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

I loved living in the Big City! I loved clubbing, going to concerts, drinking and dancing all night. I loved treating men like crap only to find out they seemed to enjoy it… or maybe they thought I was funny. I was super sarcastic and I knew the world was my oyster. I spent as many hours as possible with my best friend Natasha. I had a ‘ditch-able’ boyfriend for every occasion. At one point I had 4 different men I dated for different reasons. Mark was a nice guy and he liked to introduce me to his favourite restaurants, we were never intimate but I saw the potential; I was content with him providing me with weed until I found a better dealer (my office caterer, but that’s a different tale).  I dated my boss for 18 months too, but clearly that was because I was stupid. He was married with children and at that time in my life I didn’t care. I wanted to experience all that life had to offer and I wanted to be ‘bad’. I felt that I’d always followed the rules my entire life. I knew it was a

Neall was not a bad person; he just wasn’t the guy for me. While we were married and our marriage was crumbling, I’m not proud of how I acted at times but in fairness, neither was he. Neall had a really good heart, he had empathy and compassion. Neall’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t motivated. Neall suffered a lot of trauma in his own childhood also. In my early 20’s, I didn’t even know I had suffered trauma so I was not able to recognize the signs in him, let alone myself. Neal grew up in Southern Ontario, he was adopted and had an older adopted sister. His parents provided a nice loving home. His mother was a TV personality in the 1970s with her own yoga TV show while his dad worked in HR at a manufacturing plant. Neall recalled feeling happy until one day his parents divorced. His father had an affair with his assistant and left his current bride, a successful and well-respected Jewish businesswoman for his Catholic assistant. Neall remembers feeling hated and like his new