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The isolation, loss, and uncertainty of the pandemic have caused a sharp spike in demand for mental health care, but the system is not providing the help people need.

Chelsea, a 33-year-old part-time CrossFit coach, managed her lifelong anxiety by keeping herself busy and physically active, but the pandemic lockdowns and social distancing measures deprived her of those essential coping mechanisms. Suddenly she found herself alone at home and her anxiety, which had been acting up since 2018, became a serious problem. A resident of Edmonton, Canada, Chelsea tried to find a therapist within the public health-care system who could see her for free or on a sliding scale. But the waiting lists were long, and she was unable to afford a private therapist. She tried BetterHelp, a company that provides web-based therapy, but stopped when she realized she had to pay extra to speak with a therapist via video camera. She also tried a free phone service through the Edmonton municipality, but she needed long-term therapy—not a one-time chat.

Chelsea was on two separate wait lists for over two years but did not receive any updates so, to her frustration, she had no idea when her turn would be. Recently, thanks to a new job with improved benefits, she was finally able to find a therapist in the private system.

Canada’s national health-care system, which, for the most part, is publicly available and funded through contributions from the federal and provincial governments, has been stretched to its limits by the pandemic. But even in better times, before COVID, mental health care was difficult to obtain. The national health-care system places a priority on physical health, with a particular focus on critical and emergency medicine. But now, after two years of extreme stress caused by isolation, unemployment, uncertainty, loss, and increased family responsibilities, the demand for mental health care has spiked.

A recent survey by the Canadian Mental Health Association found that the number of Ontario residents currently seeking mental health care has risen to 24 percent, up from 9 percent in 2020. According to another survey conducted in the fall, about one in five Canadians rated their mental health as “poor,” while half the respondents said they were worried about a lack of access to care.

Dr. Simon Sherry, a clinical psychologist and professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said his waiting list has risen from 150 pre-pandemic to about 450 people today. “In Nova Scotia, poor mental health has become statistically normal,” he said, adding that people with pre-existing conditions are having “an especially rough time.” The pandemic has left them with physical and psychological scars.Dr. Karen Hetherington, a faculty lecturer at McGill’s School of Social Work, agreed with Dr. Sherry, pointing out that “it’s no surprise” to see a decline in the mental health of a person who might have spent months in lockdown in a small apartment during Montreal’s long, dark, frigid winter.

Lyla* is a mental health-care specialist in a Montreal hospital’s outpatient clinic, working with patients suffering from schizophrenia. She has seen many cases of people with severe pre-existing issues experiencing a complete breakdown during the pandemic. “I know some patients that just couldn’t function anymore because everything they had in terms of socialization was taken away from them,” she said.

A global calamity of this scale is a natural vector for a mental health crisis, but those who have worked in mental health care for years are grimly unsurprised that the system failed to respond to the sharp increase in demand. They have been asking for extra support for years, but felt as though they were screaming into a void.

“It’s simply been the case that both the health-care field and public health have focused overwhelmingly on physical health,” said Dr. Nicholas King, a professor at McGill University who is an expert in public health ethics and policy. “So, when you have a major, large-scale event that has a huge impact on mental health, that system for dealing with mental health is obviously going to come under strain.”

Dr. Javeed Sukhera is a pediatric and adolescent psychiatrist and Chair and Chief of Psychiatry at the Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Previously, he lived and worked for a decade in Ontario. Dr. Sukhera trained in New York State, which, he believes “has a pretty decent” mental health care system. “Where I trained, if a young person needs support, regardless of whether they were poor or not, they usually got fairly timely intervention,” he said.  In Canada, by contrast, he encountered “huge obstacles in accessing basic evidence-based psychotherapies” for his patients.

Canadians believe that their system is inherently fairer and more accessible than the one south of the border. But while this is true for physical health care, it is simply not the case for mental health care. In fact, Dr. Sukhera said, “There are many jurisdictions in the U.S. where access to basic evidence-based mental health support is way better than in many parts of Canada. And that’s a difficult piece of truth to recognize and reconcile for Canadians who idealize our system. But my lived experience would say that’s the truth.”

Like health workers more broadly, mental health-care providers have burnt out during the pandemic, with many choosing to quit. Lyla cited a combination of overwork, low pay, and a lack of acknowledgment as the factors driving the resignation among her colleagues in mental health. Now, newly vacant positions are going to inexperienced recent graduates. Lyla said that mental health-care jobs were once desirable and difficult to obtain. But these days she and her colleagues are constantly begging for extra support and left feeling that “the benefits [of staying in the profession] don’t outweigh the risks.”

Noelle* works in youth mental health care at a public clinic in Montreal. She, too, has seen many of her colleagues choosing to leave. The vacant positions are going unfilled, which increases the strain on those who stay, which in turn leads to more burnout and more departures. The problem with the public sector, she said, is the way it’s structured. In the type of clinic in which she works, psychologists are told they have “four months to help the patient and then you have to close the file and move on to somebody else,” she said, adding: “In a private setting, you don’t get that.” The government, she says, “treats people like numbers, like employees. Like the way overtime was mandatory for nurses for a long time. How is someone with children supposed to be working 18 hours in a row?”

Although everyone I spoke with agreed that additional funding for the public system was much needed, Noelle also recommends more funding go into community organizations, such as AMI-Quebec, a non-profit that helps the families of those with mental illness, or Cyprès, which provides direct mental health services to individuals in their community. Dr. Hetherington agrees. In her view, the culture in the public sector is simply too “top down. It has no understanding of the real needs of the population, the clientele. It’s so bureaucratic.”

She also does not believe the public sector can be adequately transformed to meet the needs of those suffering. “You can’t change a culture when it’s such an elephant. Then you need to build new structures that integrate a different culture,” she said. She’d like to see the Quebec government fund new non-profit mental health centers with public money. These centers could then contract directly with community organizations. She hopes that this would allow a new culture to flourish in mental health care.

When we last spoke, however, Dr. Hetherington was feeling newly optimistic about mental health care in Quebec, with the provincial government having recently announced that it would invest $1.2 billion in mental health services. “This is the first time the money is attached to a vision,” she said, with funding for both school and refugee mental health. The plan is also focused on bringing mental health services into the community and sensitizing the community. She confirmed that the pandemic “was a facilitator.”

“What we need,” said Dr. Sherry, “is a fundamental kind of courage from decision-makers and government to actually center people who are suffering when making decisions because they’re politically convenient or politically popular.” Many are still waiting for a public system that is failing to provide care for them. Private therapy “is really not affordable unless you’re making a lot of money,” said Chelsea. Without her new job, she’d still be waiting—along with thousands of others.

*Names have been changed upon request.

[post_title] => A spike in pandemic-related mental illness has overwhelmed Canada's health care system [post_excerpt] => Canadians believe that their system is inherently fairer and more accessible than the one south of the border. But while this is true for physical health care, it is simply not the case for mental health care. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => in-canada-the-pandemic-has-had-a-severe-impact-on-mental-health-but-help-is-elusive [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:14:02 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:14:02 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=3880 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

A spike in pandemic-related mental illness has overwhelmed Canada’s health care system

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    [post_date] => 2021-06-30 22:44:26
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    [post_content] => Living in Berlin, where the obsession with dieting and the pursuit of a perfect body type don't exist, led to a shift in thinking.

Bikini bodies and “hot girl summers”  have been hot topics across social media for the past month or so. Legacy media platforms have been publishing tips for how to lose the weight gained during the sedentary pandemic months, while exercise apps are marketing big discounts to incentivize us to lose weight. I find all this a bit troubling.

Like many other women who grew up in the 1990s, I was brainwashed by an industry that equated healthy with thin—and not today’s thin, but anorexic thin. These were the days of “heroin chic,” of Kate Moss wearing her Calvins below the hip to reveal pubic bones that protruded over her belt loops. My coming-of-age online was at the height of the “pro-ana” madness of the early aughts, and I succumbed to my own disordered habits in college, counting calories in the hope of reaching some absurd “goal weight.”

In the years that followed, my weight fluctuated with moves abroad, job changes, and shifts in eating habits and exercise. In Morocco I was slim, thanks to a vegetable-heavy diet and the fact that I had to walk everywhere. In Boston I joined a gym that I loved and discovered muscles I didn’t know I had. My mind grew healthier, but the culture around me didn’t. The message that there was an ideal body was clear. And though that body changed over time—the heroin chic aesthetic eventually giving way to the slender curves of Gwyneth Paltrow and later the robust curviness, and booty, of Beyoncé—the common denominator was that the ideal body was unattainable.

When I moved to Berlin in my early 30s, my thinking shifted dramatically. Berliners surely have their own ideas of what the perfect body looks like, but the pervasive diet and exercise culture that permeates US society simply doesn’t exist here; nor does the idea that there’s a single, ideal body shape. Going to the sauna, where all genders, ages, and body types mingle—either wrapped in towels or nude—allowed me a glimpse at a much wider range of bodies than I’d ever had the opportunity to see before. And seeing that people here were comfortable with their bodies changed my relationship to my own.

But US culture is pretty inescapable no matter where you are in the world, and for those of us working from home, online at all hours, the pandemic made it even more pervasive. As COVID-19 restrictions began to ease in the US, the talk of “hot girl summer” and the ideal bikini body penetrated my brain’s defenses. Despite all of the progress I’d made over the past decade in how I viewed and cared for my own body, I became increasingly preoccupied with my weight gain.

This is where it’s important to mention the unique circumstances under which I spent most of the pandemic. In 2017, I was diagnosed with a type of chronic leukemia for which the treatment plan is, at first, to “watch and wait.” To those who have experienced acute cancers, this may sound odd, but the logic is that the treatment is often harder on one’s body than the disease, and so it makes sense to wait until treatment becomes utterly necessary.

For me, that moment came just a month before the pandemic. Then, as I began to work with my doctor to make plans for treatment, everything was put on hold for a few months, and I was told to stay at home. 

When summer arrived Germany’s COVID-19 case numbers were low, so we began my treatment. By autumn my health was improving, but the virus was spreading rapidly and the government rolled out strict lockdown measures. Throughout our winter isolation, my body was healing, but my mental health was suffering. To sublimate, I turned to my favorite comfort foods (cheese, baguettes, pizza, and wine among them); and within a few weeks, I gained about 15 pounds. At first it didn’t bother me, but as summer hit with a vengeance and the diet-industrial-complex began its ad campaigns, it (no pun intended) began to weigh on me. I stopped weighing myself years ago and I don’t own a scale, so I judge my body based on how my size eight jeans fit; much to my dismay, they didn’t...at all.

And this is where it was imperative to put to task all of the tools I’d gained over the years, to remind myself that my body had not only survived a once-in-a-lifetime (I hope) pandemic, but had fought off cancer and won. Those extra pounds not only sustained me during a hard winter, but the cheese and wine and chocolate that put them there helped me at the end of long, stressful days stuck at home.

At first it wasn’t easy...but as the rainy spring finally turned to hot vaxxed summer and I began spending more time outdoors—and became more physically active—my mindset began to change. One afternoon shortly after lockdown ended in early June, I met some friends in a park. It was a bright, hot day and I put aside any thoughts of my thighs as I slipped on a favorite pair of short shorts. Later that evening we danced. Our winter-pale thighs jiggled—and not once did I think about mine or compare them to anyone else’s. 

Since the weather warmed, I’ve lost about half the weight without even trying, simply by spending as much time as possible outside and walking and cycling as much as I can. But I have decided that I don’t care anymore. I will go loudly and proudly into my vaxxed girl summer wearing whatever I feel like, not giving a second thought to whether my body fits the advertising industry’s definition of a “bikini body.” And I will be encouraging my friends to do the same.
    [post_title] => How I got over the anxiety of my pandemic weight gain and even had fun
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How I got over the anxiety of my pandemic weight gain and even had fun

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    [post_date] => 2021-06-17 18:24:09
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    [post_content] => Patients and therapists have suffered from the pandemic, but some have benefited.

Aleena* was halfway through a series of cognitive behavioural therapy sessions at a small NHS clinic in London, where she was finishing her last year of university, when the pandemic forced her to travel back to her hometown in Pakistan. Now she has to sneak off to her bedroom for sessions that, due to the time difference, interrupt her day. The sudden changes in her routine caused a definite setback, with her weekly mood chart showing significantly elevated signs of depression and anxiety.

The impact of the pandemic on mental health has been the subject of much discussion. But more needs to be done to address the needs of those who saw their therapy disrupted by a sudden change in daily routine and geographical location. Like the pandemic, the interruption in access to mental healthcare is a global problem. Aleena has not been able to return to the routines that had started working for her.  She worries that she never will.

Some have had better experiences in navigating a more flexible, hybrid work-life balance that brings together online work and in person experiences. Dr Becky Clark, a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist based in New York, said that some of her patients benefited from flexible scheduling and the convenience of remote therapy. 

Dr. Naomi Graham is an occupational therapist and founder of Growing Hope, a Christian charity based in London that provides free services for children with special needs, including therapy. By working with families and school services, the charity created successful hybrid models that have worked for their patients. They expect more families to come in for help as the pandemic’s toll on mental health continues to grow. For families isolated from support networks while living with digital poverty, the pandemic has been particularly difficult, said Dr. Graham, noting that "not everyone has been able to move online the same way."

For some, digital poverty means being unable to afford phones, tablets, computers or the monthly cost of an internet service provider. For others, particularly older people, it manifests in a lack of internet skills. For these reasons, Dr. Clark said, many of her patients had decided to wait out the pandemic and return when in person therapy was possible.

Cultural contexts and experiences vary, but the need for good, consistent mental healthcare remains constant. Even without the complications of the pandemic, therapy still remains a sensitive, and in some cases even taboo, topic. Now it’s become a double edged sword—need is increasing, but access and availability are more complicated than ever.

Dr. Clark said that her experiences with online therapy has varied greatly from patient to patient. An additional challenge for those in the United States is the constantly changing and often confusing status of federal and state regulations governing teletherapy. This has been an issue for people who had been seeing a therapist in one state but were sheltering in place in another. 

Angela, a recent high school graduate in Canada, was one of those who managed to continue with her therapy sessions, but she says online therapy came with its own challenges—chiefly, a loss of privacy and fear of being overheard. This, she said “...significantly impacted the quality” of her sessions.

For those who are in therapy to deal with domestic problems, a therapist’s office can be a safe haven. Switching to home sessions often means that young people like Angela find themselves self censoring for fear of being overheard. According to digital privacy expert Jo O’Reilly, “this type of environmental privacy concern is something that patients and therapists must discuss to ensure that sessions are carried out in as much seclusion and privacy as possible, using headphones, or code words when required.”

But these adjustments are not always sufficient for many, particularly for those in the most difficult and precarious domestic situations. 

Palwasha lives in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan. She has been in therapy for both depression and grief counselling for more than four years and was already familiar with online sessions, since her therapist is based in Islamabad, which is over two-and-a-half hours away by car. But being unable to visit Islamabad at all during lockdown— previously she had visited as frequently as once a week when needed—made therapy that much more difficult. “In person [therapy] is much better because it allows you to leave home and come out of your shell. This is especially important for someone like me who feels trapped by her circumstances and is a survivor of domestic abuse. COVID has been particularly hard for me,” she said. 

Therapists have also suffered. According to Dr. Clark, many of her colleagues chose to close their practice, while those  who stuck it out, as she did, have been paying full rent for empty clinics. The reliance on digital communication has also had a negative impact on her own mental health. “Extended meetings can cause physical and mental fatigue from sitting and working on a computer screen for five to eight hours per day with patients,” she said. She misses the intimacy of in-person therapy, adding: “Nonverbal cues are [more] limited online than in person.” 

Unsurprisingly, patients and therapists in countries where the pandemic has subsided somewhat have celebrated the return to in-person sessions. After six months of teletherapy, Angela was in her comfort zone, opening up and connecting in her therapist’s office in ways she hadn’t been able to online.

Others have observed an upside to online therapy. Dr. Graham of Growing Hope explained that certain children, particularly those with special needs, have actually responded better to remote therapy sessions from home. For these children, “online therapy meant they were in their home environment which made them feel safer and more comfortable.” While they still prefer in-person sessions, she and her fellow therapists are now planning to be more flexible, adjusting to the use of online therapy for those who prefer it, even as their clinics have started re-opening. 

Jen, whose autistic son is non-verbal, decided for his safety to continue with at-home therapy through Growing Hope. “Although this was the right decision, it was really hard for Jen having to care for her son 24/7 without any support,” said Dr. Graham. But it was during those online sessions that her son learned to eat with a spoon unaided. Growing Hope stayed in touch virtually with the young boy’s school as it reopened, which made his transition back to the classroom much easier. By managing the boy’s therapy and relationship with his school online, Jen and Growing Hope opened productive new avenues to help him. 

The past 15 months have provided some positive lessons. “We have seen that digital support can be beneficial, but we also know it doesn’t work for everybody. We want to first and foremost tailor our therapy to what the individual and their family needs,” said Dr. Graham. As patients return to in-office sessions, it’s important that these more flexible arrangements become better defined and that patients are kept informed of their options, whether they be in-person or remote. Now they must begin the work of healing from the trauma of the pandemic year.

*All the patients’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.

 
    [post_title] => Now comes the mental health pandemic
    [post_excerpt] => For many struggling with mental illness, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated their condition by disrupting in-person therapy.
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Now comes the mental health pandemic

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    [post_content] => A university professor, a funeral director and a pastor on how the pandemic changed them.

It’s been 14 months since we began to cope with the worst pandemic in a century, confronted daily by mortality, seeing every stranger—even our loved ones— as a potential vector of a lethal and terrifying disease.

Inevitably, we are emerging from this terrible year as changed people. Some of us have seen our lives transformed in ways we could never have imagined or predicted. Some have grown tougher and stronger while others find they have become much gentler with themselves and with others.

Kari Northey, a funeral director in Michigan, saw her life transform radically , both personally and professionally. She faced the challenge of doing her work safely, which includes embalming, though she had insufficient PPE. She had to fight for vaccines because the government did not consider her and her staff sufficiently essential, and she even struggled with a lack of available caskets.

Like many healthcare workers, she also faced the daily “moral injury” of being unable to honor her vocation and comfort her many grieving clients.

“As funeral professionals we are in a “yes” position,” she said. “Yes, we want you to see your loved one, have a funeral, celebrate their life, spend time with them, gather with friends, follow your heart to caring for your loved one, all which prepares your mind and soul to grieve and begin life without them.”

The pandemic made it impossible to gather with friends to mourn and to celebrate the life of the deceased. The bereaved could not participate in the comfort of mourning rituals.

Missing words “to say goodbye in a healthy way,” she said, adding: “The one that hurt the most to have to say was: ‘No, you cannot see your loved one again.’

“I fear how much unhealthy grief our world will be working through for the next many years.”

Home schooling her two young daughters gave Northey more time with them, but the year also brought divorce.

“It took some work to find the joys in the added time with the girls, but the longer snuggles and quiet moments were a bonus and benefit,” she said. “I was given a million more beautiful moments with my children. Those many added moments gave a solid foundation to my girls to get them ready for what was coming with their changing family.”

Until the pandemic hit, Amy Sterner Nelson spent most of her time building The Riveter, co-working sites in six states, and traveling constantly for her burgeoning business. So did her husband, a real estate developer. Their busy life was only possible because she employed two caregivers, in addition to the help her mother-in-law provided in caring for her three children, ages six, four, three and one.

“Before the pandemic started, one of us was traveling every week for work,” she said. “We lost our caretakers and schools shut. All of a sudden, our life was totally different. I was with the kids a lot more. I put them to bed, I get them up. I know their rhythms a lot more. I realized I missed part of my children’s lives. I didn’t see them play. I didn’t laugh as much or see their creativity.”

It’s been a sobering realization. “I don’t think I’ll ever travel as much [after the pandemic],” she said. “This has taught me to be present in a different way. I play with them now! I have the energy now.”

COVID-19 wreaked a special form of havoc in communities of color. Reverend-Doctor Jean Robinson-Casey, pastor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Christian Church in Reston, Virginia, presides over a 175-member congregation that is 95 percent Black.

“I think it’s changed our community because we have more than one epidemic at the same time,” she said. “Racism has been going on for years, and so for our people it’s been a double issue. What I had to do is lift my game and be creative.” She held an interfaith service last summer with Catholic, Unitarian, Baptist, Jewish and Episcopal members. “After that, we did a ‘get out the vote’ program. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been fruitful for us.”

“The leaders of the church have been galvanized as well, even though it was difficult. We were also right in the middle of back-to-back slaughters of young people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Everyone’s tired! We’ve been tired for decades.”

What keeps Reverend Robinson-Casey going? “God is with us every step of the way. He has never left us. And I have faith in those I plant around me, not just my own church.”

In the years he’s been teaching sociology at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, to undergrads and graduate students, Kevin Shafer always prided himself on being a bit of a hardass. The pandemic’s effects on his students have radically changed him and his teaching.

“I’ve totally given up on that,” he says, of his former rigidity in dealing with his students. “It has no value. As I’ve watched my students struggling with their mental health, I now try to do everything in my power to help them achieve academic success. I have the ability to help them achieve those goals and desires.”

Part of the change was his own willingness to be more open and vulnerable with his students. He wrote them a personal letter detailing his own struggles to manage the stress he felt while teaching remotely and parenting four children ages 12, 10, eight and six.

“When all hell broke loose [with COVID] I realized I have a lot of flexibility in my life and my students don’t. Their lives are much less stable than mine,” he said. Some of his students got COVID, some were hospitalized, and some are now asthmatic as a result. He also realized how intimidating and limiting standard office hours were and plans to hold them by Zoom from now on—even after a return to in-person teaching.

Shafer, who is Canadian, also admits to a deep weariness and disillusionment with how selfishly so many have behaved during the pandemic, nonchalantly infecting and possibly even killing others.

“I do think Canadians are raised with more communitarian sensibilities than Americans are. It’s our mentality of ‘we’re in this thing together’ so seeing this sort of individualism is so moronic!”

“The $64,000 question for me is in what way will I go back to what I used to be? What will I change?”

 
    [post_title] => 'No, you cannot say goodbye to your loved one': processing the pandemic year
    [post_excerpt] => Inevitably, we are emerging from this terrible year as changed people. Some of us have seen our lives transformed in ways we could never have imagined or predicted. 
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‘No, you cannot say goodbye to your loved one’: processing the pandemic year

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    [post_content] => In which the writer reflects with guarded optimism on a deeply traumatic year. 

April Fools’ Day has always been an idiotic quasi-holiday, offering some people an opportunity to pull pranks and others the chance to observe them–mostly by scrolling through Twitter to see which corporations embarrassed themselves the most with misguided attempts at humor (see: Duolingo’s announcement about a new line of educational toilet paper or Budweiser’s anchovy-pizza seltzer.) But for me, the context and significance of April 1 turned in on itself this year, a house of mirrors. April Fools’ Day is now serious business, a day of joy and gratitude, hope and rebirth.

On April 1, 2020, I drove with my son to the hospital 20 minutes away to retrieve my husband. Josh had been admitted to the ICU two weeks earlier and hooked up to a ventilator before making a miraculous recovery. As AJ and I pulled up into the circular driveway, the entire staff was outside clapping and cheering for Josh, who was being pushed in a wheelchair by a nurse because he could barely walk. 



We know a lot about the coronavirus now, but back then, everybody was flying blind. Josh was the first Covid patient at this particular hospital. Misinformation, often coming from the highest levels of our government, was rampant. As Josh got sicker and sicker, the President of the United States was telling the American public to “Just stay calm. It will go away.” By the end of April, he was encouraging people to inject bleach. The pulmonologist thought there was a 70 percent chance Josh wouldn’t make it. Nobody had any idea if he would experience long-term effects following his hospitalization. So far, he hasn’t. 

If someone had told me last year that by this time in 2021 Josh and I would be fully vaccinated and starting to plan our reintegration into society, I would have sent you one of those Brady Bunch “Sure, Jan” GIFs. But look at us, two Pfizer vaccine doses in each of our arms, blessed with good health, a network of supportive friends and family and access to my parents’ house outside of New York City. We go on long nature walks and appreciate silence, the beauty of simplicity: a sunset, tall trees, birds chirping, the frenetic energy of our dog when she sees a squirrel. I try to receive every day as a gift, thinking, There but for the grace of God go I and all that (even though I’m an atheist.)  

Yet, the week leading up to this moment felt precarious, as if we were being haunted by ghosts, reliving last year’s trauma. Psychologists call this “the anniversary effect,” a phenomenon I first heard about, fittingly, while watching the horror series “Stranger Things” on Netflix. As the one-year anniversary of Josh’s recovery approached, he felt ready to revisit the notes he wrote to himself on his phone when he was in the hospital–before and after he was intubated–and showed them to me for the first time. “Rachel and AJ waving goodbye. Saying they loved me. There were a bunch of other people and vehicles on the street. Escorts?” he wrote on March 20, 2020. I vividly remembered the EMTs that day in their white hazmat gear, carrying Josh out to the ambulance as he gasped for air. The following day, Josh wrote in his notes that he was “doing what needed to be done” to give himself the best chance of seeing us again. When I read that, I felt that muscle memory of the panic, the fight-or-flight mode in which my body existed for that entire two-week period he was away from us, in his own version of the Upside Down. And we’re not out of the woods yet.  

I am one of the estimated 2.3 million women who have been pushed out of the workforce as a consequence of the pandemic—possibly permanently, but who the hell knows. That’s not to say I haven’t been working. I’ve just been doing the arduous but unpaid labor of being a housewife—cooking, cleaning, homeschooling—while my husband works full time from a makeshift home office. To be sure, some elements of our new arrangement have been delightful, like having dinner together every night, discovering the joy of cooking and embracing activities like watercolor painting, which I hadn’t done in 20 years. There are sparks of joy in the small quotidian details of our home life. At the same time, I’m acutely aware that the only reason I am able to revel in these precious moments is because I am not constantly worried that one illness will hurl me into bankruptcy. 

When Josh got out of the hospital, we received a bill for $208,000, the overwhelming majority of which was covered by his employer-backed healthcare plan. (Allegedly, the federal government would have paid for these expenses if we were uninsured, but I suspect we’d still be locked in an ongoing back-and-forth with the hospital’s billing department, like the woman who was billed $52,000 for an out-of-network emergency helicopter ride.) More alarming still is thinking about the counterfactual universe—the universe where Josh didn’t survive—in which I would have become not just a widow, but an unemployed and uninsured single mother, right at the moment I needed healthcare support the most. All because I do not have a job. Due to circumstances beyond my control. This is unacceptable, denying human dignity to people who can’t work, and of course it has always been unacceptable. The coronavirus, if nothing else, has laid bare the hypocrisy of a nation founded on the principles of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without considering that healthcare is a prerequisite for any of those things. 

There has been so much suffering this past year. 530,000 deaths. 20 million job losses. 8 million Americans sinking into poverty. On the same day Josh got out of the hospital last year, one of my oldest friends said goodbye to her father, who was intubated the day after Josh was. We texted each other back and forth through the horrors of those days. Her father was the first of many people I know who didn’t make it. This anniversary has been very hard for her family. 

When people check in to see how we’re doing, I don’t know what to say. I’m fine, mostly. Because of my good fortune, I sometimes don’t feel like I’m entitled to be unhappy. But I also know—thanks to my therapist who is covered by my healthcare plan—that delegitimizing suffering because others have had it worse is not a constructive way to experience the world. I’ve been thinking a lot about the distinction between privilege, which exists in relation to others, and suffering, which feels absolute, solitary, and all-consuming. The only way through it is to feel it. 

[caption id="attachment_2442" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Rachel Dodes with her husband and son.[/caption]

My seven-year-old son shook me awake early in the morning on April Fools’ Day; I was screaming in my sleep. In my dream, a swarm of live bats were flapping their wings in my face, alighting on my hands. One need not be named Sigmund Freud to decode this obvious Covid anxiety dream, reflecting a truth I’ve learned to appreciate over the course of this pandemic: how deeply interdependent we are, not just with other humans, but with the entire natural world. People, bats, pangolins–all tangled in a web of destiny. If we don’t redouble our efforts to be prepared when the next pandemic inevitably rears its head, “we are finished,” warned Jane Goodall last year, speaking at an online environmental conference. “We can’t go on very much longer like this.”

As the trees begin to bloom, and the birds fly home, I am feeling hints of optimism. We’re alive. We’re vaccinated. We should celebrate. Josh asked me if I wanted to mark our one-year milestone by dining at an actual restaurant for the first time since February 2020. Of course I did. This was a very exciting development. But the joke was on us: It was freezing cold on April 1, too cold to be outside, a symbolic reminder that things are still far from being “normal,” and in fact may never be again. 

But that’s OK. Because what we settled for before as “normal” wasn’t nearly good enough. 
    [post_title] => April Fools' Day in the year of the plague
    [post_excerpt] => On April 1, 2020, Rachel Dodes brought her husband home from the hospital. He had been in the ICU two weeks earlier with COVID-19, hooked up to a ventilator and given low odds for surviving. One year later, she takes stock and wonders if things will ever be ‘normal’ again.

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April Fools’ Day in the year of the plague

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    [post_content] => Four years of Trump will leave some bruises, but we can own them.

The most dangerous time in an abusive relationship comes when the victim tries to leave. If you recognize President Donald Trump’s relationship with American democracy as an abusive one—and the comparison to domestic abuse is certainly popular—then you can imagine how destructive the two-month transition period to a Biden presidency is going to be.

Every abuser has enablers. In Trump’s case, they are powerful Republicans using his lame duck period for their own selfish gains: these include Mike Pompeo, who is clearly eyeing a 2024 run, and is courting Trump’s base with little “jokes” about “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” even after Joe Biden’s decisive win; or Mitch McConnell, who is supporting Trump’s refusal to concede because the president remains a useful tool for him to wield against the Democrats. This is not a coup, but it’s still destructive and dangerous. By trying to convince the public that he didn’t lose the election, Trump and his enablers are eroding the public’s already shaky trust in U.S. institutions; worse, this is happening in the midst of a pandemic and a financial crisis, which further exacerbate the country’s black mood.

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, I wrote about my experience of working for a pathological narcissist and how it taught me to recognize and predict Donald Trump’s behavior patterns.  One way the editor I worked for manipulated and punished writers who displeased him was purposely to leave errors he could have fixed in their pieces, and then use those errors to attack them. This made no sense: by publishing texts with errors, the man in charge was ultimately damaging his own credibility. But narcissists don’t see things that way. Every situation is about the narcissist and not the organization to which they belong, or which they represent. This is why Trump will try, as his psychologist niece Mary Trump is predicting, to “burn it all down” before he is forced to leave the Oval Office on January 20. A narcissist does not feel beholden to any office, even if it’s the highest office in the most powerful nation in the world. A narcissist is only beholden to a fragile ego. 

By firing officials like Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, pushing out senior advisors like acting undersecretary of defense James Anderson, and threatening to sack any staffer who looks for a new job or shows support for outgoing officials, Trump is demonstrating narcissistic rage in full bloom. The Republicans in power are going along with Trump, partly because they obviously don’t believe the Democratic party will deliver any kind of repercussions for their craven, destructive behavior.

If you’re upset about what’s going on, that’s good! You ought to be! It’s an upsetting situation. 

At  the same time, there are useful and useless ways of being upset. You’re not helping anyone, including yourself, if you allow this situation to beat you down. Remember, one of the abuser’s most salient goals is to create chaos and to exhaust you. Don’t let Trump do this to you.

Second, we shouldn’t treat Trump as a dictator. He is not. I would argue that he has exposed just how vulnerable the United States is to the rise of a dictatorship. But treating Trump as a dictator can only create a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Instead, Donald Trump is an aspiring dictator who wants to tear the country apart. This is why it’s important to have dialogue — but not the fluffy, “let’s understand the violent racists who gleefully voted for Trump” kind. Rather, we need to have a serious, grounded conversation about our political realities with people we can actually reach. 

It is easy to succumb to dismay and despair with the knowledge that 70 million voters cast their ballots for Trump. But despair is a luxury and dismay is counter-productive. We must internalize the understanding that our society is sharply divided over the pandemic response; that we have different psychological models for engaging leadership; that we are drowning in disinformation; and that the vast majority of white evangelical Christians support Trump not despite his racism,  misogyny and authoritarianism, but because those characteristics reflect their own worldview.  Remember, instead, that voter turnout was at historically high levels for this election, with an enormous grassroots organizing effort bearing fruit with significant early voting that flipped red states blue and won Joe Biden the presidency. Yes, there are unsavory political realities on the ground; but rather than be discouraged, we should categorize and prioritize them right now. You might not be able to change the mind of a Nazi who loves Trump, but you can certainly engage with and combat disinformation.

Now is the time to hold our elected leaders to account. Political battlegrounds are important too — which is why we should look to Georgia, where former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams built a grassroots effort to register more than 800,000 voters who were primarily Black, Asian, and Latinx. Her success, and the historic voter turnout for the Biden/Harris ticket, show the power of organizing, and of positive messaging. All three candidates emphasized the power of the individual and community to effect change, and the importance of compassion. This is clearly what a tired, angry populace needed to hear.

History holds important lessons for this moment. In Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar, authors Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni paint a vivid picture of Cato the Younger, a follower of stoicism who fought against corruption brought on by wealth and empire; and against both Pompey and Caesar, as each man struggled to control Rome. This narrative should sound familiar. Yet even as Trump tries to hold onto the presidency in order to avoid being prosecuted for his debts—echoing Caesar’s own financial troubles—we should remember that Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar. On the other hand, Cato’s rigid idealism is a cautionary tale for Americans in that it shows how refusal to compromise can help bring an entire republic crashing down. For all his inspiring integrity, Cato’s life comes with its own warnings. 

The lesson is this: like Cato, we should retain our principles; but unlike Cato, we should be cognizant of realities with which we live. Yes, the United States is a messed-up country, but it’s our country. We’re not going to recover from Trump without bruises, but we can own those bruises. We shouldn’t entertain illusions about life simply going back to normal with the Biden administration, but we can draw valuable lessons from the Trump era going forward. Surviving an abuser has its own advantages, as I know personally. The experience makes one stronger and wiser. After four years of abuse at the hands of Donald Trump, you will never lose your ability to identify a malignant narcissist.
    [post_title] => How to survive Trumpism and even laugh
    [post_excerpt] => Remember, one of the abuser’s most salient goals is to create chaos and to exhaust you. Don’t let Trump do this to you.
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How to survive Trumpism and even laugh

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    [post_content] => The balance between a commitment to free speech and a means of preventing online abuse is elusive.

A few weeks ago, while scrolling Twitter, I came across a brewing controversy about the Netflix film Cuties, about a young girl from a conservative Muslim family in a Parisian banlieue who becomes involved with a dance crew. While director Maïmouna Doucouré—who is French-Senagalese just like the film’s protagonist—has said that the film is “sounding an alarm” about the all-too-early sexualization of girls (partly) through social media, its critics—many of whom seemed not to have seen the film—immediately objected, essentially accusing Doucouré of creating softcore porn and petitioning for the film to be removed.

Janice Turner, a columnist for The Times who is known for her “gender critical” stance, wrote a particularly scathing review of the film. In it, she conflated Cuties with the work of a charity that had, weeks earlier, put out a call for queer black youth in the U.K. to respond to a survey asking about their age, sexuality, location, and vulnerability of housing. The call, claimed Turner, violated safeguards intended to protect children’s privacy.

Turner’s critics, myself included, saw the piece as an attempt to paint the charity as sexualizing children. The sub-hed of her column stated so plainly: “Attempts to sexualise minors are always wrong but a vocal minority of gay campaigners twist concern into prejudice.”

I tweeted at Turner, accusing her of seeing sexualization where it didn’t exist, but she refused to engage on that point, repeatedly deflecting and implying that I didn’t care about safeguarding. I gave up shortly thereafter, but her followers did not: For hours after our brief exchange, they attacked me from just about every angle you can imagine.

There was a handful of reasonable comments that brought up the issue of safeguarding, but most were overtly transphobic: My attackers denied the existence of trans individuals, stated that children have no conception of gender, and implied those who are trans are simply insane. One person called me “batshit crazy,” while another accused me of having told trans people that “suicide is their only alternative to life-limiting drugs.”

Later, when I tweeted about the controversy around Cuties, one of Turner’s lackeys assumed I was a trans woman (presumably because I include “she/her” pronouns in my bio, which is a simple reflection of my gender identity) and began harassing me, calling me a man. Then that person’s followers began harassing me, in public and in DMs. I closed my laptop and curled up with a book.

***

This was not my first experience with online harassment. I am, after all, a woman on the internet—and a public one at that. Public critique for my political views (most often fair) has sometimes resulted in brigading by the critic's followers; I’ve at times spent entire weekends offline, avoiding Twitter and waiting for the controversy to blow over, as it almost always does. But this was different. For the first time, I experienced firsthand the kind of outrageous abuse that seems to follow transgender individuals wherever they go online. The next day, I logged back in and tweeted about my experience: “Someone on this hellsite mistook me for a trans woman last night and I got brigaded for a bit (thank you, block button), and holy shit I don't know how y'all deal with that all the time what the fuck.” That tweet received nearly 2,500 likes and retweets and dozens of comments both public and private. Trans followers confirmed that my one-off experience was their daily reality. One person called it “living in hell.” Others shared their tactics (“block early, block often”) and their solidarity. I was in the midst of finishing the final edits on a book that covers a number of issues related to free speech and social media, so the topic of harassment had been on my mind. But now I began to reflect more deeply on positions I had taken in the past, on my own experiences, and how those two things interacted. I was raised in New England to be tough and stoic. I didn’t talk much about my emotions growing up, nor did I feel the need. Then, soon after arriving at a university where I knew no one, I went through a breakup that threw me into a major depressive episode, unable to get out of bed. I tried calling my close friends, who were at other universities, but eventually they got sick of my late-night crying jags. I saw the university psychiatrist, who sent me home with pills after talking to me for just five minutes. They didn’t help, but eventually I found my way out of that depression. From there on out, I was Teflon: I didn’t let anything stick. My hard-won ability to slough off criticism gave me the confidence to work toward my goals but I still struggled, financially and otherwise. I decided that, in order to get ahead, I had to tuck my emotions away. By the time I became well-known for my work, my belief in free expression was near-absolute. The experiences that had led me to take this position were noble: the state-sanctioned murder of a blogger I’d been emailing with in Iran; the arrest of a friend in Tunisia, then another in Egypt and one in Syria; and helping people I knew through the asylum process in the United States. For a while, free expression was my religion. I studied government censorship and, later, the role of social media companies in governing our speech. I became one of the first experts on content moderation, and among the first to suggest that perhaps corporations aren’t the best arbiters of speech. For a long time, that stance felt unimpeachable. And then Gamergate happened. Gamergate, for readers who may not be aware, was a 2014 online harassment campaign. At first it targeted women in the gaming industry who had spoken up about sexism and misogyny in their field, but later it broadened to target loads of other women. Many say that it was a precursor, or an early warning, of the alt-right brigading we see online every day now. I ignored it at first. I was in Australia to give a series of talks; upon my return to San Francisco, I had two weeks to vacate my apartment and move to Berlin. It was not an easy time (there was plenty else going on beneath the surface that I’ll save for an eventual memoir). Since my colleagues were following Gamergate, I allowed myself to block out both the phenomenon and the feelings that the incident raised for me. Eventually, I was asked to comment and—still not having quite caught up on the details—I did, deflecting to talk about the importance of not allowing the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world to define acceptable speech. I argued that what we really needed were better tools that would enable users to control their own experiences. Over time, I recognized that I hadn’t given the victims of Gamergate their due. I focused harder on looking for solutions that would both preserve free expression and ensure that harassers—and the pain and silencing they cause to those they target—wouldn’t be tolerated. But I did so quietly, behind the scenes, unsure of what to say. I knew that the tech companies’ failure to take action was partly due to my prior statements on free speech. This latest incident over Cuties brought my previous missteps into clear focus. I still believe, as I write in my upcoming book, that corporations have far too much power over our speech, and that we, the people, should have the ultimate say in what is or is not acceptable expression. At the same time, I now understand that too many of us—on all sides—treat our perspectives as religion. We are dogmatic and inflexible. What I realized from the brigading I experienced a few weeks ago, and the conversations that took place in its aftermath, is that we must always remember to be compassionate. This is important not just for others but for ourselves as well. I now realize that part of the reason I once found it so difficult to express compassion for victims of harassment was that I was burying my own feelings, and thus couldn’t empathize with people who lacked my ability to grow a thick skin. I could intellectualize the harm of harassment, which I most certainly recognized as harm, but I found it nearly impossible to put myself in others’ shoes. Some of my well-known critics have themselves experienced intense harassment. And yet, they too have taken an approach that feels a lot like bullying—or at least punching down. To be sure, public figures should be criticized when they say something awful, particularly when they have the privilege of access to a massive platform like the New York Times Opinion page (I am thinking of the notoriously thin-skinned columnist Bret Stephens, but there are many like him). But we should also be careful to remember the humanity of others—especially when they’re willing to engage in discussion about or account for their mistakes. When it comes to harassment online and what to do about it, I don’t have all the answers, but here’s what I do know: We need to listen to people when they are describing their lived experience. This is particularly true of queer and trans individuals, and people of color. We need to think about holistic solutions that start with education. We need to teach people how to stick up for victims, and how to help them fight back. And we must create better tools and architecture that pre-empt those who would engage in harassment and brigading. I am fine with booting serial harassers off social media platforms, but we also need to be careful about any solutions that fail to consider free expression. In my experience, companies all too often come at harassment with a hammer, whacking not only those who are causing real harm, but also those who are engaging in counter-speech, or sharing their experiences while quoting their harassers. This is harmful too, and we should not accept it as a reasonable tradeoff. There are many partial solutions, but we must be wary of anyone who claims to have a silver bullet; and while there are many worthy ideas out there, each has significant tradeoffs. Nor can we simply ignore harassment or wish it away. Our societies are increasingly divided, a fact that leads to more vitriol, more anger, and more hate. Social media is part of the problem, but it isn’t the whole problem. What we need is to take the holistic view, to see that social media, its architecture and design, maximize controversy for profit, and that there will never be a technological solution to stop online hate and harassment, because it is rooted not in code, but in human behavior. We cannot separate “real life” from “online." And so, whatever approach we take to combat that which ails us must be rooted in compassion.   [post_title] => The struggle to combat cyber bullying begins with compassion [post_excerpt] => Corporations do have far too much power over our speech. At the same time, too many people—on all sides—present their perspective as religion. They are dogmatic and inflexible. 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The struggle to combat cyber bullying begins with compassion

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    [post_content] => Published on December 15, 2016, this analysis of the Trump presidency is remarkably prescient.

As a writer and journalist, I’ve been lucky enough to have a long, varied and exciting (and sometimes too exciting) career. A few years ago, I worked with a genuine, bona fide narcissist. The kind of man who once bragged about his diagnosis while dismissing the “asshole shrink” who made it.

Without going into too much detail, here are a few things you can expect from a narcissist in a position of power:

He won’t take responsibility for mistakes.

At most, he will force himself to pretend to take responsibility, while scheming to shirk it in the end anyway. He will, however, hog credit for successes, whether they are his or not. This is why you absolutely have to stop being shocked when Trump says a nasty lie about the CIA and then doesn’t care about the consequences. He will never care. Consequences are for losers.

Everything is always someone else’s fault, and he’ll mess with your head to keep it that way. Here’s a classic exchange between me and my old colleague:

Him: … And let’s focus on that topic tomorrow. Me: OK. ***day goes by*** Me: …So I was writing about this topic and I think… Him: [Screaming, interrupting] WHY AREN’T YOU FOCUSED ON THIS OTHER TOPIC INSTEAD? THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. YOU’RE A NIGHTMARE. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT KIND OF A JOURNALIST ARE YOU? Me: But you said… Him: [More screaming, more interrupting] I NEVER SAID THAT.

Basically, you couldn’t have a normal conversation with my colleague, because every conversation was a battle he had to win. If he found himself in a corner, he just lied.

You can’t appeal to a narcissist’s morals and ethics.

For them, morals are a weakness and you’ll lose their respect for trying. You’ll never persuade them with ethical arguments, but don’t let that corrupt your own moral compass in the process. When I was being verbally abused by my narcissist colleague, I worked hard to keep the moral high ground. When he insisted that the world was upside-down, it was necessary to keep right and wrong clear in my own head. Why should someone sick like that set the standard for my behavior, let alone explain my reality?

Don’t waste your time expecting a narcissist to change.

Before Trump won, there was all this talk about how he’ll become more “presidential” should he win, because he will realize the gravity of his responsibility. Hahaha — what a joke!

Now people are telling you that it’s OK, Trump will be “presidential” when he’s sworn in. Those people are wrong. You know, sometimes it’s necessary to admit that things are exactly as bad as they seem. I did it. You can too. This doesn’t mean you get to sink into a deep, apathetic depression about the state of things, it just means facing what is happening to our country and society head on. The emperor is naked, but you won’t go blind looking at him.

Disengagement is always the best policy, but when you can’t disengage, remember to not let the narcissist play you off other people.

Narcissists can’t form healthy bonds with others, and therefore do their best to destroy others’ healthy bonds through divide and conquer tactics.

My narcissist colleague would badmouth others around me, trying to make me feel like his special confidante. I realized he was badmouthing me to others simultaneously. I wasn’t important to him, I was just being isolated and used. Look at how Trump humiliated Mitt Romney. Trump didn’t do it because he’s some brilliant tactician, he did it because he pathologically dominates others.

Speaking of “brilliant tacticians” — don’t buy in to the image of grandiosity these people like to project.

Narcissists fake it ‘till they make it. They bluster, and people give in to the bluster. This doesn’t mean that they are smarter than you, it just means that they’re better at the game of “chicken.”

I noticed that my colleague liked to surround himself with people who were conscientious and, in many ways, vulnerable to him precisely because they were conscientious. He enjoyed making people feel guilty and insecure. This kind of abuse is so rampant because it’s everyone’s best kept secret — those of us who have been abused elsewhere are perfect targets for further abuse.

A narcissistic leader won’t inspire genuine loyalty in his inner circle, which is why he forces compliance. 

People have mercenary approaches to narcissists in power: “Oh, I just need the money,” or “Oh, let’s see what he can do for me,” that kind of stuff. Sadly, those who stick around too long get “Stockholm syndrome-ed” to the point of no return. Just look at Trump’s marriage. Melania acts like his well-coached prisoner, not his wife.

Meanwhile, does someone like Kellyanne Conway look like a true believer to you? Please. This lack of loyalty is precisely why narcissists are always working with incomplete information. It is their primary weakness and must be exploited.

These people have big plans they often can’t deliver on.

They’re too bored, enraged or hysterical, which are not particularly efficient emotions. Or it’s because hard work is rarely glamorous and seemingly unrewarding at first. Or maybe it’s because they spend all their time hiring and firing their latest favorites.

You’re going to argue, “But Trump made billions.” Says Trump. We can’t check that fact because he’s shady and avoids all accountability. He won’t even make his tax returns public.

We do know he had his father’s support, and a narcissist’s knack for abusing others’ vulnerability. It’s why he’s such an effective sexist and racist, though maybe not such a brilliant businessman. In short, Trump succeeded because money makes more money, not due to his great ideas. Don’t let the lifestyle and the babes surrounding him fool you.

I remember how my colleague would say literally anything just to maintain the appearance of power and control. People who didn’t know him took him at his word. But observing him closely, I became disillusioned. Seeing his lies for what they were helped protect my sense of self from his verbal assaults.

Narcissistic leaders need adulation and refuse to listen to things they don’t want to hear (i.e., the truth).

Besides vulnerable folks, my old colleague had to surround himself with incompetent people who made him the center of their universe (sometimes the vulnerability and the incompetence overlapped). He mistook empty praise for loyalty.

This is why members of the press should be wary about falling into Trump’s trap. He will seek to punish anyone who in any way deviates from him, because the truth is a betrayal of his worldview. And his worldview is the only one that matters.

If you’re a journalist who depends on access — you’re going to have an especially hard time. Use your access for good. Stockpile what you know. Stay organized.

Narcissists in power do everything they can to drain you of your energy.

They are relentless. They argue, cajole, whip up hysteria, insult, demand that you please them, etc. It’s important to keep quiet about what you value, because they will go nuclear just to take it from you and force you into submission.

The bottom line with a narcissist is that they demand that all attention be focused on them, at all times. If you can’t disengage, don’t try and reason with them. You must learn to conserve your energy, pick your battles, and just. remember. to. breathe.

. . .

In summation, I’d like to be completely honest : You are not going to win with powerful narcissists when you play their games. The minute you’ve started playing, you’ve already lost.

But being realistic about the person you’re dealing with will save your mental health. Don’t let them into your head to prey on your insecurities.

These people do real psychological damage. This is why The Conversationalist places so much emphasis on the roots of and consequences of authoritarianism.

[post_title] => I used to work with a narcissist. Here is my advice on dealing with Donald Trump [post_excerpt] => You’ll never persuade them with ethical arguments, but don’t let that corrupt your own moral compass in the process. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => i-used-to-work-with-a-narcissist-here-is-my-advice-on-dealing-with-donald-trump [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:08:26 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:08:26 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=56 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

I used to work with a narcissist. Here is my advice on dealing with Donald Trump

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    [post_date] => 2020-07-16 17:35:36
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    [post_content] => As a child, I viewed his alcoholism as a personal affront; I didn’t realize he was in a lot of silent pain

For most of my life, I thought my dad was kind of an asshole. He was a very angry guy; and by the time I was in high school, he had also started drinking a lot, which didn’t make his fits of rage any better. I thought he was abusive, and that my mother and I were victims. I changed my mind when something similar happened to me. 

I’ve always had fairly bad anxiety, but, throughout my 20s, I was good at managing it in healthy ways. When I turned 30 last year, however, something broke. I found myself downing a bottle of wine every night even though I didn’t even want it, walking to the deli at 4 a.m. to buy beer even though my mind was screaming at me to turn around. I’ve had a much more privileged life than my father, whose childhood was much more difficult than mine, and I don’t carry quite as much anger around, so the consequences were relatively mild. Most of my drinking binges ended with me just falling asleep; the next morning I went to work as usual, but felt tired and depressed. I also often found myself on the receiving end of that mixture of pity, anger, and disgust that I used to direct at him. 

“What is the matter with you?” concerned friends, asked, clearly frustrated. “Why can’t you just get it together?” I stared blankly at the wall. I did know how to explain it. I just couldn’t. 

If someone tried to take the bottle away, I felt a wave of rage unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, as though they were stealing something precious that was so clearly mine. I’d lash out, verbally, then self-isolate. My roommate said that, in those moments, I acted like a “wounded animal in a cage.”  

It had never occurred to me that my father’s drunk rages were reactive rather than intentional. Now I understand what it feels like to see revulsion in someone's eyes—how it can make you feel even lower when you thought you were already at your lowest. 

As a child, I viewed his alcoholism as a personal affront; I didn’t realize he was in a lot of silent pain. One morning when I was 15, I came downstairs to find him sobbing in the living room. Big, heaving sobs. The sight threw me off completely. I had never thought of my father as someone who cried. I sat next to him and asked him what was wrong, thinking someone must have died.

In between sobs, he finally managed to get out, "I don't understand why I don't have any friends. I thought money would make it all go away." 

My father was a Soviet Jew, one who grew up in a room in a communal apartment with peeling wallpaper and a mossy bathtub in the hallway meant to serve five families. He had no father and was raised by an alcoholic mother. When he was a little boy, he got caught under a bridge in the Neva river and almost drowned. He thought that his anxiety could be cured with a middle-class income, middle-sized car and a middle-sized house with a middle-sized garage. But it couldn't. 

I interviewed an alcoholic in recovery a few months ago who said, "No one knows how alone an alcoholic truly is." I get that now. When I'm having one of my episodes, I'm not quite sure what to do. I know I'm supposed to ask for help, but I also know I'm liable to get mean-spirited and verbally aggressive. It seems safer for everyone to self-isolate. I lie in bed and think about how I’ve turned into my father, pushing everyone away and then crying about being alone. 

Thanks to a lot of therapy and yoga and self-care last fall, I managed to start the year off strong and get by OK during quarantine. I was mostly mindful about drinking, but I had my dark days. I’m convinced, at this point, that while alcohol isn’t the solution, it also isn’t the problem. My alcoholism is different from my father’s; I go months on end drinking “normally,” and then I’ll have a self-destructive few days where I drink without eating, a condition colloquially called “drunkorexia.” The real problem for me—as far as I can tell— is wanting to hurt myself and believing that I deserve to be hurt. Drinking on an empty stomach and taking pleasure in throwing it all up is just one of the ways to make that happen. 

I've been getting together with my father's AA group a few times a week since we started reopening. They hold nightly Zoom meetings, but I find the small groups that gather at the beach to be the most helpful. I sit there and listen to them try to convince me, successfully, that you can lead a richer life without alcohol. I sit there and let them tell me, over and over again, that asking for help is not a weakness, but a strength. I don’t tell them that I’m a journalist and that I’ve written hundreds of stories on this very topic, because I know that they aren’t telling all of this to me as much as they are to themselves.

I also just really like them. I’ve never met anyone more compassionate and willing to be vulnerable than alcoholics in recovery; it's like they've already lost everything and have nothing left to lose. It's a testament to the power of a strong support system. I also think there’s nothing more inspiring than watching a bunch of burly Russian men, in their Armani jeans and leather jackets and gold chains, start sentences with phrases like, “I think that my anxiety comes from…”

It always pains me a bit to hear my father say, "One of my friends from AA used to be a surgeon." 

"He used to be a surgeon," he repeats, with gusto. When I hear him say this, I realize just how low he considers himself in society because of his drinking problem. I try to explain to him that alcoholism affects people from all walks of life, that the most intense alcoholism that I've ever encountered has been from people "at the top." Fellow journalists. My friends at Oxford. Anyone I've ever dated in finance. He doesn't really get it. To him, alcohol abuse makes you a degenerate, and that's that. 

But I'm really happy that, for once in his life, he feels like he has real friends. And I hope, for once, that I can be one of them. Because I do believe healing and forgiveness are possible, and I do think that compassion is one of the best tools we have as human beings. I think it’s not that difficult to love and accept someone, with all of their flaws, if you get where they’re coming from. All you really need to do is listen and try to understand. 
    [post_title] => My alcoholism taught me to forgive my father for his own drunken rages
    [post_excerpt] => Raised by an alcoholic father prone to drunken rages, the author thought she was nothing like him. But when she turned 30, she suddenly became a binge drinker. The experience of recognizing her alcoholism and learning compassion at her father's AA meetings helped heal their relationship. 
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My alcoholism taught me to forgive my father for his own drunken rages

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    [post_date] => 2020-07-02 05:39:25
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    [post_content] => The inequities New Yorkers accept as a part of life are immediate, and sobering.

Returning to Brooklyn after two months of hiding from the pandemic in the suburbs, I had the discomfiting feeling that I’d been sold a bill of goods about the charms of this city—that maybe we all had. As the scenery changed from trees to close-packed single-family homes to bleak public high-rises, I was struck anew by the contortions of aesthetic impulse that had me finding beauty in tiny apartments, excitement in trash-strewn sidewalks and a sense of possibility in packed subway cars. I found myself making an inventory of the places I had lived over the last 15 years, and it was as if I had finally realized that that multi-geared thing in my hands was a kaleidoscope. The same pieces, turned askew, suddenly told a different story, and my narrative of constantly moving back to New York became a story of my constantly leaving. I realized that that story had been there all along.

As a child of the East Coast, New York felt like the only and obvious city to move to after college. It was the hub of culture, it was the fulfilment of suburban childhood fantasies shaped by romantic comedies, it was the place that seemed natural for a writer to cavort among other writers and stir up material. The city promised romance, new friendships, political activism, millions of strangers whose lives I could imagine, a whole new type of landscape to negotiate and ladders to climb.

It was also the city my parents grew up in, and which I had spent my life ruing their decision to leave.

From the vantage point of my childhood in a cookie-cutter subdivision outside Washington, D.C., I was sure they had made a horrible mistake, and that my brothers and I were the worse for it. Growing up, I found the green lawns and shopping centers of suburbia to be stultifying in their homogeneity, which to me seemed tragically matched by the lives of their owners. In college, living in close quarters with my peers, I read Jane Jacobs, fancied myself a committed urbanist, and decided to continue living closely with others. After moving to New York, I reveled in how much richer and more textured a simple run to the neighborhood bodega felt than a late-night drive to the suburban supermarket.

When I started traveling abroad in my mid-twenties, I saw that living in a diverse, international city with a vibrant cultural life didn’t have to mean compromising on quality of life. On vacation in Berlin, I found apartments that were cheap and spacious, freshwater swimming lakes right off the U-Bahn, and dedicated bike lanes. In Tel Aviv there were verdant boulevards designed for strolling, ubiquitous balconies, and more outdoor cafes than a person could visit in a lifetime. Paris had a refreshingly human sense of scale in its proportions, and even its grandeur felt calibrated to a person’s ability to take it in. Dublin was full of leafy neighborhoods and small shops, and its museums offered reduced entry fees for the unemployed.

The governments of the countries in which all these cities are located offer heavily subsidized childcare, education and eldercare, too. Sure, they each have their own brand of reprehensible politics, their own blind spots and injustices and intergenerational calamities, but today’s citizens can at least progress through life with a sense of security that comes from knowing there’s a social safety net, and that their government feels responsible for protecting its citizens. Those governments took proactive measures to protect their residents from the coronavirus, while the Trump Administration remains mired in anti-science hucksterism and denial, continues to turn U.S. citizens against one other and generally lets us fend for ourselves.

If you’ve got either wealth or American-dream style luck, New York, like the rest of America, can be an amazing playground full of career and educational opportunities, culture, food, entertainment. But without a financial cushion, the inequities we live with here are immediate, and sobering. It’s no coincidence that one of the city’s main strategies to offer decent affordable housing is called a lottery. You literally have to win the lottery to obtain an affordable apartment for the long term. With the exception of those lucky few, the available housing stock for all but the top tier is small, cramped and prohibitively expensive.

Our schools are grievously segregated. Homelessness is exploding. The quality of a public university or college is grossly inferior to that of the private universities, which charge annual tuition that is higher than the city’s median income. While real estate prices skyrocket, rat colonies are overtaking even Brooklyn’s most expensive neighborhoods, chewing through car wires and taking up residence beside cool engines. The city’s public transportation is frayed due to underfunding; meanwhile cyclists who avoid it get killed, and the cops ignore rampant motorist bike lane violations while overpolicing black neighborhoods.

For the millennials who migrated to the city after college, we can pretend all we want that New York is the city we want it to be, but in reality, it was always just the city it is, with its extremes of wealth and poverty and its uneven attempts at making it livable for all. In our twenties, my friends and I would strap towels and umbrellas to our backs and bike out to city beaches, battling traffic fumes and dodging collisions the whole way. By the time we got there and spread out our blankets, my heart would be racing more from adrenaline than from endorphins, but we’d pride ourselves on our grit and pretend we’d enjoyed it. On some level I did – who wouldn’t enjoy a survival tale that ends at the beach? But then of course, we’d have to face the return trip home.

This was all before the pandemic made New Yorkers with money flee like birds from a fire, while those without wondered how they could have so underestimated their neighbors’ wealth. For those of us who are privileged enough to think about moving our lives elsewhere but lack the wherewithal to do so easily, we find ourselves with actual decisions to make. For many in the middle class, living a good life in New York has always felt like a precarious balancing act that’s contingent on exactly the thing that Covid-19 has stripped away from us: comfort going out into the crowd. Without that, we are actually stuck inside apartments we only believed were as cozy and charming as the realtors promised back when we could leave them without fear.

As we drove into Brooklyn after our suburban retreat, we found ourselves in the middle of a BLM protest. My whorls of ambivalence about living in the city paused amid the chants. Being surrounded by marchers was exhilarating and encouraging and we tooted our horn in solidarity as they swarmed around us toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Every day since then has seen more demonstrations and masked young people, a striking number of them white, walking around the neighborhood with BLM posters made of cardboard delivery boxes. It’s reminded me why I do keep returning to New York, and why I still love the place in spite of its miseries.

But the truth is that right now I need the daily reminder. Maybe it’s political despair, or resignation. The racism of this country, the cruel pugilism of this political moment, the childish, criminal negligence of our leaders and all the systemic loopholes they’re exploiting in their self-serving campaigns – it all feels so much larger than us, so entrenched. And now that I have an infant to look after and provide a childhood for, I find myself focusing on attainable goals. Most are in the realm of the sensory: the air I want him to breathe, the landscapes I want him to explore, the feeling I want to have when I go about my day being his mother, the feeling I want him to have when he goes about his day being my son.

The problems are enormous, but the choices are individual. For my own little family it means cataloguing all the American cities out there and wondering if there’s another one we could imagine making a life in. It means ruminating on the small towns and rural areas I’ve loved and thinking through which are diverse and culturally rich enough to imagine wanting to live and raise a child in. It means wondering if we could feel at home in another country that offers the urban fabric we crave with the social safety net we desire.

How do you want life to feel? I asked my partner the other day on a masked walk to the park.

Not how do you want it to look, or what do you want to do. How do you want it to feel? At what point do we accept that the sensory is the level to focus on, that the rest is too far out of our control? And at what point do we shake up our lives in order to catch that feeling?
    [post_title] => The pandemic laid bare all the reasons I hate living in the city I love
    [post_excerpt] => New York can be an amazing playground full of career and educational opportunities, culture, food, entertainment. But without a financial cushion, the inequities we live with here are immediate, and sobering.
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https://conversationalist.org/2020/05/14/escaping-pandemic-brooklyn-youre-probably-white-even-if-you-dont-have-more-money-than-your-black-neighbors/
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The pandemic laid bare all the reasons I hate living in the city I love

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    [post_date] => 2020-06-18 20:24:45
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    [post_content] => Father's Day elicits painful and happy memories about a now aged father.

The words that best describe my father all start with the letter “r”: rogue, rapscallion, renegade, rascal.

Also: Rage. I have been scorched many times by his verbal outbursts; for years at a time, I’ve just had to keep my distance, emotionally singed by the last blast. I have wished often for a father who was calm and consistent. Someone for whom I could find the right Father’s Day card.

My father has four children by four women. I’m the oldest, the only child of his first marriage to my mother, an American he met in the south of France and married a few months later in her native New York City. He took her to his hometown, Vancouver, where they had a glamorous life: they opened an art gallery, and she modelled part-time. Later, they moved to London.

The second oldest is a half-sister I’ve never met and someone, for decades, he didn’t even know existed; I’ve spoken to her once by phone. The next oldest, who I know, is ten years my junior, a successful entrepreneur. The youngest, a man 23 years my junior, is the only child of his second marriage. None of us ever shared a home and only the two half-brothers have a relationship. The two not raised by my father resent those who were.

I lived with him from the age of 14 to 19. My parents had divorced, and my mother’s mental illness became overwhelming. I moved into his home with his girlfriend; she was too old to be a sister, too young to be a mother, and a tough cookie who, at 28, didn’t really know what to make of an unhappy 15 year old. He was often far away for a month at a time, filming, leaving two ill-suited young women alone to make it work.

When he was home in those years, though, he made up for it, and gave me a lot of time with him, alone. We skied and played squash and went for long walks in the country. When I was bullied at school, he tried his best to help me. Our Christmases were lavish. We played Scrabble for hours in front of the fire, the cat scrambling our letters as we drank tea and ate chocolate cookies.

This was the mid 1970s. Second-wave feminism was blooming and he never once, then or later, pressured me to be conventionally pretty or to follow the traditional path of marriage and motherhood. I’ve always appreciated that. Being smart, talented and competitive mattered most to him. He raised me, basically, as a boy — to be fearless, intellectually confident, eager to explore the wider world.

The summer I was 15 we drove across Canada together, just the two of us. We slept most often in a tent, once awakened by a farmer looking down on us from his tractor.

That road trip is one of my happiest memories. We drew, took photos and played endless games of 20 Questions as we drove across the tedious prairies. We dipped south into the United States and attended a pow-wow in one of the Dakotas, where a bag of sugar and some meat were left at our tent door, a welcome for everyone there. That’s typical of the best of my father — always curious, always seeking the next adventure.

That’s the part of him, still healthy and living alone at 91 in the countryside, that I still like and admire. Through his travels making documentaries, I glimpsed tantalizing bits of a larger world. He brought me home bits of it: badges from the Tokyo 1964 Olympics, a caribou rug and sealskin gloves from the Arctic, a woven Afghan rifle case. Much as it was difficult being left alone with his girlfriend—later his wife—I knew he loved his work and understood that his long absences were the price we paid for that. His pursuit of adventure and career influenced me profoundly in my choice of career; I became a journalist, digging up my own stories to share.

But those loving teenage years came to an abrupt end when, in my sophomore year of university, he abruptly sold the house and told me, without warning, to find a new place to live; he and his girlfriend were going to live on a boat in Europe. I was on my own for good, with some money from a grandmother but not a dime from him for tuition, books, or living expenses. Long before the internet or cellphones, the only way to contact my father was by poste restante.

That year was disastrous. I slept around, starved for male approval and attention. I was attacked in my ground-floor apartment where I lived alone, at the back of an alley in a dicey neighborhood—a place no attentive or protective father would have allowed. My grades, previously straight As, plummeted. I moved again and again until finally, that summer, I found safe shelter on the top floor of a spacious house on a treelined street in a much nicer neighborhood, in a sorority filled with other women, one of them my best friend.  Life calmed down and took a turn for the better.

That was the summer I started writing for national magazines, which was exciting but also a source of tremendous pressure.

I was running on fumes when my father sent me a ticket to join them on their small boat in France and I mailed a long letter explaining how fragile I was. Attending university full-time, while also freelancing, had been exhausting. I was thrilled to be taken seriously by national magazine editors, but was emotionally raw, barely a few weeks after having been grabbed through my bathroom’s low open window and hit on the head while bathing. The assailant took off and I never reported it.

My father never got the letter—so he had no idea. And he never welcomed weakness and fear.

That visit ended very badly, with a shouting match in a French parking lot at midnight. I was proud of my writing success which, somehow, he found dubious. Why, he raged, would anyone take me, then just turned 20, seriously?

Well, why not?

I had arrived desperately needing a relaxing break but, as usual, I disappointed him for reasons that made no sense to me. He wasn’t paying for university or any of my living costs and I didn’t need him financially. I sure didn’t need him emotionally if this was to be my lot.

For the first time in my life I stood up to him and flew home early.

They came back and re-settled in a small town 1,200 miles away from me, and I tried again, in my mid-20s, another summer vacation visit. They now had a son who was five or six.

There was another explosion of rage at me, and my father flung a heavy glass goblet into a metal sink, shattering it. I didn’t leave that time. Why was he always so angry with me? I rarely spent time with him and his second family, and had become a successful young journalist any parent would normally take pride in.

In the decades since, I’ve been the brunt of his anger —verbal, never physical—too many times. There’s never an apology, just the assumption this is the price of admission to our relationship. He’s had quieter arguments with my husband. After each one, we withdraw for months or years and hope he’ll be civil the next time.

He was wonderful at our wedding in 2011, terrible when I got breast cancer in 2018. He came out to support me at a successful event I organized, elegant in jacket and tie, beaming with pride – then a few years later excoriated me in front of others for a minor mistake.

He was cordial in our most recent conversation, just before his birthday. Relieved, I enjoyed it and wondered how many years we even have left to mend fences for good before it’s too late.

But, let down too many times when I really needed his help or support, I never know what to expect and learned not to rely on him years ago.

I keep trying because he’s my only parent.

Because his own father, a self-made businessman who died before I was born, was apparently very tough—and who knows what he learned to become?

Because I just do.

People wonder why I persist and so do I—how can a woman who considers herself a feminist keep tolerating such abuse?

I don’t have a tidy answer.

I just know that one day I won’t miss his anger—but I will miss the best of him.
    [post_title] => A daughter reflects on a volatile father who brought out her best and hurt her the most
    [post_excerpt] => I have wished often for a father who was calm and consistent. Someone for whom I could find the right Father’s Day card.
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A daughter reflects on a volatile father who brought out her best and hurt her the most

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    [post_date] => 2020-05-08 03:51:34
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    [post_content] => Want to stop a conversation cold? Tell someone you haven’t spoken to your mother in a decade. Then tell them you’re her only child.

The annual Mother’s Day frenzy culminates with the actual celebration this Sunday, with a sentimental blizzard of flowers and cards that included, in pre-pandemic times, restaurant tables often filled with happy mothers and daughters celebrating their love for one another.

On social media, there will be endless tributes to mothers who have died, recently or decades ago, still much missed and deeply mourned.

That won’t be me.

My mother died suddenly this year, at 85, sitting in her nursing home armchair watching television—in a city a seven-hour, cross-country international flight from me.

I hadn’t seen her in years nor tried to re-connect. I knew better, even though others repeatedly urged me to, including my father, 50 years divorced from her but lately back in touch.

“You’ll regret it!”

“What if she dies?”

“Just go!”

“You never know…”

But they didn’t know the full story.

Every year I sent her a Christmas card filled with the past year’s news, but never received a reply, not even in 2018, the year of my early-stage breast cancer, surgery and radiation. When she had had a mastectomy decades before, I’d flown from New York to Vancouver to get her back home and re-settled.

A few years ago, she told my best friend, a local who went to visit, to tell me to stay away.

How does one end up so estranged?

More easily than you’d think.

Yet no other relationship carries as much emotional freight as the mother-daughter bond.

The very word, mother, is a verb as well as a noun, implying loving attention, an open heart and arms, a ready ear. A welcoming place to run back to whenever you need comfort and solace.

But that’s just not everyone’s experience.

She left my father when I was seven. I was sent to boarding school, and every summer to camp, my battered blue trunk shuttling between them. I shared rooms for years with four to six other girls, summers in a raw wooden bunk, winters in a brown metal bed.

At school, we were shouted at routinely by ancient housemothers, women who’d been widowed or never married, old enough to be our grandparents, to whom we were nothing more than a name on a checklist and someone to discipline, but never to hug or console.

I saw my mother on weekends and holidays. She did throw great, lavish birthday parties for me, with cakes and sparklers and lots of my pals.

There were adult years when she and I got along well, and even traveled together, with adventures in Fiji, Peru, Costa Rica and Colombia as I flew in to visit her, mid-journey. She had inherited enough money to travel as long as she liked and lived frugally. Later, I visited her home in British Columbia a few times.

But her alcoholism worsened, and her bipolar illness blitzed my life repeatedly, usually without warning. That meant hospitalizations, worldwide, and I learned to dread the inevitable phone call detailing the latest mayhem – when, manic and acting out wildly in public, she landed in foreign jails and hospitals or trashed her rental apartment, sometimes many time zones distant.

At 19, living alone and attending university full-time in downtown Toronto, I had no idea what to do. You really can’t turn to someone in your Chaucer seminar and ask for that kind of help. My father, also away traveling the world with his soon-to-be second wife, showed no interest.

And talking about any of it, rough enough for me to handle privately, felt like telling tales out of school. Who could possibly understand, sympathize or help? She would just keep doing whatever she pleased anyway, consequences be damned.

The worst moment for me was when she ended up in a locked London psychiatric ward. I had just finished the happiest year of my life, on a Paris-based journalism fellowship. Her illness, a trio of frosty English doctors told me, could be inherited, while offering me no advice or comfort. I was a young, ambitious journalist with a growing career, now terrified my mind was potentially as susceptible. In a small, highly competitive industry, I couldn’t risk anyone wondering if I would be next.­­

Her weary friends gave up.

Her three American cousins, living many miles away, fed up with her late-night calls and wild-eyed visits, gave up.

No one really knew what was going on but me.

I had fled her care after a terrifying manic breakdown that occurred when I was 14, when we lived in Mexico. She drove a van carrying me and two others down a major highway with the headlights turned off, ending up crashed in a ditch at midnight in a city we’d never seen before. For two weeks it fell on me to care for a friend who’d just arrived from Canada to visit.

A few weeks later, I returned to Canada and moved in with my father and his girlfriend. I never lived with my mother again.

No one ever discussed her illness with me, or offered me tools to cope with it, even though I knew the name of her psychiatrist. Later in life, I intellectually accepted that mental illness is an illness, but at 14, I was too scared and angry at having been so endangered. Nor was this the first time I’d been subjected to a manic breakdown; she had one when I was 12 when we stayed at a friend’s house. I awoke to find a massive potted plant spread at the bottom of the stairs --- but remember nothing after that. I have some gaps in my memory, likely protective.)

Yet, for decades, like a broken robot, I did keep visiting her, hoping, naively and childishly, for the kind of mother so many others took for granted – healthy, loving, reliable, attentive. Too often, I endured another drunken rage.

So, I too, gave up.

Only in the weeks after her death, that little flickering pilot light of hope for eventual reconciliation finally extinguished, did I realize that I’d won more than I’d lost.

Without her, I’ve created and navigated a successful life, living and working in five cities and three countries. A life filled with loving friends, a strong marriage and a successful writing career.

No one taught me how to dress or apply make-up or cook or any of the skills mothers traditionally pass on to their daughters, let alone how to handle finances, work or relationships. I learned, even as a teenager, to rely on a few others, happy to help me out when needed.

The more I figured stuff out, most of the time successfully, the more self-confidence I gained. I didn’t need a lot of direction or advice.

I learned to challenge authority – or, more crucially – not genuflect to it in the first place. Would my mother disapprove of my choices? She’d never even notice. That itself offered  substantial freedom when I see so many women miserably buckling, sometimes deep into middle age, under the weight of their mothers’ disapproval --- of their bodies, their partners, their work or their parenting.

And I learned to celebrate my own triumphs.

When I graduated university, all of which she’d missed while traveling, she refused to attend my graduation, even in a huge hall with thousands of others, because I’d also invited my father. So, I asked him to stay home; when I called her back, she’d already committed to the graduation of a friend’s daughter instead.

So, friends became my  closest family.

The Christmas Eve my mother threw her gifts around my living room in a drunken rage, I fled the next day to a friend’s home in Pennsylvania, racing from my New York home down the highway to a place I knew for sure --- never having met his parents -- would be calm and kind. As usual, the homes of others were my refuge.

When I married for the second time, a friend stood in as my witness and helped me with  the last-minute primping every bride craves before heading down the aisle. For decades a friend 10 years my senior welcomed me into her home, year after year, whether I was single, divorced, re-married.

The world, I learned, is full of other mothers.

 
    [post_title] => On Mother's Day, I feel no desire to pay tribute to my mother
    [post_excerpt] => The very word, mother, is a verb as well as a noun, implying loving attention, an open heart and arms, a ready ear. A welcoming place to run back to whenever you need comfort and solace. But that’s just not everyone’s experience.
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    [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:14:03
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On Mother’s Day, I feel no desire to pay tribute to my mother