COVID19 in-house Day 35: Marathon

Training for a marathon is fun, but it isn't easy. This time I didn't download a program like I did in 2018 (Fredricton). Neither did I download a bunch of programs and move back and forth and get all frazzled, like I did in 2019 (Edinburgh). I just use my Runkeeper app marathon training program, for someone who can train 7 days a week and wants to finish in around five hours. Easy peasy.

Well, of course, it isn't easy peasy to run 42.195 kilometers without practising for it. So that's what I'm doing. My race got cancelled - Ottawa Marathon - and so I'm going virtual and I plan to run around a mile loop next to my house, 26 times.

It's going to be fun! My family will be hanging out on the porch with water, Nuun, Rekarb maple syrup gels, orange slices and bits of banana. They'll have the music blaring, and they'll take a pic of me every time I pass. The last mile, they're all gonna run with me, even my dog (who's been my running buddy throughout the winter).

I often try to apply my marathon experience to my daily life. If I'm at the cafe and it's 3:30 pm, and we've has a busy day, and I still have a ten k, and I have a mountain of dishes, and we had a bunch of rude customers, I just breathe and imagine I am at mile 20. I know I can run 42 k, so small things shouldn't matter, right? I am luckier than the huge majority of 63 year olds ever anywhere, and I can still run and move and all that.

Of course, this new challenge is a little more complicated. But humans are eternally adaptable, and we are adapting as well as we can to the situation. I see so many people every single day who are fighting against angst and despair, by giving to others, taking care of their own, taking care of themselves, remembering their social responsibility, trying to do good. 

The Covid19 marathon is different: we don't know the distance, we don't know who will DNF, we don't know its rules, the course, we don't have a GPS to tell us the way or volunteers to give us water. The virus has its own rules and only nature knows what the final score will be. Except that nature doesn't actually care. So we, the runners, just have to do our best, put one foot in front of the other, take care, take care. 

My training is going well. I have all the time in the world to run, as I've closed my cafe for now. I'm running faster. Sleep helps. Stress doesn't, and of course I am stressed. When can we open again? What will it be like? How safe can we make our space? But the good thing about running is that part of the deal is you don't give yourself time to think and ponder. The body takes over. 

Some practical tips for training during this time:

• Lower your expectations. Everyone is living with added stress, some more than others. You may find you're needing more sleep, eating differently, and of course if you're an essential worker then - we love you! - you are battling fatigue. While it's usually a great idea to push through in normal times, it may be better when you're trying to stay mentally and physically healthy to ease up a bit on yourself.
• Stay safe!! That computer simulation that went viral had some validity: infected slipstream snot could theoretically reach and infect an unmasked person up to ten meters behind them. ("For walking at 4 km/h a distance of about 5 m leads to no droplets reaching the upper torso of the trailing runner. For running at 14.4 km/h this distance is about 10 m. This implies that if one assumes that 1.5 m is a social distance to be maintained for two people standing still, this value would have to be increased to 5 m or 10 m for slipstream walking fast and slipstream running, respectively, to have a roughly equivalent non-exposure to droplets as two people standing still at 1.5 m distance. This leads to the tentative advice to walkers and cyclists that if they wish to run behind and/or overtake other walkers and runners with regard for social distance, they can do so by moving outside the slipstream into staggered formation when having reached this distance of about 5 m and 10 m for walking fast and running, respectively.") 
• Stay safe!! Don't run trails or neighbourhoods that you would avoid, just so you can run alone. The Covid crisis has already created a huge increase in gender-based violence; women running solo, be aware!
• If you have extra time on your hands, move your schedule around if you feel like it. If you're not feeling the long run, don't do it. This is a time for introspection, change, loosening. 
• Strength training, yoga classes, meditation are all available online if you want to learn some new skills that will keep you running strong.
• Don't dwell on the disappointments. Yip, all our spring and early summer races are cancelled. It sucks. We've lost money. It sucks. Let it go.

I'm planning on running my marathon on May 24, 2020.  For each mile I run, I'm going to ask my friends, family and others to donate a dollar. I have created a campaign to raise money to distribute food in Luwero, Uganda, to the most vulnerable families who cannot eat because of their lockdown restrictions.

I'm asking you all to send me your suggestions: if you have a campaign or a charity that you think is valuable, please let me know! Let's help others, by running around a city block!

COVID19 in-house Day 28: Risky Behaviour

When life hits you sideways with a truck, you get back on your feet as well as you can, make the best of it, or you die. I'm here to tell the story, didn't die yet, and I'm thinking about clever advice I could hand out on the social media.

So I'll tell you this: trauma breeds trauma. 

We're all born into it. Catecholamines are produced, along with cortisol, in both the fetus (and the newborn) and the mother before, during, and after childbirth. These hormones, known popularly as "stress hormones", allow the newborn's body to adjust to the rigors of life on earth. This happens metabolically, whether the baby is born in water, in air, or on a surgical table. Actually, catecholamine levels are higher in babies born vaginally, because those babies are born "physiologically" and have a physiologic reaction to being born, which helps them breathe.

Birth is risky. That doesn't mean we should rush to the hospital and get fixed up with intravenous pipelines if we are giving birth. But it IS risky, for mother and child. Life is too. In fact, the older you get, the higher your chance is that you will die sooner. Of course, parents are usually around to protect the young ones from behaviours or events that are too risky, but they can't be around all the time, and sometimes they just aren't.

I've lived a pretty risky and interesting life, in all sorts of ways, and miraculously I've survived, like that old Timex watch from television commercials a lifetime ago. I must have at least nine lives (there was that time when we were crossing the railway bridge, and the guy with the shotgun... then the year I travelled through Africa solo, oh, and the drug mule thingy...), and I don't know which life I'm on now, but some of my more scary moments are tending to pop up in front of me these days, and I kind of want to wear bubble wrap (but you can't run in bubble wrap!).

In these surreal days, we are faced with mortality: our own, our friends' and loved ones', random strangers'. We are trying to #staysafe. Trying to #stayhealthy. We are told to #stayhome. We are talking about numbers, risks, science, masks, ventilators, viruses, pneumonia, sickness, plagues. We are blaming: the Chinese, Bill Gates, the Jews, Trump, the government. We are all doing our best.

And we're worrying. And as we worry, our stuff is going to rise to the surface. When we are robbed of our busyness and our schedules, we have time for our demons to rise up and confound us. Some of us have tame demons, some of us don't.

My demons decided to haunt me this week, and the only way I could put them at rest was to keep on running. And I don't mean that metaphorically. I started a run streak on December 31, 2019. I run at least a mile a day: so far in 2020 I've run over 400 k. 

When I run, I can feel my body working. I know that I'm alive, I'm good, I'm okay. My lungs are strong because of the mountain air I used to breathe when I wandered in the Rockies. My frame is strong: farm work and five babies helped with that. And thankfully, when I'm running, my mind goes into low power mode and my imagination stops streaming, and my spidery thoughts relax and spin pretty webs.

I'm not suggesting y'all go out and start running - far from it! In fact, I wish y'all would stay home like you used to, so that I can have the sidewalks to myself again. I'm just letting you know - those of you who can't understand why ghosts from the past are haunting you, or why old angers or sadnesses are reliving themselves in your mind, or why you might feel like crying for no reason - I'm letting you know that you are not alone. 

And if you see an old lady with a gnarly look zooming down the road, or down the trail, stay away - she's chasing demons!

COVID19 in-house Day 24: Spiritual Awakening

On my run yesterday I passed a young woman visiting her grandparents. They were tucked up comfortably on lawn chairs just outside their front door. She was sitting on a camping chair on the sidewalk, chatting and visiting with them. A lovely, normal and bizarre sight in the times of the modern plague year.

Here in my household we are preparing for Passover. This is a holiday that has some pretty weird echoes with our situation right now. I'll get back to that. For now, I'll say that all seven of us in our "nuclear" (read "nuclear explosions") family have different religious beliefs, ranging from atheist to secular, to very observant. I sit on the sidelines with my Earth Mama placard and my deep understanding of We as One and my conviction that Nature is a Terrible Beast and somehow tapestried into and with the Divine.

So there we go.

During the Passover Seder, we speak of the Jews' escape from their lives in Egypt to a brave new world across the desert. Themes such as plague, authority, compassion, cleanliness, restrictions, food, mathematics, and freedom enter into the evening, as well as concepts of what childhood means, how we categorize each other and our children, and most of all, Order. The whole evening follows a particular order that has been so since the beginning of the holiday, and we recite it at the beginning of the evening and we move through each step carefully.

Right now, we are living through a time where all of these themes are radically in play. I feel like I am spinning on the knife edge. Plague? We are living it. We have unleashed a plague upon ourselves that is killing many and creating confusion, suffering, and possibly a new order but possibly not.

Authority? Yes, authority is playing a big part in our lives right now. Do we do as the government asks? Do we believe them? Is it right for police to enter your house without a warrant? Who in a household has the right to tell others what to do, if everyone has different ideas about social distancing and hygiene? What do we tell or kids, when we have no control any more?

Compassion! Now is the time above all to be compassionate - to others, but also to ourselves. Ugly thoughts have swam up from my deeps over the past three weeks, I'm sure they've done the same for many. When someone acts with anger right now, try to drape them in light and move on. When you're had enough with yourself and want a break, take a walk outside of your mind and give yourself some compassion. Be compassionate of others; take social responsibility and keep your distance, wear a mask, stay healthy if you can.

Cleanliness! We are ordered to be clean! So before the Passover week we spend weeks cleaning the house, getting rid of breadcrumbs, making our living quarters sparkling clean. And now, even more so, during this pandemic, it is so important to be conscious of cleanliness. Wash your hands, as often as you can. Wipe stuff down, donate money to projects that are providing hand sanitizer and soap to marginalized communities. Don't touch your face, be conscious about what you bring into your house.

Restrictions: During the eight days of Passover, we are not supposed to eat any grain that can be leavened. And we eat Matzah which is a cracker made with flour and no yeast. These restrictions have been made light of, and they've been made heavier, depending on the personality of the people following them, or the religious establishment they belong to. You can actually go so far as to bleach your dentures (a true story) or you can just do a Seder on the first night and ignore it the rest of the time. That's the thing with religious restrictions in a liberal democracy: no one will cut off your head if you don't follow the rules. But actually, if you flagrantly ignore the restrictions put in place around Covid19, then there's a good chance that you and yours will get sick, and maybe even die.
Which is kind of creepy because it begs the question, that religious people might ask, whether following the earthly rules and not dying is more valuable than following the divine rules, getting sick, and dying. Conspiracy theorists also may follow this twisted logic. I figure, like I said a month ago, best to pray to Allah AND tie your damn camel to a tree.

Food! We eat ceremonial foods during the Seder, but we don't actually get to eat our meal until it's over, in our house that's usually around midnight at least. We prepare the food very carefully, washing it well. And of course our menu is completely changed around because we don't eat any grains or seeds. Zero. It's pretty interesting from a cooking point of view, and challenging. Luckily, since we are in stay-at-home mode, we have the wizard chef living in the basement ( his partner is in Italy, living through the plague there). And this year, everyone is cooking and experimenting with how to cook from scratch and make stuff you've been buying for years. Not only that, food and suffering has become a huge problem in places where every meal has to be struggled for. People are hungry, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia, and in your own back yard.

Mathematics? There's a weird couple of pages in the Seder book where we start talking about mathematically how many plagues there actually were the year the Jews escaped from slavery. The echoing across the centuries is bizarre: everyone is reading about statistical this and that: how are we flattening the curve? New cases? Deaths? Which country is better and why? Testing? What percent? Age groups?

And Freedom! Freedom? Where is our freedom? How is our freedom? From an illusion of freedom under advanced capitalism where many of us thought that freedom was about being able to buy stuff and experience stuff, we are being forced to recognize that we don't have any freedom at all, really. Some of us believe that the whole pandemic experience is being used to whittle away at our social freedoms. I don't believe that. I think everyone is scared shitless, and they're all just scrambling.

I do know, however, that my most frightening and scary times were the times when I experienced a sort of freedom, and those moments were the ones when my intense conviction that there is a Creator, there is a purpose, my purpose is love .... when that conviction was born. And giving birth to a deep knowledge is no less painful and ecstatic than giving birth to a human. When I wandered, alone, in the mountains when I was very young, I was afraid, but I also knew that my survival was not in my hands. Was the moose who walked next to me with its calf taking care of me? Possibly. Was anything taking care of me? Possibly not.

I don't know what's going to happen. If I'm going to get sick and die. If we all are (unlikely, says the scientist in me). I'm lucky, I've had a huge life so far. You don't know what's going to happen either, so dig deeper, and find yourself. Give to others, break your rules. Stay home. Stay healthy. Call a friend.

Dive down, people. It's all we have. Love each other. Embrace the tumbling down of all the things you knew to be true. #spreadthelove #freedom

COVID19 in-house Day 22: Birth and Choice

My dear friend Syd reminded me of something the other day when she suggested we all stop talking about "lockdown". Lockdown is something that happens is prisons. It's a scary situation when all of your freedoms are taken away. What we in Canada are living through now, most of us anyway, isn't that. It's scary and several of our taken-for-granted freedoms have been curtailed, but we are not in "lockdown".

I would like to take a minute to think about all the people who have had their lives deeply shaken by this pandemic: some people have lost their lives, others have lost loved ones. Some people's futures are changed beyond recognition, other people's present lives are changing as quickly as thought. In some countries, the biggest risk is starvation because there's no way to get out to get food and no way to make a living. In others, people are struggling to get by on what little they have.

But all of us in this world, together, are living through this historical event, whether we like it or not. We all have to figure out creative ways to live, to rise up to the new challenges we are faced with. Here in Montreal, most of the people I know are staying home, except for the health workers amongst them. Those brave souls are out in the hospitals and clinics, keeping us healthy, providing for the sick, and juggling their own lives and families with the needs of others.

I worked as a birth attendant for twenty years, and I trained doulas for fifteen of those years. One of the qualities I always valued in a student doula was flexibility. If a doula has that quality of making virtue of necessity; if she can take a challenging situation and make the best of it, then I am confident that she will provide the very best care for her clients. It's tough, sometimes, when a client wants her birth to go a certain way, and you as her doula know that it's unlikely that it's going to go that way. It's tough when your client is going to birth in a hospital where you know that the protocols don't "fit" with her beliefs about birth, or when things take a turn and interventions are needed. In these situations, I teach my doula students a few main lessons.

The first one is: when you and your client enter into the hospital, you are entering someone else's home. In the hospital, you don't make the rules. When you're in someone else's "home", you follow their rules. When your client is in labor is not the time to try to change the rules. A birthing woman should not have to spend her labor time battling with her attendants. She should have a realistic idea of what will happen. If she doesn't agree with the rules, then she should make other arrangements.

The second rule is: as the doula, you are there to support your client throughout the journey. In every scenario, with whatever tools you have at your disposal. Again, now is not the time to argue with the medical staff. Now is the time to concentrate on accompanying your client as best as you possibly can, so that their experience will be positive.

The third rule is: love your clients, love the staff, love the birth experience, love the baby. The more love you can spread around, the better.

Two major maternity wards (also here) in Montreal announced this week that because of Covid19, patients giving birth would not be allowed to bring anyone into the birth room. Not a doula, not a partner, not a mother. This has sparked a huge controversy and many people are angry, many are worried about how their birth will unfold, and petitions and news articles are all over the social media.

I do understand how scary it is to give birth alone. I've done it, in a foreign country, and it's not pleasant. (Actually, that's an understatement. It's traumatic and awful. But I didn't have a doula, and I didn't speak the language.) I believe that the maternity care system here in Quebec is broken: it's been broken for a long time - there aren't enough midwives; the laws around midwifery care were badly conceived; the maternity wards are understaffed and overly restrictive. In twenty years, I've heard many, many awful stories about giving birth in Quebec.

But this is the worst time to start to fix it. The worst time to try to change it. The worst time to push against a policy that actually will save lives.

It's a difficult time to give birth. It's a difficult time to stay alive. It's even a difficult time to die, as funerals are restricted. But this is a time when we can use all the resources we have to make our experiences better. So, doulas, I am calling out to you to do your very best work, and prepare your clients with love and compassion so that they can look forward to their birth with joy, and they can enter the hospital knowing that, yes, they will be cared for. The nurses are in fact there to care. You will be FaceTiming them from your home, guiding your client with your voice, letting them know that you love them, that they're doing a great job... using all the skills and creative tools at your disposal in the trying times.

After this is over, let's fight together for decent maternity care! Let's make a note that, yes, maybe hospitals should be for sick people and birth belongs somewhere else. Let's fight for more midwives, for more birthing centres, for an understanding of pregnancy as a normal, healthy event. But let's save that fight for later. For now, let's try to live together, with love. Doulas, be creative! Use your voice to provide support for your clients, where they are.

In these complicated and challenging times, let's pool our resources to work together! Spread the love!

COVID19 in-house Day 17: Do the Right Thing 🇨🇦

This post is all about how we are treating each other, as we all hunker down throughout Canada to weather this storm. I just found out today that eight people I know, including some kids I helped get born, are sick with Covid19. This is real. I hope everyone reading this is staying safe, staying home, spreading the love, and honouring our essential workers.

I run a small vegetarian cafe.  I'm looking forward to retiring, but I'll probably have to work longer than I planned because of this pandemic and the financial fallout that will follow. I attended births for twenty years and I was founder and director of a charity here in Montreal that provided free doula services for marginalized families. We received very little funding: every so often a paying client would donate $500 or so. To clarify, I know I'm very wealthy compared to most of the planet's inhabitants. I also know how to run a charity, and I know how to run a sustainable, successful, and ethical business.

So I am confused about the decision of the Ottawa Marathon to propose only two options following the cancellation of the 2020 race. Those are: 1. run a virtual race and get your bling or 2. get a 50% off next year's race. No refund, no free deferral, no fall race.

Here's why these two options don't work:

1. Let's start with the virtual race option. I registered for the marathon. I'm not training heavily right now, because I don't want to put my body at any risk. I'm keeping my runs at two hours max, which for me means less than 20k. So how would I run a virtual marathon without any training? Also, when would I run it? As soon as this is over I will be working like crazy getting my business back on track, I won't have time to train. And, if I wanted to run a virtual marathon I wouldn't have bothered spending $160.00 to register for the race; I would have just run 42 k around the city.
2. The second option? I don't think anyone would actually pay 150% for a postponed race. Really? You would? 
3. Now let's look at the business side of it. As a small business owner, I also host events and retreats. I have money put down for my retreats in Italy this summer. Guess what? They're not going to happen. I will not be making the money I hoped to make, but you can be sure that the money that I already received as NON REFUNDABLE deposits will be paid back to anyone who asks. Why? Because it's good business to care about your clients. Because then they will be back. And hey! Because we are experiencing a worldwide pandemic and we should treat each other well. 
4. The whole charity argument also confuses me. I'm assuming that the donations are made from the day that registration opens. So I'm assuming that all the donations get put somewhere until the race is over and they get paid out? So I'm guessing Scotiabank has a little stash somewhere of all the donations? And they might be racking up some decent interest? Couldn't that money be used to pay back the registrants?
5. I've only run two marathons so far, and I just checked out what they're doing. The Edinburgh Marathon is also cancelled for May 2020, and they are also receiving a lot of criticism about how they're handling it. The Fredericton Marathon  offers three options: defer for free to 2021; receive a 50% refund; do the virtual race.

Bottom line? The Ottawa Marathon should offer a full refund or a free deferral for all of its registrants. Or, offer an option where we can donate our registration fee to a charity of our choice. It's the right thing to do. We are all in this together. Some of us will get sick, a small percentage of us will die: how isn't the time to make money on the backs of others. We paid money for a product, please do the right thing! 

Stay home. Stay safe. Keep running!

COVID19 in-house Day 14: Tilt

A friend called me today. Her husband ripped the island out of the kitchen floor and threw it at her. Another friend last week was worried about the revolution, the final solution, and the birds. Yet another is working ten hours a week in a busy grocery story because she is worried she will lose her job if she stays home.

I love my friends and worry about them. And my heart is with the people who literally have no where to go, let alone anywhere to wash their hands, and with the women and children who are living with abusers, and with those of us whose reality is too hard to bear.

We are all suffering, but in very different ways. I live in Canada, where our government is acting effectively and compassionately to help the people. We are cooped inside, but our house is large, warm, and we have food. I'm surrounded by people who love me, I have good internet: I can talk to my family, friends and the other people I care about. But still, but still. My world, and your world, has been turned upside down. My cafe is closed, my races are cancelled, my projects are kaput, and ... yes, I'm scared and anxious a lot of the time.

Here are some suggestions for coping with our collective distress. If you are living with someone violent, or you are feeling very sick, or you're in an extreme situation, then you have my love and all my sympathy. These suggestions are for us pansies who are living on the edge, some of us for the first time in our lives. And just to make it very clear, those of you who have informed me that this pandemic is a manmade plot, propaganda, or a message from God, this advice probably isn't for you.

Admit it. You're scared. What can you actively do to make it feel better?

• reduce the scary input. You don't need to read the stories online or on the social media. Assign one person in your household to read and report the important news. Important means that it has an actual effect on your life. If you are the only person in your household, then pick one reliable news source to give you the relevant news and stay away from the rest. Your government health ministry, Harvard, and the WHO are the best sources of real news.
• do your social media apps nourish you or frustrate you? I decided two days ago to ignore Facebook and Twitter, and to keep posting on Instagram. Posts on Facebook were leading me either to anger or despair, and the funny one-liners and friendly posts didn't balance it out. My friends can always find me on all three of the text messaging apps I have, or they can actually call me on any of the four phone apps I have, or send an email. Twitter is even more dangerous for me because my bs-ometer was malfunctioning so I was telling a lot of people they were fuckwits. They might be but it was not my best version.
• practice gratitude. Yes. Just practice being grateful for what you have. It's that easy.

So how can I connect if I'm off Facebook and Twitter, and I don't have my work or my friends or colleagues to hang out with?

• call your people! You can talk on the phone! That's what we did before the internet. 
• make a list of people you care about. Send them a message and find out how they're doing.
• find a virtual something to do, and do it. There are free classes, races, groups, activities, all out there in the virtual world. Get involved!
• if you are talented at something, consider sharing it online. Get creative!

What to do when the inevitable melt-down happens? We have been in house for two weeks now. There are five of us, ranging in age from 18 to 63. Three of us have online school, one teaching, two learning. Two of us have no work. We have had about five meltdowns that I know of so far. My nephew is not used to living in a large loud family that drinks a lot and yells. He's had some adjusting. My two sons are both having to live without seeing their partners. I'm used to being in boy land but sometimes I like to have a woman to hang out with (not the dog). Even thought she is very cute and a great companion, especially these days.

We also have an incontinent, deaf and blind twenty-year old chihuahua and a fish. 

Meltdown suggestions:

• try to avoid them. Don't let stuff get bottled up and ready to explode. Person pick his nose at the table? Tell him nicely not to touch his FUCKING FACE. Seriously, though, we decided that when things feel odd it's probably a good time to have a meeting. We decided that choices about health and safety need to be talked through until a unanimous agreement was reached. This gives everyone the chance to have some control over their life, at least in the limited environments we are living in.
• try to schedule times when each person can be alone and silent. Even if it means that you head to the bathroom with your phone for an hour, alone time has to be respected. Everyone is dealing with their fear.
• if someone seems odd, ask them about it.

If you live alone and you feel like screaming, scream. 

• take a shower or a bath. If you can go out, take a walk or a run. 
• write it down. Call someone. 
• if there's no one, and you can't think of anything to do, then don't do anything. Just lie down and stare at the ceiling. You may want to cry. That's ok. If you were drinking or smoking weed before the quarantine, allow yourself to have a drink or whatever. If you're sober, STAY SOBER! Find a virtual group and stick with it - it could save your life and will certainly save your sense of self-worth.

Meltdown with kids:

For some of us, this is the first time you have actually been in-house for hours and days at a time with your kids. It can be tough, especially when the kids are used to going to school every day. Meltdowns will happen. Older kids may decide they absolutely need to go outside to see their friends. Younger kids will have their regular old meltdowns. Just remember, go easy on them. Home school doesn't have to imitate school. You don't have to achieve at educating your kids at this time. Take the time to be with them, and ease off on expectations. At our house, even though we are all adults, we have fuck-off hour when everyone fucks off and does stuff on their own. Kids can do that too. And getting bored? Part of life! 

Are you, the adult, melting down? Get the older kids to watch the younger ones, or if they're all too small to take care of themselves, put them somewhere safe for a minute and have your meltdown. You'll be fine. You'll survive. You can do hard things. 

Think about it, though, and maybe go deeper into your meltdown and try to discover what stage of grieving you are at.

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance

These are the five stages of grief. Most people who experiences a loss will go through these emotional stages, at different speeds and at different intensities. I was in denial when the pandemic first started. Although as a health care worker I knew that we had to be more careful, I didn't look with open eyes at how bad it actually was. Then when I realized, I acted quickly and became angry. Irritated. I was angry at everyone, pretty much. I felt betrayed and let down. I've just reached the bargaining stage, I think. I've cleaned up a bunch of things in my life, stopped complaining, got rid of the social media, stopped being angry .... and do I want to prize in return? Like life back to normal? Probably.

Practical suggestions: take control of the small things

• if you normally get up at a certain time, try getting up at the same time to keep the rhythm 
• don't stay in your jammies all day unless it makes you feel good. Wear what makes you happy! If you normally wear makeup and jewelry, go for it! And your hair? Well, yeah. I don't know. I look like a racoon right now. Brows ... DIY ... 😐
• if you're stuck at home and you can't do your actual work because its one-on-one, think up something to do that uses those skills. Here's project that a Toronto photographer thought up: Windows. She did all of this from her tiny rural home.
• keep fit! You don't have to run a marathon on your balcony, but you do have to get some exercise. If you're taking care of kids, you will probably keep pretty active. If not, make sure you take some time to move: dance, walk around, find an exercise video online and get moving! 
• if you're ordering in your groceries, make a menu before you order so that you can make different dishes each day. If you don't know how to cook, now's the time to learn! If a dish looks too complicated to make, it probably is. Find an online cooking blog that suits your taste and your level of skill.
• make a schedule for yourself, make a list, make some goals. Is there something you always wanted to do? Something modest, that you can do at home ... sewing, that knitting project you started, singing, writing ... gaming, coding...

The bottom line

I realized something the other day that stopped me in my tracks. I was angry. I was irritated with everyone around me and everyone I was meeting online. I was upset with my kids. I was also pretty annoyed at myself, basically, I thought I was a useless sack of shit.

And then I thought: yes, you could have it. Your throat scratchy? You have a light cough? Maybe. Yes, I could have it. You could have it. Any one of us could have it. Any of us could die at any time, and that is more real than ever before, for the huge majority of us. 

So do I want to live what could be my last days in a cloud of anger and irritability, like a crabby old bitch in her rocking chair? Or do I want to enjoy my life, all of it, right up until the very end?

It's up to you.

COVID19 in-house Day 9: Fuck This

This situation has got me thinking: thinking about all the facades and masks we usually wear. We don't walk around with hospital masks on; we wear our social masks that tell everyone who and what we are. I feel my mask slowly slipping off.

I moved to Montreal from a small organic farm in Umbria, where I had four young sons, hens, ducks, geese, a dog, a cat, a vineyard, a garden, a wheat field, and a busy and productive life. In 1996 I joined a cult (shame, shame) that brought me to Montreal.

Once here, I devoted myself to accompanying mothers through childbirth. I taught prenatal classes, provided support to women in labour, and visited families postpartum. I studied how to be a doula and then how to be a midwife. I started a school that taught the art of doula work. I founded a volunteer organization that provided doula services for free to marginalized women. I probably assisted over 1000 women, one way or another, in their birth experiences. I retired from that work when I realized that working in a broken maternity care system was wreaking a huge emotional toll on me. I was angry all the time. I hated the fucking hospital, and started to hate the women themselves for being such stupid sheep, being led to the operating room to have their babies cut out when they didn't have to be ... and who was the bad guy? Me! Because I didn't somehow prevent it from happening....

And my volunteer organization, well, that suffered too from my anarchist tendencies... we had no structure in place to handle (an inevitable) a sexual assault that happened to two volunteer doulas... and so everyone broke up, traumatized and confused.

But hey! I'm a survivor! So I decided to open a cafe... we would serve healthy food, vegetarian and vegan... good food, like what I used to make on the farm, and we would provide a space where everyone could come and eat, feel safe, be happy, man it was gonna be good!

Good Vibes

And it WAS good! We opened on June 8, 2015. We had some idealistic ideas when we first started,  that we scrapped. We started with sandwiches and soups, that we scrapped. We changed and grew organically based on what worked for our customers. We were doing well enough that I had time to spare to help others. I left for Greece in January 2017 to use my midwifery skills to help the Syrians who were pouring into Greece. The cafe survived without me. And continued to survive, and thrive, until about ten days ago when I decided to close because I know about infections ... clearly I didn't know enough. I had no clue that we would be closed as long as it looks like we will be closed. I had no idea that my cafe would be brought down by a virus. 

I didn't know how much I would miss my sons who are living far away. I miss my friends, especially the ones who are already living through difficult times. I miss my normal life. I miss doing half-marathons and marathons. I miss having small things to worry and complain about.

I don't know what's going to happen. Every time I cough I freak out inside. I worry about myself, my family, my friends, the world. I didn't know how much our lives would be changed, and obviously I don't know how much they will be changed in the future. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't have a foolish belief that Allah will save me if I don't tie the damn camel to the tree tight enough. I hope the rope will hold.