Before we start:
Substack has been taken to task for its unwillingness to implement content moderation on the platform. You can read Casey Newton’s post about it. For paying subscribers, a portion of your payment to this newsletter goes to Substack and supports unmoderated content, including hate speech.
In 2019, I left Twitter because it was a cesspool. In 2022, during the municipal election campaign, a Twitter troll decided to use my relationship with my partner Glen as the basis for a smear campaign meant to disqualify him from public office. This troll shared personal information about me and where I live, encouraging his followers to dig out dirt about my employment and family history. Glen and I used to work together and we always accepted that questioning whether we were in a relationship while working together was of public interest. The problem is that when we answered “no, our relationship started two years after I left his office” , it was not enough. I was unemployed at the time and this smear campaign compromised two employment opportunities. I had to consult a defamation lawyer who went over the tweets and emails and agreed that there was defamation but that the cost of pursuing it would be higher than the potential award, especially given Twitter’s reluctance to make its platform safe for women. Our requests to Twitter to remove the content were ignored or turned down by the platform.
At the time, Glen was still using Twitter and I was trying to convince him to leave it. He felt like it was a useful tool to communicate with his constituents. I said: “Your white male constituents.” To me, his continued use of Twitter to broadcast information — about parking bans, development applications, weather events — forced people who were not safe on Twitter (like me) to use the platform. It was like taking office in a part of town known for its sexual assaults and expecting women to go there to access city services.
As a cis white man, Twitter was safe for him. Case in point: he was subjected to the same smear campaign I suffered and was re-elected easily. To me, it was not enough to encourage women and other vulnerable people to leave Twitter. Staying on the platform was an endorsement of Twitter’s policies concerning unfettered freedom of speech and harassment. Bringing traffic to Twitter in the form of constituents looking for information about bus delays and snow removal was unconscionable.
Which brings me to Substack. Substack’s decision not to moderate hate speech is not a threat to me. With my 200 subscribers, 50 of which pay a nominal fee for my content, I operate unbothered by hate speech. My revenues, paused at the moment, are so small that if I squint I can’t see them anymore. The portion of my earnings that could be argued to support hate speech is calculated in hundredth of a decimal point.
But it is not ok for me to benefit from a platform that threatens others just because it is safe for me.
If you have good solutions or insight, please share them with me. I won’t resume subscriptions until I find a solution. One option would be to add a Stripe “checkout” button and let people pay as they go. Maybe I will revive the blog for those who prefer avoiding Substack altogether and add micro-payments to the blog. I think that we all have a hand in making the Internet a safer place for woman and other vulnerable groups.
Ok, on to the post itself.
January is almost over and I have not written anything since last Fall. The problem with writing is that it creates its own momentum. When you stop writing, you don’t only lose the habit, you lose the inspiration. Like all skills, it’s a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. So here I am, coming back to it.
How am I doing lately? I’m ok.
On the good news front, I am working again. After applying for 200 jobs, writing exams and taking tests, I got a message on Facebook from a friend whose husband was trying to staff an admin assistant position at a large public sector union. Two weeks later I was back to a full time job. My job is a 3-month term position that was just extended for another 3 months. I enjoy the work, I really believe in the cause, and while my job is strictly administrative, I sometimes come across papers and over-hear interesting presentations about health & safety, alternative conflict resolution, anti-racism in the workplace and indigenous advocacy. My boss is attending a conference on “Trauma informed approaches to justice” this Spring and while I can’t make a case for going (she could need someone to hold her shoes…) I love the fact that I am working for an organization that supports this type of formation for its employees and managers. I’m hoping to claw my way to a position in grievance & adjudication or labour relations. I think there’s a future for me in sticking it to bad managers after the last two years.
There are a lot of good parts of my life, things I am thankful for. I live in a cozy house near a park. My children can walk to school and bus or bike everywhere else. I’m in love with a man who loves me back in equal irrational amounts. I often tell him “I’m but a shadow of the person you met in 2018” and his answer is always the same: “But it’s still you.” His optimism verges on annoying at times but it has a way of knocking me off a downward spiral. A few months ago I was having a tantrum about how bad everything was and I told him: “Why can’t you see that everything is SHIT???” His face fell and he said: “Every morning I wake up next to you, and we sit together on the couch and I have coffee with my best friend. I think that’s pretty awesome.”
Right.
On days when the kids are not with me, we live a quiet domestic life with my daughter Marie and our dog Mirabelle. The other half of the time, we live a loud and chaotic family life trying to keep it all together. But seeing those good and lovely parts takes an act of will. I have to force myself to look at the good parts because the not-so-good parts are still overwhelming. I read a piece of fashion advice forever ago: once you are done putting your outfit together and accessorizing, close your eyes and turn yourself around in front of the mirror. When you open your eyes, the first accessory that jumps at you should be removed. A little like perfume: if you can still smell your own perfume after 15 minutes, you’ve overdone it. The tough parts of my life are like the first accessory you see, like the perfume you can still smell after 15 minutes. I take a swirl in front of a mirror and when I open my eyes I see the hardest parts: the precarious employment, my age, financial instability, school issues, health issues, legal issues. I have to force myself to remember the good parts. But the hardest part is having no hope that things will get better.
I have been reflecting a lot on hopelessness, what is it, where it comes from, how I got to that place and why I can’t leave it. In 2021 I went through a severe burnout and depression. One of the most enduring symptoms of mental illness (for me) has been the loss of “interest or participation in activities normally enjoyed.” I lost my interest in music, in writing, in hosting, in creating community around me, and nothing is coming back. I clawed my way almost all the way out of the depression bucket but for that little ledge of enjoying anything. If you have been in labour, it’s like transition: a really uncomfortable in-between space. It’s “the lip” of cervix that won’t completely make way for pushing the baby out. That lip of cervix that feels like a brick wall when you push against it and yet, is so negligible the midwife can touch your baby’s head.
So I’m here waiting for my new birth and wondering if after 3 years, this is just the way I am. Maybe this is a permanent fold in my life, a consequence of the loss of innocence, of trust in providence. The loss of the illusion that if you make the right choices and do the right things, things will work out.
When I was a practicing Catholic, I found a lot of comfort in Romans 8:28 “all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose…” When you put this belief in the driver’s seat, you start seeing adversity as part of an ensemble, like a painting that is only partially finished. Another part of Romans 8 is a call to hope for things unseen: For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
Romans 8 is a real shield against hopelessness, you could even call it a bit of self-gaslighting: if you believe in God and are called according to His purpose, adversity is not adversity. It’s only part of a bigger story, one that ultimately ends well. And if your senses tell you that your life is shit, you need to work on your faith. Because your senses deceive you.
When I reflect about the loss of hope that has accompanied the end of my marriage, I am struck by a compelling irony: hope for a better tomorrow, for greener grasses, for an “after”challenging times, is what sustained my relationship with my husband for 25 years. Not that things were bad, but my ability to get along and be happy with Paul for so many years was largely based on my ability to follow along. And my ability to follow along was rooted in an ability to hope, to trust. I looked up the online dictionary’s definition of hope as a verb and it gave me to “want something to happen or be the case.” To want something to be the case. That is an accurate summary of my marriage: to want something to be the case.
We moved 10 times in 20 years in the same city. This April, the little rental house where I currently live will be my longest held address since 1995. Every move was motivated by a promise: a bigger dream, a better situation, greener grasses, stronger footings. Paul was always looking at the next best thing. As soon as things settled, we were on the move again. Paul went through these cycles of creation and destruction like clockwork every 3 years and my ability to hope, to believe it was true, to want something to be the case, buoyed this frenetic search.
I had chats with my older children about how these moves affected their emotional and social lives and I remember telling one of them that I never felt forced to move, I always went along because I believed it would be the last time. Every. Single. Time. I was busy having and raising my children and while the cycles of creation and destruction were difficult for me, Paul was a generous provider. I remember telling a friend – who was worried about how vulnerable I was in this situation – that I was also gaining from that arrangement: I had the large family I had always wanted and we didn’t want for anything. I also remember telling my mom when she shared similar concerns that Paul would always stop short of self-destruction: as long as my fates were tied to his, I’d be ok. Boy, did that come back to bite me in 2020!
I got pregnant at 21 between my first and second year of law school. I knew early on that my professional and personal lives would follow a jagged path. But I always believed my turn would come. I never resented the demands of my family or the impact of my children on my career. To me, that was just life unfolding. I believed in “later”. I believed in having it all, just not all at once. I followed along, raised my children, and every now and then Paul would throw me a line: I got my master’s degree and started a career in politics between pregnancies and moves, creations and destruction. But everything stopped short of coming together: the jobs in bioethics paid too little (if at all), the jobs in politics had crazy schedules, daycare was too expensive, we needed to pay off our debts, get ready for the apocalypse, build a custom house, homeschool, move back to the city, get a job, sell a house, rent a house, build our equity, spend it all on a camping trailer. It was never quite “my turn.” I didn’t know what “my turn” meant but I always knew it would come. “My turn” had something to do with taking a step back from the cycles of creation and destruction, with the ability to shelter myself – and the children who wanted to – from the constant restarts. And throughout, a deeply held belief that things would work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
What drew me to the Catholic faith was hope. The idea of things unseen, the idea that our human limitations prevent us from seeing the whole picture. Christian hope is a powerful motivator. For me, it was the glue that held it all together. I started a blog because I hoped to become an author. I practiced my music because I hoped to join a band. I got a master’s degree because I hoped to find work. I built up a foundation between cycles of creation and destruction, between pregnancies and nursing, hoping that when my turn came I would be ready for it. Once the kids were older, once things were more stable, once money wasn’t so tight. After the next move, the next contract, the next opportunity.
For 25 years, I rode the coattails of Paul’s sense of self-preservation but when my marriage ended, I became an obstacle, something to protect against. Today, when I turn to my Christian hope, all I see is that my belief in Catholic marriage, in mutual support, in a joint venture, has left me completely exposed and financially dependent on someone who sees that dependence as an existential threat.
Things are no longer working together for good for those who love God, or maybe I am no longer in God’s favour, or maybe I am no longer called to His purpose as an ex-wife. There was hope of things unseen, enveloping my 25-year marriage like a fog. When the fog lifted, there was nothing left but a broken promise of mutual support, precarious employment, unstable housing, and the need to hire a lawyer to prevent my children from falling into poverty. I’m angry at Paul, for sure I am. But to be honest, I am angrier at the Church for making women like me hope that God is bigger than patriarchy and capitalism.
I don’t know how to get back to a hopeful place. “It’s the hope that kills ya” or maybe it’s the shock of realizing that hope led you to your own demise. But this life without hope is not a life.
Hey Vero 