into men with vaginas. Rather, it was men who needed to learn from women, especially to learn how to be human. The issue was less about gender and more about becoming complete and fulfilled human beings. I have never swallowed this fatuous fiction that female political leaders are likely to be kinder and more merciful than their male counterparts. Remember Margaret Thatcher, anyone? Indira Ghandi? Golda Meir? How about Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State and approved the massacres in Libya that took out Gaddafi and created a barbarous chaos where people are being openly bought and sold now in slave markets! (I still would have much preferred seeing her as president instead of that deplorable clown now in the Oval Office! but let's stay on topic, shall we?) It isn't just testosterone that makes us violent. It is position and power. I am not going to oppose equal rights, not even if that equality includes being equally assholes and douchebags between the genders. So, you have women, in the name of equality, breaking the glass ceiling to become every bit as powerful, rich and psychopathic as their male counterparts of the .01 percent. And women in the military? Now, just like their dumbass male counterparts, they also get to kill other human beings who have the misfortune of being the enemy, as well as mindlessly obeying and following the murderous orders of their superiors. It has long been my concern that an authentic feminism has absolutely nothing to do with women turning into men without penises and everything to do with the genders meeting each other halfway. That's right, Gentle Reader. Men need every bit as much, even more so, to become more like women as women need to become more like men. Not entirely. There will always be differences between the genders. Whether this is due to nature, nurture, or both, I would be the last one to know. My own tendency is to believe that gender is a social construct with a minor bit of biological basis and that this gets all twisted and mutated out of shape with the way that children, boys and girls are raised. We are never going to have men who menstruate, except perhaps for transmen, but men definitely have more to learn, and emulate from women than vice versa, if we are to move forward in our healing from collective trauma. I see promising signs of this happening, but we still have a long way to go. We need to get beyond competition and power plays and learn increasingly to focus on cooperation and working collectively and in harmony with one another. That's right, ducks, we are going to have to oppose the very toxic process of capitalism if we are really interested in saving ourselves and our planet. Women hold the key to our healing and it is my hope that as we move more towards full equality that, rather than lose their empathy and compassion, men come to also absorb these qualities so that we can grow, function and celebrate together a healed and restored sense of humanity. I think we might be on our way, but these are baby steps forward and the obstacles ahead of us are formidable. I don't expect to see a lot of change in my lifetime but I am holding out in hope that we will survive long enough to see some strides forward made in future generations. Time is running out.