In April 2006, my sister Roxanne announced she was pregnant! I remember feeling shocked, happy, disappointed, and excited all at once. When we were kids, we vowed to go through the pregnancy journey together, when we were grown up and married. I was married in 2004, but I definitely didn’t feel like an adult even though I’d just turned 32 when my sister told me she was pregnant. I remember thinking she told me because she wanted me to take her to the clinic… so I offered to attend the abortion with her since she wasn’t yet married. Fortunately, she saw my good intentions and assured me she was ready for motherhood and that she and her partner had plans to marry after the baby was born. Her due date was November 2006. She was so beautiful, pregnancy definitely agreed with her; labour not so much as I recall she had ‘back labour’ and was in a lot of pain. I remember feeling guilty that I wasn’t pregnant at the same time so we could experience growing a human being together. I also reme

  I feel calm, relaxed, carefree, and loved - much like any normal kid should feel. I only feel this way when I’m at ‘la cabine’ with my grand-parents. Grand-papa would come pick us up at the end of June in his burgundy coloured station wagon and drive the 45 minutes to the log cabin he built with my father many moons ago. My grand-maman would be waiting for us in the cabin’s small living room, which doubled as the dining room complete with wood stove that made great toast in the morning. The cabin was built in the early 1970s using logs, tin for the roof, and pink insulation. The cabin sits on a parcel of leased land for a 99-year term. The small structure contained a small workshop for my grand-father’s tools, a main area, 2 window-less bedrooms, a loft with several mattresses on the floor for when my cousins visited, a small kitchen, a tiny bathroom (illegal because he installed a septic tank for my grand-mother because she didn’t want to use the outhouse). The kitchen also contai

 PTSD is a bitch. When you live and breathe it daily, you don’t know any better. It’s like being born with a headache; you don’t know you have one until it’s gone. As a teen, Big M told me I was moody and depressed – a typical teenager. She also told me daughters and mothers never get along in the teen years, which is also totally normal. Uh Huh. As a young adult, I knew more than anything that I would never be a parent. Ever. I didn’t know how to relate to children, I’d never spent any time with children, I’d always been surrounded by adults; but mostly, I believe children were a burden. Deep down, I knew I’d be an abuser. I was terrified to be alone with children. I assumed I’d be a sexual deviant and if I wasn’t, I’d probably just beat them black and blue. When I told my family every time they joked to “wait until youuuuu have kids!” I was always met with shock and mild horror that I didn’t want to shoot watermelons out my vagina. I don’t think those living outside my family unit

al·le·go·ry / ˈ al ə ˌɡ ô r ē / noun noun: allegory ; plural noun: allegories a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. Today’s post comes as an allegory… my blog is ‘being watched’ so I don’t 'antagonize' anyone. I’ve given this a lot of thought….Welcome to the Green Forest! Nose in the air Papa Bear can smell him from several kilometres away… “Ma! Ma!” Mama Bear had been enjoying the fermented blueberries “she’s sleeping,” he says to himself when she doesn’t respond . Papa Bear sits in wait for the Badger to approach. Badger:    Hello there! Papa Bear nods in greeting, he’d just finished some of the mushrooms those caribou were eating before they completely lost their heads! Badger:   Hello there! He says again Papa Bear:   Yup, hi, how can I help you ? (Papa’s trying to stay focused and ignore the matrix of lights all around him); the Badger is the law in these parts Badger:   I w

I had moved all my belongings into a storage unit my sister had arranged for me through one of her customers. I was very lucky to have the space for free. In exchange for a rebate in rent, I donated my nearly new appliances to our landlord. My sister and I slept together in the same room and bed until her ex-boyfriend moved out. He was such a douche. He seemed to refuse to acknowledge they had broken up. I had fun because I had someone to pick on and take my aggression out on… I was very sarcastic and quite the bitch in my 20s. I didn’t realize it, but my bitchy sarcasm was my wall of steel, my fortress – better to chase people away now than get screwed over; those who saw thru the façade had a chance, but not really, nobody got ‘in’ to know me. No one. I liked it like that. My long-standing opinion is that people are not to be trusted; they all just want something from you. Those who were too dumb to run or thought they saw through the façade would eventually face my brutal honesty an