Erin's Journals

Thursday, October 3, 2019

October 3, 2019 Erin's Journals

Just a thought… A new baby is like the beginning of all things – wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities. [Eda J LeShan]

Well, she’s here! (And I don’t mean me – although I have details on where we can meet up tonight if you’re in the London, Ontario area.) I’m talking about a sweet baby girl named Jane, who arrived safely at 2:04 am Monday, September 30th.

Jane

Mommy, Baby and Daddy are doing just fine and are now cozily at home getting used to all of the changes that come (besides diapers) when “three” becomes “four.” I see a lot of both parents in her, but Brooke says baby takes after Mommy…and we’ll be looking for resemblances this weekend.

New babies bring such joy and we can’t wait to immerse ourselves in all of the love and warmth that Jane’s arrival brings!

Jane Phil & Jane

Today we’re in London, Ontario, having driven here from YYZ last night. I’ll be delivering a brand new keynote address based on Mourning Has Broken: Love, Loss and Reclaiming Joy to a terrific group of Registered Practical Nurses; I’ve been fortunate to emcee their events in years past and am grateful to get to deliver our speech and AV presentation today.

After the speech, Rob and I will rendezvous with my dearest pal Lisa Brandt who, with her husband Derek, have just bought a place about 20 minutes out of town. We’ll check out the new “homestead” and get caught up, then later in the day, Lisa and I head back into the city for a book event!

We’ll be at the Indigo North London at 7 tonight – Lisa and I will be in conversation together – followed by a book signing and a chance to get acquainted with anyone who joins us. I’m very excited about another book signing opportunity and am so grateful to Lisa and to Indigo for making this happen!

Tomorrow, Rob and I point the car east again and make the 8-hour drive to Ottawa. We can’t wait to see our sweet Colin (who’s a little perplexed about this new baby stuff) and meet the newest member of our extended, ecstatic family.

We’ll help out all we can for the weekend before shoving off Monday to spend a night with our pal Mike Cooper. Then, on to Collingwood for a three-day conference…more to come.

Life is busy, full and wonderful. And just filled with love. Have a terrific weekend and I’ll be back with you here on Monday.

Monday, September 30, 2019

September 30, 2019 Erin's Journals

Just a thought… It is what it is, but it will be what you make it. [Author unknown]

Well, here we go – from a trip yesterday across the water by ferry to a flight back to Ontario Wednesday, this week has just about everything. (And yes, we took a train and a bus to where we were going Sunday, too). I do love to travel, especially when it’s to do work that gives me such joy!

Shot this last night from the bow restaurant on the ferry. As I did, I remembered Sunday night traffic coming home from the cottage. This time I was returning from “work” at the end of a weekend and, oh, the view was quite different too, wasn’t it?

Word Vancouver was held yesterday. Like Toronto’s Word on the Street, it celebrates authors and those who love to read and I got a chance to do the latter when I shared an excerpt from my book, Mourning Has Broken: Love, Loss and Reclaiming Joy. (Luckily for me, the October Reader’s Digest Canada includes an excerpt of my book as their Editor’s Choice, so I simply read what was literally the Reader’s Digest version!)

My favourite part, besides seeing our dear friend Michael Bentley from SierraSil (which I still take and love)…

Erin & Michael

…was hearing another bereaved mom share from her book. Becky Livingston wrote The Suitcase & The Jar about her life after losing daughter Rachel to a brain tumour. Becky travelled the world – picking up where her 23-year-old daughter’s dreams left off – and took with her some of Rachel’s ashes.

While I haven’t yet read this book, published by Caitlin Press and available on Amazon.ca, I greatly look forward to it; we swapped books when our shared reading session was over!

Erin & Becky

It was a one-day in-and-out trip on the ferry to Vancouver and today we’re at home getting ready to hit London, Ontario (and then Ottawa) later this week.

I’ll fill you in Thursday as to what we’re doing, but before we get too deeply into October, there are a few things about which I’d like to remind you.

I hate to use my journal to “plug” things, leaving the “What’s Up” section of my website to keep you abreast. But these are time-sensitive events and I’ve long promised I’d mention them. So bear with me – I promise Thursday’s journal is going to be BIG.

First off, it’s now almost exactly a year until our exclusive Ama Waterways cruise from Switzerland to The Netherlands. Our HOPE is that we can book this luxurious river boat entirely with our friends and that Mike Cooper and I can host you for a couple of his fantastic Coop’s Classics dances.

We can take over the dining room, bar and tours – just the group of us – and have a time I promise you’ll remember forever. Here’s the thing: our friend Gerry at New Wave Travel has a cut-off date in just two months, for the bookings to be secure. If we don’t have the entire boat booked, the cruise will be opened up to others to join us.

Now, don’t get me wrong; we had a fine time with the folks who watched with bemusement as our fun group had a big ol’ party on the AmaStella last spring during our Tulip Time cruise. But wouldn’t it be fantastic to make it all just us?

If you have any questions at all, Gerry is a wonderful guy (we’ve booked travel with him for years) and is a no-pressure, tremendously patient and helpful man who’ll aid you in any way he can. Click here to email him and he’ll be glad to provide details.

Please, if you’re considering this trip with us next October, do book your cabin now. We really want this to be an exceptional and intimate experience for everyone.

And while I’m filling you in on the fun stuff coming up, you may have heard that Mike and I are hosting a Hallowe’en-themed dance to benefit Markham Stouffville Hospital on November 1st at Le Parc in Markham.

We’ll have food, prizes, costumes (only if you like to dress up) and GREAT music just like Mike and the boys used to play at the Old Mill. And we promise you a terrific time – whether you want to tear up the dance floor or just enjoy the music and great company!

Book a bunch of friends; there are rooms at Le Parc as well as other nearby hotels if you choose to make a night of it. We’ve had a ton of inquiries since I first mentioned it here on my website, so don’t miss out – you can get ticket info here. If you have any difficulties with that website, you can contact Catherine Ortiz at cortiz@msh.on.ca or 905-472-7373 ext 6606 and she’ll be delighted to help you out.

Well, that’s it for now – I’ve got a lot of packing to do as we check our lists, gather our wits and get set for the first of two exciting trips east before we take a winter to relax.

Speaking of relaxing, if you were wondering what I did for my birthday, you might like to know that I had a massage and then 90 minutes in this float tank…

float tank

Later, we enjoyed dinner at a beautiful spot that afforded us views of a glorious sunset.

sunset

But most of all, it was a day of gratitude and serenity – exactly what I hope to enjoy a lot of in the coming months. And what’s not relaxing will be fulfilling and enjoyable – just the perfect mix, I’d say, wouldn’t you?

Thanks for coming back and I’ll be here on Thursday.

Thu, 09/26/2019

September 26, 2019 Erin's Journals

Just a thought… And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. [Lennon/McCartney]

You’ll notice today a brand new website. The company working on this (and our previous site), Graymatter Marketing Solutions out of Pickering, has collaborated closely with us to give us what we want and need, both for us and for you, as a visitor. We hope there are no hiccups, but we’ll be working together to make it the best it can be; one change will be the availability of past journals prior to 2018. If you want to refer back to something, just email me and we can locate and send it to you as needed. Rob and I hope you like what you see.

If you had trouble getting here today using a favourite link, I’m afraid your old link probably won’t work. The new site is laid out differently, so you’ll have to set up a new favourite link. I’m very sorry for any frustration you may have experienced.

We’ve added a bunch of events coming up this Fall in the ‘What’s Up’ section. I hope you’ll check it out; it promises to be a busy season!

_ _ _ _ _

First off, a Happy 50th Birthday today to Abbey Road, what to me is the Beatles’ finest album. Yes, there’s plenty of competition (even in our household at times) but “Golden Slumbers” (from the famous Medley on side two which closes with “The End” and the line above), will always be a song that means the world to Rob and me. So much so that we had the lovely Dan Clancy sing it at Lauren’s funeral. Yes, that special.

Golden Slumbers fill your eyes

Smiles awake you when you rise

Sleep pretty darling, do not cry

And I will sing a lullaby….

Here’s to music that is ageless (the song’s lyrics date back to the 17th century) and a band whose creations provided the soundtrack to our family’s story – and always will.

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From Abbey Road to Downton Abbey – and into space – I wanted to share with you some thoughts on a couple of movies you may be considering seeing this weekend.

I’ll jump ahead (into what’s called the not-too-distant future) to Ad Astra, an $80 million space thriller that stars Brad Pitt. What some might have expected to be a lot of “edge of your seat” was more of a slow-paced study and, like another Pitt flick, Tree of Life, it must have gone over my head. (That alone should guarantee it at least nine Oscar nominations.)

Slow paced and unengaging, its most redeeming factor is its study of the damage done by toxic masculinity – or so other, smarter reviewers have said. I just didn’t get it and I’m not ashamed to say so. We even paid extra for IMAX, which may add to the sting of not having loved the film.

As we lined up for our snacks on Friday prior to Ad Astra (which is Latin for “to the stars”) we saw people who were a lot older than Rob and I, tickets in hand, strolling towards the theatre showing Downton Abbey. I remarked to Rob that the movie, a continuation of the hit British TV series, looked to be doing brisk business during its matinee debut.

Just how brisk, we would find out when the tickets were tallied on Sunday: Downton Abbey won the weekend box office with $31 million US, compared to Ad Astra at $19.2 million, and Rambo: Last Blood (sadly, not about menopause – and I just wish I’d come up with that line) with $19 million.

Downton Abbey cast

About the movie: it’s a delight. Maggie Smith steals every scene she’s in and delivers her barbs and one-liners with more dryness than a James Bond martini.

Almost the entire TV cast has reassembled for a story that, while it has plot holes you could drive a ’28 Rolls Royce Phantom through, delivered exactly what audiences wanted: more of the Crawley family and their upstairs/downstairs adventures. The King and Queen are coming for a visit! Grab your pearls and get ready to clutch!

We had a really good time. Laughs, tears, romance and suspense, plus all of the comfort of a warm cuppa on a fall day. No wonder exiting audiences gave it an A rating (compared to B- for Ad Astra).

But here’s what gave me the warmest feeling of all: a headline in The Hollywood Reporter that said “Baby Boomers Flex Their Muscles.” A movie in which no one got shot (despite a bit of a close call), there were few (if any) CGI or special effects and the closest we got to a swear word was “bloody” (for which the utterer was admonished!), killed the competition.

And why? Because those of us who are not 15 or 25 or even 35 were given a movie we could go to. THR tells us that more than half of the ticket buyers for DA were over 45 years of age and more than half of those (or us) were over 52.

So, keep buying tickets to movies you want to see and tell those who decide what gets made and what doesn’t that you’re more than willing to shell out your money for a good story. Oh, and yes, there’s already talk of another Downton Abbey movie. Because, well, why not?

If a Batman villain can be resurrected 19 times (or whatever), then who’s to say we can’t keep propping up the Crawleys until Princes George and Archie come looking for girlfriends?

Have a lovely weekend.

Mon, 09/23/2019

September 23, 2019 Erin's Journals

Just a thought… A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. [John A. Shedd]

Ah, a new season. And what a summer it was! I can’t say that, when it began, I ever envisioned spending nearly seven weeks of it trying to work through a whole lot of things I had pounded down and embedded in wet cement, but that’s how it went. And, boy, am I glad – and grateful – I did!

I was planning to tell you today about two movies I saw this past weekend: Ad Astra and Downton Abbey. I’ll save that for Thursday.

Today, I am moved to say this: Margaret Trudeau rocks. I was sent a review yesterday of her one woman show “A Certain Woman of an Age” (a play on the term “woman of a certain age” which, of course, she definitely is) which was staged as part of JFL42 in Toronto.

I saw an early version of her presentation at the Registered Practical Nurses’ Association of Ontario annual gathering in Ottawa two years ago, which I emceed, and was blown away. In fact, I refer to it in Mourning Has Broken, as she is a high-profile bereaved mother – among many other things. I wrote a journal about it and I’ve copied it below today’s entry, if you care to read it. As it happens, this year I’ll be the keynote speaker myself at that same RPNAO event to be held in London, Ontario on October 3. A nice full-circle moment, if you will.

An advocate for mental health, Ms Trudeau is frank and vulnerable and it’s the latter quality that scares me so much in this age of online vitriol. I can only hope that she never EVER reads the “comments” on any articles about her talk, which is delivered as a speech from a podium.

I was struck by the honesty and deep humanity that Ms Trudeau shared in her struggles and triumphs (“bad choices make for good stories” was one line I recalled and loved). I hope that in this age of hating – literally hating – someone who does not share your political beliefs, she is spared the pain of reading the barbs of people who choose to post with cowardice and anonymity, and who only aim to cause pain.

I understand from a Toronto Star write-up that her presentation does not include mention of her most prominent son’s vastly embarrassing revelations of late, since it wasn’t part of what was deemed a “script.” I would have been tempted to lean into that a little if I was her, although I can understand fully her fear that any words she said, even in jest, might end up on late night TV or in the mouths of her son’s political opponents.

You can think what you want of a woman we’ve known – or thought we knew – almost our entire lives here in Canada. But all I see is an awful lot of courage. Courage to take on the haters and the cowards simply by standing up and telling her story. Courage to share her own struggles with mental illness and experiences being an inmate of what she calls “the crown jewel in the federal penitentiary system” (24 Sussex Drive).

At 71, she could stay at home in Montreal and revel in the quiet pleasures of being a mother and grandmother, as well as best-selling author. Instead, she is, to paraphrase Brené Brown’s take on a Teddy Roosevelt quote, daring greatly: she puts herself in the arena, covered in mud and blood, and makes her mistakes with more bravery than any who sling barbs and criticize her from the safety of the viewing stands. And that, to me, is real courage.

Have a gentle day and I’ll be back with you Thursday – from Brad Pitt’s future in space to Downton Abbey’s royal grace – two movies that couldn’t have been more different.

In the meantime, here’s that journal from two years ago:

A number of things strike you when you are in a room listening to Margaret Trudeau speaking.

First, it’s that she’s been a figure in your life for as long as you can remember. From the young Flower Power bride of a charismatic politician to the wild child partying with the Rolling Stones and dancing with abandon at Studio 54, to a woman who seemed to publicly battle demons of mental illness, lose herself to grief following the death of one of her sons and then emerge as a spokesperson for mental health.

In the course of an hour, she spoke of all of those things.

But the other thing that strikes you is how she speaks: like someone who has just run into the house to tell you of the most marvelous rainbow or a tornado on the horizon. She almost bounces in her red pumps, her curls tossing as she gesticulates and laughs, her voice modulating from excitement to sadness with a force that takes her listeners on the roller coaster with her.

I felt exhausted when the hour was done, as though we’d been running hand in hand on a train platform, passing each car that represented another element in an extraordinarily public and equally sad life.

Her time in our lives began when she was a teen on a family trip at a Club Med; whilst awaiting a chance to flirt with the young, handsome French Canadian staffer on the beach, she met up with an older gentleman who, she says, began grilling her about Plato of all things!

When she returned to her parents’ side, her mother told her that the man she’d been killing time with was the leader of the Liberal party of Canada. Ho-hum, thought Margaret, and as her politician parents socialized with this lawyer from Montreal, she continued to prance around in her bikini, somewhat oblivious to his attentions.

Some time later, back in Canada, her mother told Margaret that Mr. Trudeau had asked for a date; it turns out that Pierre Trudeau told a confidant that “…if ever I marry, it will be that woman.” And so began an unconventional marriage: at one time the unhappy bride told her husband that he could see other people but, she exclaimed, “I didn’t mean Barbra Streisand!”

We all laughed when she continued as an aside, “I told her that she actually won,” referring to the fact that it was Barbra, not Margaret, who “got away.” In another humorous moment, Margaret refers to 24 Sussex Drive as the “crown jewel in the federal penitentiary system.”

Mrs. Trudeau’s story is honest and open: she speaks of deep depression, of being bipolar, being misdiagnosed and being deprived of proper conventional mental health treatment because of her last name.

Her own mother eschewed psychiatric analysis for her daughter, saying she just needed sleep and the company of friends. A time spent locked away in a hospital was disastrous when the levels of lithium in her body, which were not being properly monitored, threatened to seriously damage her liver. Her life was imperiled more than once.

In all, Margaret Trudeau lived a difficult life in secret – and not-so-secret (although she says of her time with the Rolling Stones, that she was a goody-goody and people like to imagine things as far worse than they were) – and seemed to have found happiness, balance and a healthy stability in her life with a second husband and more children.

And then she lost her and Pierre’s 23-year-old son Michel in an avalanche in BC in 1998. This horrific tragedy took her to her knees – literally and figuratively – and for six months she was unable to get up off the floor even, her doctors believe, trying to die by not eating or drinking water (just as Pierre had done in the last days of his battle with prostate cancer, going out on his own terms).

She found a will to live, was saved and now plays her most important public role yet: proof that one can, with proper treatment and medication, triumph over the stigma and shame that has for so long been associated with mental illness.

She spoke not of politics nor of her son, the Prime Minister (except to point out that Pierre had won a majority when she campaigned with him – but not as big as Justin’s), and that was all right. We weren’t there to hear anything more than her own story, which you can read about in her four books, the most recent of which is Time of Your Life: Choosing a Vibrant, Joyful Future published by HarperCollins.

The lineup to speak to Mrs. Trudeau after her speech was a long one and she agreed to meet with every single person, regardless of whether they purchased one of her books.

I came away from her speech, given at the Registered Practical Nurses’ Association of Ontario’s 2017 gala in Ottawa, exhausted, humbled and awakened; I know that I have got to find someone to talk to about the stress and the grief that are so much of our waking lives, Rob’s and mine. She reminded me of the power of taking action, even when you think there’s no more help to be had, that you’re just going to have to “live with it” and that, as always, there is tremendous strength in vulnerability.

Thank you, Margaret, for sharing yourself and for speaking in such a manner that held us all completely in the palm of your hand. You may never know how many people have been touched and changed by your message and it’s one that should be spread as widely and loudly as can be. #sicknotweak

@erindavis on Twitter

Thu, 09/19/2019

September 19, 2019 Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. [Dr. Viktor Frankl]

So, how’s your week been? Mine’s been…busy. I truly had no idea how much work was involved in recovery until I began it – and this applies to everyone, whether from illness or disease, or from traumas and change (large and small).

I have also finally come to admit that one of my biggest enemies is judgment. And it’s not from outside – as it used to be – but from within. I’ll explain.

When you live and work in an environment that is literally a popularity contest (in my case, with radio ratings monthly, and in a former life, counting how many clicks there were to posts or blogs – something that quite literally no longer counts), each day can be a challenge. I faced judgment as to whether what we were doing – topics discussed or written about, songs that were played and so on – were to people’s liking. Many felt free to share their opinions (especially at Christmas time). But that was the job and I loved so much of it that the rest was worth it.

Now, of course, that has changed. I’ve set more boundaries in my personal life and have removed several of the demands for more-more-more when it comes to numbers. Would I love to see our Switzerland-to-The Netherlands riverboat cruise in 2020 filled with just guests who want to be with Mike Cooper and me? Oh, heck yeah! (Anyone wanting information on that can click here to email our friend Gerry Koolhof.)

Do I hope that my friend Allan Bell will sell out tickets for the Old Mill-style dance Mike and I are hosting in Markham November 1 to aid Markham Stouffville Hospital? Absolutely.

But the pressures are off now. It feels strange but wonderful.

I don’t worry that what I write or post on social media will not please people. I stay away from political discussions, especially as one scandal after another – real or manufactured – arises each day; it’s just not worth the garbage responses and personal attacks that can accompany having a different point of view. I’m done with that idiocy and I’m embracing the Serenity Prayer‘s reminder to have the courage to change the things I can (and the wisdom to know the difference).

I block bots and bigots, have stopped following acidic accounts on Twitter and deleted my subscriptions to emailed newsletters that used to put a knot in my stomach when I saw their subject lines first thing in the morning. How much of my tension was self-inflicted! Now I use that morning time on meditation instead. Ahhhh.

The judgment that I’m working on now is something that I think a lot of us deal with: the voices that peck away at us from within. The ones that ask me why I’m doing this or not doing that; the ones that ask if I’m doing enough or doing too much. But this week, I found an astoundingly clear answer in a book that I’ve waited far too long to read: Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

If you’re not familiar, I’ll boil it down: Dr. Frankl was a young Austrian doctor when he was shipped to a series of concentration camps during World War II. Much of his family, including his pregnant 24-year-old wife, were among the millions who perished. The first part of the book is a series of moments and experiences from that horrific stain on history as seen through his eyes, both as a man and as one who studies the mind and its workings. It’s filled with heartbreak and abominations, but its pictures of human nature in that most stripped-down moment in time reveal glimpses of humour and even hope. It’s a brilliant and timeless piece of work.

(I am going to make it clear here that in no way am I comparing the loss of our daughter to the unimaginable hardships endured by those who have suffered physical and mental torture, the loss of their entire families and communities and so much more in wartime – and even peacetime – atrocities. While I think that something like that might go unsaid, I feel I should point it out, lest anyone imagine I believe otherwise. Full Stop.)

Back to what jumped out at me from this book. It was a line that made me reach for my highlighter, mark it and then read again and again. I’ve cited it to counsellors, to Rob and to anyone who will listen to me in recovery. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. The line refers to the behaviour patterns and psychological makeup of his fellow concentration camp prisoners. Laughter? Hope? Prayer? Bargaining? All normal for them as they strived to find a reason to live another day, another hour or even another minute.

What does that mean to me? Well, those simple words help me to understand why it is that I’ve been able to do what I’ve done since Lauren left us: dig deep into our grief to write a book and then talk about it without breaking down into tears every time I’m interviewed, sent a letter or email, or asked a question in a book club.

You see, it may not strike anyone as normal to have a reaction or aftermath like the one I’m experiencing, but that’s okay – it’s my normal. It’s how my mind and body have chosen to cope and to move forward and put into practice what Dr. Frankl calls “will to meaning.” Rob and I are willing ourselves into a future that has purpose and goals, like helping others through our own experience. That is exactly what Mourning Has Broken and the events that have come in its wake are meant to do. Even my recovery.

After judging myself and wondering how it was that the woman on stage or on camera (me) was getting through all of this intact when it should have left us to die, too, I finally have an answer. This is normal! And, as we all know, like beauty, “normal” is in the eye of the beholder.

When we stop judging ourselves, it frees us from the weight we carry in our minds, on our shoulders and elsewhere in our bodies. We become lighter of spirit and outlook and the rocks in our pockets transform into feathers. After all, are we that different from each other? Most of us are just doing the best we can with the hands we’ve been dealt (or the cards we’ve drawn) on any given day.

To lighten up on oneself, truly, is to feel altogether lighter. And it’s glorious.

By the way, if you’re interested in more information on the river cruise, the Oldies Dance or perhaps one of the appearances I’m making over the next few months, have a look at the ‘What’s UP’ section of my homepage.

Have a beautiful weekend and I’ll return on Monday.

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