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My Mother’s Shoes

The first time crippling anxiety assaulted my mind and body at age twenty-nine, I felt super-stimulated by everything going on around me. My mind raced.  I could not follow a radio broadcast, it barreled along too quickly, too much information. No matter how I tried, I could not fall asleep. This continued for seven days before I sought medical care and was forced to take sick leave from my job. Struck by a deep-seated fear that my career was over, I felt bowled over by a sense of shame at my failure to cope. I was convinced my mind was irreparably broken. One evening I labelled the myriad of spices in the rack and organized them alphabetically. It was an attempt to make order out of the chaos I was experiencing inside. 

And so I recognized something familiar in the nearly fifty boxes of shoes, labelled and organized by colour and style, I discovered in my mother’s apartment after she died. It was a work of art, arranged neatly on the shelf above her clothes closet. I understood, because my mother suffered from Alzheimer’s and this organized mass of shoes must have been one way she tried to cope with her own internal chaos as the illness progressed.

Navy sling backs. Red running shoes. Peach coloured sandals. My pertly dressed, not quite five-foot-tall mother always matched her shoes to the outfit she was wearing. Her modest pantsuits, skirts and dresses each had their own carefully chosen footwear. Mostly comfortable, few heels. All a diminutive size five.

What is this pursuit of order, especially when our thinking is disordered? Is it an effort to contain and command the wayward thinking that characterizes mental illness? In my anxious state, I conquered the celery salt, cinnamon and cumin. Classifying her shoes may have brought my mother some serenity, as she traversed a disturbed mental landscape. I certainly hope so.

–30–

Autonomy in the face of scarce resources is a false promise

A shortened version of this piece appeared in The Toronto Star, November 26, 2022.

Autonomy in the face of scarce resources is a false promise

At the moment I most needed acute mental health care, I was lobbing rocks into a bucket in anticipation of drowning myself in a remote, pristine lake. But the line I tied to the pail and to my ankle did not hold and I just bobbed on the surface like a beach ball.

This sorry incident took place some two months after I’d spent six weeks in hospital suffering from severe depression. Although I initially felt optimistic about my discharge, recovery was elusive and certainly not fast enough for my liking. I felt desperate.

I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I eventually found help – a psychologist at the hospital who had known me when I was well agreed to see me again as an out-patient. Together, we worked through some of the issues plaguing me. I regained the will to live. Not everyone is so fortunate.

The lack of available mental health services, the high expense for non-insured psychotherapy and the lack of access in many parts of the country are but a few of the barriers people face in trying to secure competent mental health care.

And now there is another complication to throw into the wash: the possibility of MAID (medical assistance in dying) based solely on mental illness.

At first, I was eager to see the right to die as something people with mental disorders should be able to access on an equal footing with those who suffer from physical illnesses.

I still tend to toward that position, but I want to see safeguards built into the system, standards that protect the most vulnerable. The promise of autonomy in the face of scarce resources is a false promise.

If one can’t access psychotherapy or afford the medications that might help ease one’s suffering, exercising the right to a dignified death is precipitous.

There is a danger that vulnerable people, those without means, may resort to MAID because they can’t afford the necessities of life. Experts indicate that such cases have occurred in Canada.

I know what it can be like in the depths of a depression. One doesn’t believe the gloom will ever lift. It can seem that the world and one’s loved ones would be better off without one’s presence. Neither of these statements is true, but perception is skewed by overwhelming clinical depression. Suffice to say it’s not a great time to make big, life-altering decisions.

What safeguards are needed? Some people just don’t respond to the treatments available. What if they’ve tried everything medicine has on offer? Does that put one in the position of having the right to choose to end it all?

It’s not a decision I would want to rush. I am concerned that by March 17, 2023 the law of the land will permit MAID based solely on mental illness, without a full set of standards to govern cases or specialized training for medical practitioners.

We need to extend the safeguards now in place. Two specialists to assess the individual instead of one, wherein the second physician would rigorously investigate treatment options, would constitute such a cautionary measure. So would lengthening the 90-day waiting period between when one applies and can receive MAID, when death is not foreseeable.

Interestingly, in the Netherlands 90 percent of psychiatric euthanasia cases are not accepted, although raw numbers have increased over the years.

A Quebec government committee studying the issue recommended disallowing MAID based solely on mental illness. Certainly, that is the most cautious route. It bothers me in that scenario, however, that a truly desperate individual who had exhausted all treatment options would not have the right to end their life in a dignified fashion.

I agree with those advocates who maintain that what the patient wants should be supreme, but with the caveat that this right is accessed only once the full slate of care options has been tried.

Finally, MAID must not become a ready alternative for vulnerable people who cannot make ends meet. Many people with serious mental illness are poor, can’t work, have fallen through the cracks. It would be ironic if the one policy that might ‘catch’ them is one that would allow them to kill themselves.

When I stood over that serene lake years ago actively choosing suicide, MAID was not an option. I wouldn’t have been a good candidate for it either. Only two months out of hospital, I was still on my first drug trial. It didn’t turn out to be successful. It took another few months,another drug and intensive counselling, before I fully re-entered the land of the living.

In view of that kind of situation, I would want policy makers to be parsimonious in the granting of MAID – there were still too many unexplored routes to wellness. Recovery takes time.

When recovery is not possible, assuring the judicious application of MAID means improving the accessibility and depth of mental health services in this country. And it means extending the safeguards that exist, before widely granting the right to MAID based solely on mental illness.

  • 30 —

Miriam Edelson is a Toronto writer. Her latest book, The Swirl in My Burl: Essays, is out now.

My book is launched!

In Vancouver on October 11th I was very excited to launch my new book, “The Swirl In My Burl: Essays”. Around twenty people gathered at the beautiful Massy Arts Centre on East Pender St. for a reading and snacks. The book explores five themes: Growing Up, Mental Health, Parenting, Politics and Nature. I read three of the personal essays to a warm response from those gathered. Next stop: Toronto on October 25th, 7 pm at Another Story Bookshop at 315 Roncesvalles.

Soon to be Published!

After many months of waiting, with no communication from Adelaide Books, I have now received and edited the proofs and seen and approved the cover art. It would seem that my collection of essays, The Swirl in My Burl, is going to be published.

The book deals with a variety of subjects, including mental health, parenting, growing up, politics and nature. The essays are accessible and compelling.

I’ve begun to set up readings in various places, so far in Toronto and Vancouver. Please contact me if you wish to set up a reading in your community.

The Kiss

And then he kissed me. He was my grade five teacher, Mr. Woodward. It was not a peck on the cheek, but smack-dab wet on my lips. I was ten years old. I never told anyone.

I had stayed after school to help him clean up. Perhaps he asked me to, I don’t remember. I wiped the chalkboard and placed fresh white chalk on the ledge so it would be ready for the next morning. The air was redolent with fine particles of chalk dust.

My teacher had also taught my older brother a few years earlier. My mother invited Mr. Woodward to dinner, he became a friend of the family. After we moved to Canada from New York, he came to visit and stayed with us for a few days. I remember him sitting at one of the swivel chairs in our avocado-coloured kitchen.

I didn’t tell my parents because it didn’t seem so strange for a teacher to thank me by giving me a kiss. Even though it felt kind of funny, I think it was an innocent kiss. But when I told my daughter and step-daughters about it fifty years later, they thought it constituted sexual assault. Times have changed.

A call to action re the siege of Ottawa, Canada February 2022

Op Ed NOW Magazine Toronto. February 19, 2022. (longer version)

Since when is hot-tubbing with hate groups an acceptable practice in Canada? Like many, I am deeply troubled by these images and the underlying messages they convey. 

After visiting Ottawa and devouring press reports about the protests and the Emergencies Act over the last few weeks, I am concerned by the direction the coverage is taking.  For example, a Globe and Mail article February 16th by James Bradshaw (Banks grapple with new Emergencies Act powers to curb the flow of funds to support blockades) quotes a Canadian in New Zealand who contributed four thousand dollars to the protests who claims she “donated in good faith to a peaceful protest”. 

 

Excuse me, but this attitude is either disingenuous or naïve. There is nothing peaceful about powerful trailer transports sporting swastikas and Confederate flags. Reports of angry men traipsing about Ottawa intimidating residents is hardly peaceable behaviour.

In a similar vein, a security expert on a CBC special broadcast last weekend stated that the protests have been free of violence. Although he might possibly be excused since the seizure of firearms in Coutts Alberta had not yet surfaced, I beg to differ with his rather glib characterization of the protests as “peaceful”.

Peaceful people do not sport swastikas. The violence inherent in the symbols of hate displayed by the convoy and elsewhere is dangerous in and of itself. Confederate flags and Nazi symbols display an underlying hostility to anyone other than white men. They also convey antagonism toward order and good government, when these are precisely the democratic practices most Canadians cherish.

The danger, if coverage remains milquetoast on the question of hate, is that the narrative becomes one of quiet acceptance:  ordinary folk have a right to protest. Of course they do. But many Canadians, from myriad backgrounds, are genuinely appalled by the flaunting of hate symbols and the historical horrors they evoke.

In 1930’s Germany, one did not have be a member of the National Socialist Party to be a supporter of the atrocities committed by the regime. One just had to remain silent, to stand by and do nothing. Silence constituted consent. It still does.

I don’t pretend to know whether bank accounts of our Canadian friend in New Zealand should be frozen. What I do know is that her example suggests the dangerous territory upon which we are now treading.

As accelerationist right wing groups attempt to spark chaos in Canadian society — and police have linked them to the weapons seizure in Alberta — it could be argued they are succeeding.  Just look at the policing situation in Ottawa wherein the oversight board and municipal council are locked in conflict. Can we not learn from the past that this kind of destabilization creates fertile ground for a lack of belief in our institutions and possibly, the rise of fascism?

Relatedly, I’ve heard more than one media commentator quip lightheartedly that ‘a one or two hundred dollar donation is really nothing’. I disagree. Money spent in this way signals more than being ‘fed up’. It signals acceptance of discrimination against racialized people, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ2S? individuals, people with disabilities, First Nations and others. 

If Canada does not want to slip into that territory where we accept swastikas beamed from our television sets while we sit in our living rooms, we need to register our concern.

This is, perhaps, the only silver lining of these protests. The Alt-Right is well organized in this country as the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and others have demonstrated. The tendrils of their organizations have been partially exposed by the coverage of the media and academics they call upon to comment.

I submit it is now time for the rest of us to speak up and, moreover, to organize in civil society – in our communities, our unions, our schools, and our synagogues and churches — to counter the extreme ideas conveyed by these disturbing events.

–30–

Op-ed: #FreedomConvoy and the link between misogyny and white supremacy

Extreme misogyny and white supremacy aren’t just related, they’re entangled – both see increased demands for equality coming at the expense of white privilege

I learned about fascism at my father’s knee. He explained to me that he was not a pacifist because some forces in the world have to be fought. Fascism is one such force. He enlisted to fight in the Second World War because of it. 

He was wounded on a beach in France, earning a Purple Heart from the U.S. Army. My father was not a man who glorified his memories of the war. But he did teach us that like the swastika, the “goose step” march of the Nazis was something to deplore.

Extreme male rage was also a feature of my childhood. In reacting to it, I learned to be vigilant and walk on eggshells around a father who could storm about so as not to provoke his out-of-control behaviour.

And so, as I watched the “Freedom Convoy” roll into Ottawa with Confederate flags and Nazi symbols, I was alarmed and frightened not only as a Jewish person but as a woman. 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “the alt-right is a set of far-right ideologies, groups, and individuals whose core belief is that white identity is under attack.”

Their impact is growing. The views they espouse and their actions are reminiscent of the early seeds of fascism in Nazi Germany, an unsafe place for Jews, women, homosexuals, disabled persons and anyone thought to be different.

While I do not normally walk down the street in fear, now they are not far away and have descended on our seat of government.

The alt-right is not just an American or European phenomenon. There are 6,660 right-wing extremist channels, pages, groups and accounts across social media platforms operating in Canada. They use the internet to construct collective identities that are reinforced and mirrored by others of like mind.

There has been an increasing number of hate crimes in Canada, linked to far-right ideologies that demonize Muslims and Jews, as well as immigrants, Indigenous people, women, LGBTQ communities and other minority groups. The alt-right glorifies misogyny, sexism and racism. The linkages between misogyny and the alt-right are worth exploring.

Extreme misogyny and white supremacy aren’t just analogous, they’re entangled. Both see increased demands for equality, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or the #MeToo movement, as coming at the deadly expense of the privileged group — white people or men. 

Violent extremism can’t be addressed without first dealing with the misogyny in our culture that feeds white supremacy. 

The expression of male rage on the streets of Ottawa evoked strong feelings. Like many, I felt a bodily fear watching the protestors. The protestors in Ottawa have not, so far, erupted into violent action. But there have been many examples of aggressive behaviour reported by Ottawa residents.

We must come together to make the alt-right less attractive to people who feel disenfranchised. A new collective politics must be forged if we are to dismantle and effectively thwart the far-right from gaining further ground now that it has grabbed national attention. The first step is naming this insidious ideology wherever it appears. 

Miriam Edelson is a researcher and writer living in Toronto. The Swirl in my Burl, her forthcoming collection of essays, will be published in April 2022.   

@nowtoronto

I learned about fascism at my father’s knee. He explained to me that he was not a pacifist because some forces in the world have to be fought. Fascism is one such force. He enlisted to fight in the Second World War because of it. 

Extreme male rage was also a feature of my childhood. In reacting to it, I learned to be vigilant and walk on eggshells around a father who could storm about so as not to provoke his out-of-control behaviour.

He was wounded on a beach in France, earning a Purple Heart from the U.S. Army. My father was not a man who glorified his memories of the war. But he did teach us that like the swastika, the “goose step” march of the Nazis was something to deplore.

And so, as I watched the “Freedom Convoy” roll into Ottawa with Confederate flags and Nazi symbols, I was alarmed and frightened not only as a Jewish person but as a woman. 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “the alt-right is a set of far-right ideologies, groups, and individuals whose core belief is that white identity is under attack.”

Their impact is growing. The views they espouse and their actions are reminiscent of the early seeds of fascism in Nazi Germany, an unsafe place for Jews, women, homosexuals, disabled persons and anyone thought to be different.

While I do not normally walk down the street in fear, now they are not far away and have descended on our seat of government.

The alt-right is not just an American or European phenomenon. There are 6,660 right-wing extremist channels, pages, groups and accounts across social media platforms operating in Canada. They use the internet to construct collective identities that are reinforced and mirrored by others of like mind.

There has been an increasing number of hate crimes in Canada, linked to far-right ideologies that demonize Muslims and Jews, as well as immigrants, Indigenous people, women, LGBTQ communities and other minority groups. The alt-right glorifies misogyny, sexism and racism. The linkages between misogyny and the alt-right are worth exploring.

Extreme misogyny and white supremacy aren’t just analogous, they’re entangled. Both see increased demands for equality, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or the #MeToo movement, as coming at the deadly expense of the privileged group — white people or men. 

Violent extremism can’t be addressed without first dealing with the misogyny in our culture that feeds white supremacy. 

The expression of male rage on the streets of Ottawa evoked strong feelings. Like many, I felt a bodily fear watching the protestors. The protestors in Ottawa have not, so far, erupted into violent action. But there have been many examples of aggressive behaviour reported by Ottawa residents.

We must come together to make the alt-right less attractive to people who feel disenfranchised. A new collective politics must be forged if we are to dismantle and effectively thwart the far-right from gaining further ground now that it has grabbed national attention. The first step is naming this insidious ideology wherever it appears. 

Miriam Edelson is a researcher and writer living in Toronto. The Swirl in my Burl, her forthcoming collection of essays, will be published in April 2022.   

@nowtoronto

Bear Alert

It’s mid-afternoon on a cool June day. I am walking in the forest with Bear, my daughter’s dog. He’s a big, black-haired beast of an animal with a sweet disposition. The trees overhang the road, verdant at this time of year. We’re going to walk down to the boat house on the lake. It’s about a 20-minute walk each way.

Bear seems to be in his element. He runs ahead and then comes back to me. At one point, though, he disappears into the forest and doesn’t return. I call for him and walk back a ways, looking for the spot where he might have entered the bush. There’s no one around and I have no idea where he has gone. I am bereft.

I continue calling him, but to no avail. I race back to the cottage where my daughter is sitting and reading. Tearfully, I tell her what has happened. She grabs the keys and we jump into the truck to go and search for Bear. We drive slowly on the road, stopping to look and call his name. Nothing.

We travel the two kilometres to the gate, same drill. Nothing. We continue searching some of the less-travelled roads. Still nothing. By now, my daughter’s boyfriend has joined the search. He takes my car and starts along the forest roads. This continues for about an hour when finally, out of nowhere, Bear appears on the road ahead. He is covered in mud, but otherwise fine.

It’s been an hour of hell. I was imagining that we might never find him in these woods. It’s likely he wouldn’t know the way home.

Suddenly, we see him loping leisurely toward the truck. A prayer answered. But I was angry at him too, and spoke sternly to him. In response, he was completely lackadaisical, having just had a messy adventure we could only imagine.

Dancing Bear

An achingly beautiful dancing polar bear sculpted from a piece of light green serpentine. It is a sight to behold. The white specks in the stone have a slight bluish tint and the entire piece gleams in the sunlight coming through the window. The sculpture  simply radiates joy.

I am sitting quietly in the living room, aware of the beauty that surrounds me. Art of various kinds, ceramics, African and Indian wall hangings, sculpture and paintings. We are fortunate to have such splendour in our midst. The bear keeps me company and lifts my spirits.

It was carved by Joanie Ragee, a young man born in 1986 in Cape Dorset, Nunavut.

He began carving in his early teens, watching his grandfather and uncles at work, all skilled craftspeople. He works in the traditional way; his favourite subject matter are animals – walrus, seals, birds and, most of all, polar bears. His work is now well-known and he is famous for his large polar bear pieces, made out of serpentine.

I try to teach my young grandchildren to appreciate the art in our home. Partly, this is a defensive move, as in, “don’t throw that ball in here, you could break something!” But it’s also to help them attune to what is beautiful in the world and to what might draw them to particular pieces.

Thank you Joanie Ragee for adorning our home with this wonderful, joyful work.