Becoming Janine

As I’ve alluded to previously, I left my career as a political aid at the end of the Canadian federal election in October 2019. Without being sure of what would come next, I knew that I needed to rest, to grieve, and to heal.

I knew, too, that I craved community – something that seems pretty difficult to achieve for an introvert with trust and self-worth issues, who no longer had her workplace community to rely on. Let alone trying to navigate all those barriers during a pandemic.

Without a work from home or young family, or a pet in need of care to regulate me, maintaining any kind of schedule or plan, or even a plan to devise a plan, felt next to impossible. The energy expended on sourcing pantry items, cleanser, hand sanitizer, masks, bringing an adult child home from university for an unknown duration, and learning to navigate my physical space now that it was shared with two others full time took all my energy and left me exhausted.

I’m told dysregulation is a natural response to the trauma of the times we’re living in. I have natural response by the boatloads.  

Finding community is pretty much impossible given all that.

Or so one would think.  

With so many people now relying on e-commerce, inventory systems, tracking systems, and delivery systems are so overloaded that an item commonly delivered within a couple of days is now taking weeks.

It took ten weeks and 4 online orders (3 of them cancelled because the online inventory that said the product was available was not up to date) to source a second office chair for our downstairs office that would enable my stepson to finish his university assignments and use the computer in comfort, to finally be available for curbside pickup. Three days before he returned to Montreal.

It is, at least, a lovely chair.

This week, it feels like all my online order ships are coming in at once, like an old-fashioned Christmas with the doorbell ringing constantly and being presented with packages. Two by Purolator with art supplies, one by Canpar fulfilling an order I made an unbelievable five weeks ago, one by UPS from Australia that came in a record week when domestic mail on that continent is taking over a month, and another by Canada Post Priority Mail.

And all that by mid-week.

In addition to those expected deliveries, I received an envelope this afternoon that was unexpected. Well, not quite unexpected. I had been told it was on the way five weeks ago and forgotten. It was this small and precious gift that made me realize community had come to me.

Prior to the pandemic stay at home, on one of our regular forays to the lovely town of Almonte, Ontario and a stop at Mill Street Books, one of our favourite independents. It’s a rare visit that doesn’t have us leaving with at least a couple of books and/or pieces of vinyl to spin. On that day, I picked up Draw Breath: the Art of Breathing by Tom Granger.

In early April, lockdown in full swing, I posted an Instragram story about the book and sent Tom a message saying how much I appreciated it,  and later, a congratulations on the book winning the Nautilus Book Award for innovation and creativity. Tom sent a note thanking me for my support and asking for my address so he could send a little gift to thank me for my encouragement. (see photo above)

I am touched by the personal interactions that happen on Instagram. It has become one of my communities. It allows me to stay in touch with people I have met and worked with on soul goals, people I have only met virtually, and people like Tom, with whom I share something in common.

Instagram has become a community for me.

And it’s not the only one.

The pandemic inspired the smartest and most innovative of entrepreneurs to pivot and provide services online, many of them generously free of charge.

It was as if the universe was dropping breadcrumbs for me to follow the path to my dreams, or at least to discovering what those dreams might be.

And in the process I’ve discovered an amazing community of feminist badasses who recognize that the institutions of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and systemic racism do not serve us, and who strive in diverse and creative ways to propose alternatives and to support each other on the journey.

Community comes in the places you least expect it.

I have been welcomed, challenged, invited, called in to these communities, to learn, to explore, to share my experiences and to grow, in creativity, in solidarity and in hope.

Here are some of my favourites, including amazing humans I follow on Instagram who have inspired, entertained, challenged, and taught me so much:

Jo Tucker

Brooklyn Vienneau

Erin Lindstrom

Erin Lindstrom’s Shiny Sales and Human Being Club

Colleen Gray

Colleen Gray’s Watercolour on Synthetic Paper group

Mara Glatzel

Mina Aidoo

Rachael Maddox

The Gem Collective

Komal Minhas

Sarah Nicole Landry

Viviane Kay

Jam Gamble

Kerry Clare

Kerry Clare’s blogging school

Not bad for an introvert who had trust and self-worth issues who no longer has her workplace community to rely on, let alone trying to navigate all those barriers during a pandemic, eh?

Mind you, I still crave community with skin on. I live in hope of returning to that soon. But now community with skin on has so much more potential than I had first imagined.

From unexpected places.

I was enrolled in an online learning group a while back in which people would type that they were “going rouge” when they deviated from the suggested plan. It was used so commonly that I began to think it was part of the group’s lexicon rather than a typo. Either way, it’s become part of my own personal glossary of terms.

Whenever I decide to buck a trend and do something my own way, I yell “I’m going rouge!” with gusto. It’s a silly little thing that gives me joy.

One day a few weeks ago while David and I were enjoying an end of day quarantini in the hot tub, I said “I’m not painting a fish. I’m going rouge,” forgetting that he can’t (always) read my mind.

And I told him this story, a memory triggered when my painting instructor suggested we paint prehistoric fish for that evening’s online class:

When I was five my parents enrolled me in a learn-to-swim class at the local YMCA during March break.

I hated most everything about it, which is odd considering how much I love the water. My mom always said that she couldn’t drag me out of the lake even if my lips and fingernails were turning blue.

That being said, the shallow “baby” pool at the YMCA is no Lake Superior. There’s really no comparison.

I hated the locker rooms; I hated the showers; I hated the echoey noise of the place and the smell of chlorine; I hated having to wear a life jacket. I hated standing in the cold water listening to the instructor, a crabby old lady (who was probably in actual fact a teenager earning a part time wage who probably would rather be anywhere else besides trying to teach this sullen shivering kid in a life jacket how to float).

The idea was for me to hold her hands and lay face down in the water, arms and legs extended, while she pulled me around the pool.

I was having none of it. I put my face in the water, extended my arms, and extended one leg back while keeping the other one firmly on the bottom of the pool, hopping on one leg while she pulled me around.

Ingenious.

When I raised my head from the water, rather pleased with pulling it off, I met the scowl of my captor.

“Do you think I can’t see you hopping around on one foot?” she asked. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

Well…

As you can well imagine, it wasn’t a very productive week for either of us and, speaking for myself, I was happy to see the end of it. On the final day we were presented with certificates of achievement, mine a lovely drawing of a seahorse, with whom I was well pleased.

I noticed, however, that I was the only student with a seahorse. Every other junior swimmer in my class got a fish. I was curious as to why I was singled out for such an honour and asked the instructor why I got a seahorse when everyone else got a fish. I braced myself in anticipation of her warm praise. (I may have been sullen and non-cooperative as a five year old swimming student, but c’mon – I was pretty cute and I had a fairly healthy measure of self-esteem all things considered)

She explained, with some smugness I must say, that fish know how to swim and as I didn’t even know how to float yet, a seahorse was what I got. It turns out my lovely seahorse was in fact a certificate of underachievement.

Unperturbed, I shrugged that off. Seahorses after all are infinitely more beautiful and interesting than plain old fish. Did you know that in seahorse families it is the male that gets pregnant and gives birth? See?

Besides, suggesting that fish can swim and seahorses can’t is a false analogy. So there.

When I got home I hung my seahorse on my bedroom wall in a place of honour. The following summer my dad taught me how to float and swim in the waves on the north shore of Lake Superior and I eventually returned to the YMCA to complete all the swimming star levels up to the lifesaving certificate.

And so tonight I planned to go rouge and paint a seahorse.

I had begun to believe I didn’t have an inner child when one day during a group reiki class, mine popped out from the tree she was hiding behind and ran straight into my lap for a cuddle. We’ve been getting to know each other ever since. She’s the one who reminded me that fish are okay, but seahorses are where the magic really is. She’s been streaming stories to me that I had long forgotten. I’m thinking of letting her be a guest blogger here from time to time.

Stay tuned.

This is not what I expected to be writing as part of my debut in the blogging world.

Then again, neither is this is the world I looked forward to a year ago.

The world is on fire.

We’ve heard that before, about climate change ravaging the planet; and for most of 2020 because a virus is spreading like wildfire, confining us to our homes in order to flatten the curve and prevent more deaths.

It’s quite possible that the rising up against racism sparked by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police May 25 is, at least in part, the result of the shelter at home protocols that left us paying more attention to the world, attached to our mobile devices and the internet in an effort to remain connected.

After all, Black people have been murdered for nothing more than existing in this world for centuries without much of a ripple in the capitalist-patriarchy continuum of colonial white privilege.

Janaya Future Khan deconstructs the project of white privilege, that has been systemic in our education and institutions for centuries; she describes quite elegantly that defunding the police is necessary to redistribute resources and ensure every single human has access to housing and wellness and safety. It is a necessary and proper adjustment to address this systemic evil. You can hear what she has to say in its entirety here.

“The despair you are feeling right now is something inside you saying something is just not right.”

“It’s time to step outside this project of whiteness because that is not who you are.”

I feel that. I’ve been feeling that for a long time. Perhaps you have been too.

Mehcad Brooks speaks to us from the Church of Anti-Racism here encouraging us to look at the world differently, to deconstruct the language of black and white adopted by European settlers to demonize differences in order for the state to roll profitably along.

“Perhaps this is the great awakening.”

“Perhaps we’ve been given the invitation to the greatest spiritual awakening the world has known”

“We don’t want your sympathy, we don’t want your apologies; we don’t want your feelings of guilt. We want your acknowledgement that this is the worst atrocity done to a group of people in the modern world. And then just begin the healing process of that. Why is that so hard?”

I encourage you to take the time to watch, listen and learn, to examine your hearts, to find the ways of taking action personally and in our communities, to support and demand change.

There is the despair and horror and discomfort of self-examination in these days for me. But I also feel hope and energy and optimism that a better world is possible, and that maybe, just maybe, it’s closer than I believed to be in 2019.

This is not what I expected to be writing as part of my debut in the blogging world.

But quite frankly, I have no desire to return us to our regular programming.