About

When I was thinking about moving to Vancouver last year, part of the appeal was thoughts of hiking mountains on a regular basis. My brother Reid and I had hiked The Chief in Squamish during my visits and I wanted more. As someone who has a myriad of body issues and has struggled with top levels of anxiety just thinking about my body, (more on that later) it was beyond incredible to get to that first peak, and to know that I did it. With my legs. My arms. My lungs. I wanted more of this feeling.

Instead, I went back to being afraid and just generally ignoring the fact that part of being human is having a body. I’m sure that sounds absurd to many people, and at some point I hope to explain what I mean in further detail. But for now, in short, I was adverse to physical activity.

I suddenly and unexpectedly moved to Vancouver last September. I had a vague plan of this being a new beginning. I was going to run, and hike, and be active and live happily ever after. Life was going to be awesome.

I had a bit of pain in my left foot, but since my default way of reacting to my body was to pretend it didn’t exist, I had been ignoring it. And anyway, I had decided life was good now, so obviously the pain would disappear. The thing about pain though, of any kind, is it can’t be ignored away. So a month into life on the West Coast, my foot pain became unbearable. As I suspected, the diagnosis was plantar fasciitis, with a recommendation to stay off my foot as much as possible. As a cook, this effectively ended, although perhaps just temporarily, my career. I caught a cold at the same time, and with all this time in bed, became really good friends again with depression, despair, anxiety, and panic attacks.

Fast forward a few months, and feel like I am now getting that new beginning I so desired in this lovely city.
I’ve set myself a 30 day cycling challenge. I will go out for a bike ride every day for the next 30 days, no excuses, rain or shine. To try and prevent failure, I’m not giving myself any other requirements. For instance, a ride around the block counts if that’s all I can manage. I just want to get out every day.

So, the aforementioned body issues and why I’m publicly writing about this at all. I’ve thought a lot about how and when I would say this, and I’ve decided I’m just going to go for it. I was raped when I was 12. There is no part of my life that hasn’t been affected by that crime. A lot has happened in the 17 years I’ve lived since that night to further damage my trust in people, but for now I’ll leave it there. These days I read and hear about other young girls who have had similar experiences and end up killing themselves. When I was in high school, two teachers told me about their experiences with rape. One was adamant that I never tell anyone what happened to her. Ever. Which, I mean, I understand her fear. But all that said to me was this shame I was feeling was legitimate. And it so isn’t!

I want to add my voice to the public conversation and
1) say that I am not ashamed of what was done to me and neither should other victims/survivors of abuse of any type,
2) give people a glimpse of what it is like for me with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some of the challenges I face, and also that in spite of everything, I’m actually pretty awesome. PTSD doesn’t equal a life of misery.
3) promote discussion. I personally don’t have all the answers on how to stop this kind of violence from happening, but you better believe it’s a question I plan on asking.

Well then, 700+ words later, welcome to my blog. And thanks for the camaraderie.