Category: Uncategorized

Waiting for the afterlife

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

Hello readers! This post will go into the weeds of Catholic theology about salvation and sin. I tried to keep it broad enough for all audiences but given the nature of the topic, it could not be avoided. 

In response to my last post about hope for things unseen, reader MJ left a comment full of good questions. I decided to cut them out and use them as a prompt for this post. Saddle up because this is going to be a wild ride into the heart of what I believe and where it got me.

Thanks for reading Hey Vero!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

MJ wrote: 

Beside hope for a better tomorrow, that things would become the case, did you ever have hope for eternal life, for salvation, for unity with the God that Catholics worship? Did you ever think that heaven would become the case for you? The cornerstone of Christianity is that life is eternal and death does not mean the end. That definition of hope, that faith that better things will eventually become the case, must be applied to life as it is understood by Christians: that it won’t end when you die. Christianity does not hold together if you do not hold this view. One’s life may very well be “shit” from day one til the day one dies. Absolutely hellish vision if you think that is all there is.

These questions are difficult to answer without going into what Roman Catholics believe and how these beliefs shape religious practice. I will also need to give you some context about my family’s faith, how it formed me, and what I took with me in adulthood.

I was born to two Catholic parents, received all the Sacraments on schedule, and celebrated all the Christian major feasts by going to Mass and having a party. That said, while I remember going through phases of weekly church attendance with my mother, I would not describe  my family as “practicing” Catholics. The word “practicing” to me evokes a form of strict religious observance that my parents never espoused. My parents were believers in Christian virtue, in a religion that welcomed everyone, in the qualities of belief that made you a bigger, better person. My family’s religious practice was not coercive. It was not based on fear. It was a practice of 1: Corinthians (love is patient, love is kind…) and of the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor in spirit). My parents took the parts of religion that felt good, like music and community, and left the parts that didn’t. In conservative Catholicism, people like my parents are derisively called “cherry pickers” or “cafeteria Catholics.” 

My parents held that every good thing should be enjoyed in balance, including church attendance. Church was something we did on Sunday, some of the time. The rest of the week, we just tried to live upright, ethical lives. We never went to confession, we never talked about sin. We never had to behave a certain way, do certain things, or wear certain clothes just because it was what our faith instructed. There were right and wrong ways to behave and the difference was pretty clear. Don’t be a jerk, work to relieve suffering around you, be kind to others.

I don’t remember turning into an atheist as a teenager. I’m naturally disposed to delight in things the eye cannot see: love, beauty, kinship, intuition, connection. I like my universe inscrutable. I like my questions unanswerable. I am comforted by the presence of something bigger than me. I prefer not having all the answers. 

Yesterday, I was driving with my daughter Ève (12) when she told me: “I don’t really believe in God, but I think that if ‘God’ wanted us to explore space and the deep sea, we would be able to breathe there.” Ève doesn’t believe in God, but she believes that some things are beyond our comprehension. She calls this mystery God. She believes that the deepest seas and farthest galaxies have a purpose that is beyond our grasp. Ève is ok being a spec of dust in a larger universe. I’m like Ève: I fell out of practice as a teenager but I never fell out of belief. 

I returned to religious practice when I was pregnant with my third child. I was looking for community and belonging. I was looking for certainty. I wrote about my turn to practicing Catholicism in this 2021 newsletter post: 

Like my mother before me, I came to the faith looking for somewhere to fit in. Paul’s family was associated with a close-knit conservative organization inside the Catholic Church and while conservatism didn’t come to me naturally, the ready-made community did. As a young woman with a law degree and a growing family, I longed for a sense of certainty. I wanted to be sure that I was making the right decision. Communities of faith celebrated my choice to prioritize family over career. The further I went down the conservative spectrum, the more certainty I encountered. Scripture’s promise of a “peace that defies all understanding” was extremely compelling. For someone with an anxious inner buzz, inner peace is a powerful pitch. 

To me, there was always a difference between Catholicism and conservative Catholicism. I had grown up in a family where practice was strictly a matter of how you conducted yourself in the world. If parts of your religion made you mean (for instance, taking small kids to Mass), you could just cut them out. In my family, religion was supposed to help you show-up in the world as a better person. If it didn’t, it was pointless.

In conservative Catholicism, I encountered a much different approach to religious practice. It was almost entirely focused on salvation, first your own then that of others.  Suddenly, what a Christian friend affectionately calls “the Catholic noise” became nooks and crannies of rites that were like pebbles on a scale. Every single thought and action was contributing to a load of sanctity that would take us into blissful eternity. There were big rocks of sanctity for sure: service to others, self-denial, and so on. But salvation was also in a myriad of anxiogenic little decisions, such as “How hard do I have to try to find a Sunday Mass when I’m on the road?”, “How sick do I really have to be to be exempt from Sunday obligation? What about my kids?”, “Is New Year’s Day a real day of obligation?” (answer: yes in the US but not in Canada so better not chance it…) “Can I attend a wedding in a non-Catholic Church or would this be validating mistaken beliefs?” “Is yoga a satanic practice?” “Is Harry Potter a gateway to wiccanism?” “Can there really be Communion if there are drums in the band?”

In my family, eternal life was something that happened organically as a result of showing up in the world as a virtuous person. We didn’t live our lives wondering how to get to heaven. Heaven was our inheritance, a given. As virtuous Christians, we lived our lives trying to make the world a better place for everyone. Here. Now. 

In the faith I joined, eternal life was something we earned by behaving a certain way. Scripture and Tradition gave us an instruction manual, and if these instructions made us miserable or unhealthy, we were to work at acceptance, self-denial, and abnegation. As fallen human beings, hell was what we deserved and salvation would be granted for a lifetime of sanctity. 

To root an entire belief system in fear, you have to start young. As an adult “convert” – converting from one faith expression to another – some teachings of the Catholic Church always felt alien to me. Scripture tells us that we should cultivate a childlike faith, which is understood as humble and trusting. I think that it is also a faith that appeals to the imagination. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist requires an effort of the imagination, the Immaculate Conception requires an effort of the imagination, heaven, hell, purgatory and eternal life require an effort of the imagination. Children have an openness to stories, to things that are not entirely rational. They know about the limitations of their knowledge, they understand their smallness. None of these stories about heaven and hell were taught to me as literally true when I was growing up. 

I brought into my adult conversion the mind of a child that had not been imprinted by religious guilt or fear. In hindsight, I can say that I missed the bad and the good of religion’s grandiosity. I missed the fear of hell and eternal banishment. But I also missed the awe of believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And the comfort of believing in the promise of eternal life. My religious practice was firmly rooted in my senses: it was in making music, writing words, creating community, offering support, being a mother to my children. I found awe in nature but mostly in art, often crying in art galleries and at the end of a well-written book. In her question, MJ wrote: “The cornerstone of Christianity is that life is eternal and death does not mean the end. (…) Christianity does not hold together if you do not hold this view. One’s life may very well be “shit” from day one til the day one dies. Absolutely hellish vision if you think that is all there is.”

Does it not hold together? It does for me. Catholicism is embodied. Body, blood, soul, and divinity. Eternal life is your reward, but your life on earth is your one shot at living it well. In Catholic doctrine, human beings in flesh and blood come together as one to become the Body of Christ. Jesus himself, having died and gone to Heaven, is no longer doing good deeds in Palestine. He relies on us to be his hands, eyes, and ears. To heal, to help, to soothe, to comfort. 

About 10 years ago, I read an article in The Guardian about an atheist whose beliefs had been shaken by working with homeless addicts in the South Bronx. Expecting to find hardened cynicism about the unfairness of life, he had instead found some of the strongest believers he had met, “steeped in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore:”

Who am I to tell them that what they believe is irrational? Who am I to tell them the one thing that gives them hope and allows them to find some beauty in an awful world is inconsistent? I cannot tell them that there is nothing beyond this physical life. It would be cruel and pointless.

(…)

Soon I saw my atheism for what it is: an intellectual belief most accessible to those who have done well.

The idea of atheism as a luxury accessible to those who have done well rang true to me. But I found that it also gave Christians an easy way out of fixing inequality in a meaningful way, because this life is not our final destination, and suffering is redemptive. 

In a comment to my last post, my friend Faustina wrote “hope is not a strategy.” Shouldn’t we have more to offer those who have nothing than the promise of a better afterlife, hopefully?

When it comes to me, my hope of eternal life is now a question mark more than it ever was. One thing conservative catholicism has been good at imparting is black and white thinking about who is saved and who is not. 

When my marriage ended, my ex-husband and I initially decided to stay in the same house to minimize the strain on the children. This turned out to be an ill-advised decision in more ways than one: it decimated my mental health, plunged me in the depths of burnout and depression and eventually led to my loss of employment at the City. Living with my ex-husband when he was no longer trying to sugar-coat his contempt was deeply degrading and traumatic. Zero stars, do not recommend.

I moved out of the family home in November 2020, 6 months after the official end of the marriage but I could not afford to rent in my community. Five months later, my (then) friend Glen moved in to help me pay the rent. As you probably know now – although I’m never sure how many of my subscribers read my posts all the way through – Glen and I are now “together” together. He still pays the rent but we sleep in the same bed. It’s been a good deal to be honest.

When my friend Glen moved in with me, 3 people took me aside and told me about the inappropriateness of moving-in with a man. I was emotionally vulnerable and I was putting myself in a situation of mortal sin. 

In Catholic theology, mortal sin  is a deliberate turning away from God that destroys love in the heart of the sinner. It’s a grave action committed in full knowledge of its gravity and with the full consent of the sinner. Repentant sinners can be forgiven by a priest in confession but repentance for Catholics is not the simple act of saying sorry. It also implies a desire to stop the sinful behaviour by any means, in thoughts and actions.

The Church does not provide a list of mortal sins but they are generally known as breaking one of the Ten Commandments: murder (including suicide and abortion), apostasy, and the range of sexual deviances which includes anything but PIV intercourse with someone you are married to (self-pleasure, homosexual sex, and – yes – adultery.)

When I left the family home, I had barely enough money to support myself and a fraction of what I needed to support my children. I made $3600 a month and $2500 would go to rent and utilities on the first day. I had signed-away my right to child and spousal support because we were sharing the family home and left with nothing: no money, no furniture, no household supplies. My commitment to Catholic marriage had left me in an incredibly vulnerable situation and I was being warned about living in sin. 

Glen stepped in and paid half my rent and utilities in exchange for a single bed in my basement. He held me together as I went through the most heart-wrenching time of my life, stayed by my side as I flew into white-hot rages so loud my voice went hoarse and never faltered. Not only that, but when I lost my job 10 months later, he was able to pick up the full rent and keep my children and I from losing our home. I still have the rescue list he wrote for me when I lost my job at the City:

In the Catholic Church, my relationship with my ex-husband is the right true one, and my relationship with the person who wrote that note, paid my bills, and fed my children puts me in a state of mortal sin. Of permanent estrangement from God. I have to renounce salvation for choosing a man who loves and respects me over one who really doesn’t. My current living situation puts me in a state of mortal sin with full knowledge of its consequences, absolutely no repentance, and no intention to stop. In other words, my goose is cooked.

If the Catholic Church doesn’t want me loved, respected, supported, and whole, then there is no room for me at its table. I’ll find another party. 

I don’t want to waste away waiting for something better to happen when I die. I prefer living my life as if it mattered. 

Thanks for reading Hey Vero!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Hope for things unseen (and a note about Substack)

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

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.

Your Christmas Party was brought to you by…

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

I started writing this rant before the new round of pandemic restrictions hit Ontario. Some of the details might no longer be accurate but the feeling remains the same: we’re asking more from our children than we are willing to give ourselves. We are funding our freedom to eat and drink using our kids’ credit. There will come a time to pay. Follow this link and subscribe to my newsletter to read it:

https://vroniquebergeron.substack.com/p/drinking-on-credit?r=ugay2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

You don’t like newsletters and giving your email address? Please read why I am doing this and reconsider: https://fearlessfamilylife.com/2021/12/21/the-newsletter-format-why/

The Newsletter format: Why?

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

This is a copy of the Welcome email you will receive if you subscribe to my newsletter. It explains why I switched to this format. You can subscribe by following this link: https://vroniquebergeron.substack.com/p/coming-soon

Greetings readers and welcome to this new iteration of Fearless Family Life, Vie de Cirque and whatever else you might have read from me over the years. After thoughtful reflection, I decided to move my writing to this new format (the email newsletter).

Since my separation in April 2020, I have been struggling to write about the experience of growing through the pain and parenting under new circumstances. I struggle to navigate the fine line between sharing authentically about the peaks and valleys of family life and sharing information that my children may not want me to share about. My story is also theirs and graduating from potty training and co-sleeping to learning difficulties and mental breakdown has been fraught with caution and self-censure.

That said, I know from years of reader feedback that sharing my reflections helps you make sense of yours. And putting my journey into words helps me find meaning through the pain. There is a pruning and maturing process that occurs in my handwritten journal day after day. But when I am able to write a coherent narrative about my experience, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, I start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Sharing my experience with my readers is also how I make sense out of it. You are much a part of my healing as I am a part of yours.

I subscribed to substack with the goal of making this a paid newsletter. The experience I will share on these pages is personal and impactful and I want to inject an element of intentionality into my readership. Charging $5 a month for my content will not break the bank but it will put a value on my writing and ensure that the people who receive it really want to read it. This matters to me at this point in my life.

Trees and road safety

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

I am currently in France visiting family for a little over two weeks. Since my job is also my hobby I took the opportunity to turn this holiday into an urban planning field trip. Europe is far ahead of North America when it comes to managing population density, resource conservation and the perils of pollution. It’s not a criticism as much as an observation: these concerns appeared on Europe’s radar earlier than on North America’s.

Yesterday, we travelled from Rouen (in Normandy) to the Ardèche region, a forested mountainous area near the Rhône and within a crow’s flight of the French Alps’ foothills. It’s in the south-eastern quadrant of the Hexagon.

Instagram: @hey.vero_

We travelled most of the way on France’s privatized toll highway system and finished the trip with a short stint on the “Nationale 7” , the historic tree-lined trunk road stretching from Paris to the Italian border. Used by thousands on their way to the Mediterranean, it is known in popular culture as “la route des vacances” (Holiday route) and — more tragically — “Route de la mort” (Death Route). It is comparable in history and popular culture to America’s Route 66. If Route 66 had been built by the Romans.

We drove down the old Nationale 7 along the Rhône River towards the mountains of Ardèche.

Later that evening, we were discussing road safety and how a series of French policies in the 80’s and 90’s had seen a steady decrease in road casualties from 18,000 a year down to 4,000 with an increasing population. My uncle said in passing that it was hard to parse out which policy had had what impact “between alcohol, speed, seatbelts and trees…”

Trees?

My mother said “Oh, these trees killed a lot of people!”

As it turns out, the iconic borders of trees have a storied past. Seen by some as a road safety hazard, they are also part of France’s cultural heritage to be saved and protected:

Avec la vitesse, la conduite en état d’ivresse, les incivilités, les arbres d’alignement en bord de routes sont aujourd’hui considérés comme un danger à éliminer. Et pourtant… Depuis des siècles, nos paysages sont structurés par les alignements qui bordent routes, fossés, canaux et rivières. Les arbres de bord de route, et en particulier les alignements, constituent un patrimoine reconnu, protégé par la loi dans certains pays.

http://www.patrimoine-environnement.fr/les-alignements-darbres-en-danger-partout-en-france/

Believed to be an answer to medieval deforestation and a solution to shipbuilding needs , the trees, called “arbres d’alignement” for the way they delineate the roadway, were mandated by Henri III in 1552.

Roadway tree planting intensified at the beginning of the 19th Century as a mean of reducing the dust caused by vehicular traffic. By 1895, 3 million trees lined 35,000 km of national roads and even more could be found alongside secondary roads and channels.

In the 1940’s the border trees — until then considered a source of shade and cultural identity — became the scapegoat for the death toll brought on by the rise of the automobile. Calls for their systematic removal met cries for their preservation. Accused of causing 10% of roadway deaths, border trees were not even given the grace of mentioning the state or behavior of the drivers before being killed.

Caught in the crosshair of a campaign to reduce road fatalities, border trees received the support of President George Pompidou in 1970 when he wrote an exasperated letter to his Minister of the Interior upon learning of a policy to remove border trees in spite of his express wishes that they be preserved (my translation):

Trees have no other defenders than myself it seems, and even this doesn’t seem to matter. France does not only exist to allow the French to drive around it at will. Regardless of their importance, road safety problems shouldn’t result in the disfiguration of France’s landscape.

Decreasing traffic accidents will only result from educating drivers and establishing simple rules adapted to the configuration of the road instead of the current complexity sought in signalisation as if it was a hobby. It will also result from more stringent rules in matters of drunk driving (…)

In other words, blaming the trees is a little rich when you were soaked as a Christmas cake behind the wheel. (My uncle told me that blood alcohol levels used to be an extenuating circumstance in vehicular manslaughter trials. We laughed but it wasn’t funny).

Ordinances calling for the systematic removal of roadside trees multiplied in the 80’s and 90’s until 2006 when studies of road safety revealed that border trees — or as one urban designer once told me “anything vertical close to the curb” — had a traffic calming effect. Studies of road safety statistics in communes where trees has been completely removed also emerged showing the questionable impact of designing roads to be wide, straight, and devoid of obstacles (spoiler: it makes people drive faster, has an hypnotic effect and contributes to an increase in accidents.)

In 2010, a village near Norfolk, England experimented with the traffic calming effect of the ironically called “French style avenue”. Borders of trees were shown to reduce the average speed upon entering the village by 3-5km/h for a fraction of the cost of buying and maintaining traffic cameras.

England is generally considered to be 30 years ahead of France in matters of traffic safety and yet, despite these positive results, the remaining French border trees have been singled out as part of a wide-ranging safety audit of French departmental roads.

If you are as interested in the confluence of road safety, traffic calming, environmental preservation, urban design and urban heritage as I am, go and read this 66-page document (with pictures) on road infrastructure and natural landscape from the European Landscape Convention : http://patrimoine-environnement.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CEP-CDPATEP-2009-15-TreeAvenues_fr.pdf

In the meantime, here is Charles Trenet singing the praises of Nationale 7:

Opening a door, closing a window

~ Veronique ~ 3 Comments

My new website Fearless Family Life just launched and this is the long awaited official close of this blog. Despite its recent neglect, it’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that I won’t be posting here anymore. This website was my training wheels. I made friends and connections through this page and I will always be thankful for my readers’ patience and commitment.

Please follow me at my new website www.fearlessfamilylife.com and follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to never miss a post. I have a lot of good stuff coming up, between my foray into podcasting, my fiction writing and the blog posts I will keep churning. I have a Youtube channel, a Patreon page, a family who loves and supports me and hopefully, my Vie de Cirque amazing readers will follow me in my new Fearless Adventures!

I will continue to publish occasional update posts in French on Vie de Cirque. My French family was among my very first readers and I know that some still come here for updates. All my English writing will move to Fearless Family Life.

To my Vie de Cirque readers, those who encouraged me to start, those who have stuck with me those 5 years, and those who have joined along the way and kept the momentum, thank you. If I ever make it in this sphere, it will be because of you.

22093859214_465826e252_z

A miscarriage debrief Part II

~ Veronique ~ 7 Comments

 

I wrote the first part of this debrief about 6 weeks after my miscarriage last September. Now that my due date has come and gone, I find myself dealing with a new range of emotions as I move past the shock of the miscarriage itself and into the realization of the broader ramifications of recovering from a significant health crisis.

 

I started showing signs of peri-menopause after the twins were born when I was 37. Low progesterone, erratic cycles, just the usual. When my husband and I decided to have another child in 2015, we knew that I was walking into a growing chance of miscarriage. I had never miscarried before but I knew enough women who had been through this ordeal not to expect to be spared forever. Through the years, pregnancy after pregnancy, I had always been acutely aware of my luck and of the increasing likelihood that it would eventually run out.

 

We conceived in May of 2015. I took a pregnancy test as soon as my periods were late and it came back negative. As my periods got later and later and pregnancy tests kept showing a negative result, I knew that this pregnancy was probably precarious. I took a third test, this one positive and my periods started the next day. It was a non-event. We celebrated the tiny flicker of life that had dwelled in me privately, without informing our children or our families. We were thankful that we had “tried” for this one. That we had known from day 1 that it was a possibility. The next cycle, I got pregnant again. This time, a strong positive test informed us of the existence of our baby number 10. We told our families right away and started informing friends and acquaintances as we saw them in person. It was an ideal pregnancy. For once I didn’t have any nausea. I started wearing maternity clothes in August and I met with my new midwife in early September. When I met my midwife, she offered to listen to the baby’s heartbeat adding: “I don’t like searching for a heartbeat at 10 weeks because we often don’t hear it and it really makes parents nervous.” I assured her that I knew what was in the realm of possibilities and we searched, in vain, for a heartbeat. I kept a brave face because I knew that 10 weeks was too early but in previous pregnancies I had always been able to hear a heartbeat at my first appointment. In other words, “normal” wasn’t normal for me.

 

The next day, I started seeing some spotting. “Bleeding is not normal but it’s common” my midwife told me, “you don’t need to do anything unless the bleeding becomes a concern.” And so I waited. I relied on the encouraging words of friends who had gone through episodes of bleeding and visualized myself at an ultrasound being showed a healthy beating heart and a pesky hematoma.

 

Two days shy of completing my 12th week of pregnancy, I was in the basement with my husband sorting through all the newborn clothes when I started bleeding heavily. I was not feeling any cramping or contractions, it was like my body was trying to flush the fetus by opening the faucet. I headed for the hospital wearing three menstrual pads and sitting on a towel.

 

I soaked through everything during the 20-minute drive to the hospital. I immediately went to the bathroom as I felt a giant blood clot coming through. It was so big that it fell in the toilet with a splash and splattered blood all over the walls and the floor. I called the nurse for help and she casually walked-in, flushed the toilet and helped me back to my gurney. Was it my fetus? I will never know. A few hours later when the gynecologist was able to remove the retained tissue causing the hemorrhage there was only parts of a tiny placenta, a tiny cord and a tiny, ripped-up, sac left. I told my husband to take pictures of whatever came out. That’s all I have, along with my unshakable belief in my fetus’ unique, eternal soul.

 

I eventually passed out from the blood loss a few minutes after joking: “I can bleed like this for *days* with no side effect!!” — loosely quoting Meet the Robinsons because what else are you going to do while everyone is watching you miscarry but quote Disney movies? I fought it hard until a nurse told me: “You’re in a hospital, we’re here, you’re lying down, you can go.” Suddenly, there was no more pain and no more worry. I was completely comfortable even as I felt and heard people rushing around me, insert an IV into each of my arm and push a bolus of saltwater into my body. I knew that there was nothing I could do but pray and let people do their work. I remembered a friend who was in labor and thought that I could offer-up my loss for her son’s healthy birth. So I prayed and I floated. There was nothing else I could do but rest in the arms of God and trust. I still remember the supernatural calm and clarity of the time I spent “under” with a smile.

 

I’m telling you all this because before my miscarriage I thought that I would handle miscarriage with sadness but also an understanding that pregnancy loss was an integral part of the experience of motherhood. When I lost the first pregnancy in May, I knew that my low progesterone would make it difficult to carry a pregnancy past the first few weeks and I thought that I would keep trying. Now, I must come to terms with the fact that even trying to conceive in the current circumstances would be unhealthy. Walking into repeated miscarriages is more than an exercise in accepting God’s will, as I have read in some forums, it’s a gamble with your health. A miscarriage can be as straightforward as a heavy period or it may cause a hemorrhage, require surgery, a blood transfusion or even a hysterectomy. We simply don’t know how and when our bodies will pull the plug on a pregnancy and this has been, for me, a very painful realization. Can I sacrifice my health — a health that is not only my own but that of the family who depends on me — to have the child that I so painfully desire?

 

Lately, I have been struggling with the notion of sacrificial love. The Catholic Church — to which I belong — is all about sacrificial love. In the Catholic Church, nothing should be held back from God. Our lives are not our own. We know that Heaven is opened to those who are “perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.” This self-sacrificing perfection is acquired in this world or in the next through purgatory — but it must be acquired before we can rise to eternal life. Saints’ stories are rife with men and women who have sacrificed their health and even their lives in the pursuit of holiness. But it is equally rife with stories of ordinary people seeking holiness through quiet, ordinary lives, in their work, their families and their communities. Is the desire for another child a sign that I am called to offer-up my health in the pursuit of self-sacrificial love? Or, if we believe as the Evangelist Matthew tells us, that where our treasure is, there our heart is also, is the desire for another child the earthly attachment that needs to be offered-up, sacrificed?

 

This is the discernment that has been gripping my heart and my soul since the due date that wasn’t. While I was still supposed to be pregnant, I was struggling with the loss of what should have been. But when the friends and acquaintances who were due at the same time I was started welcoming their babies earthside, the bellies lost their anonymity and their babies were obviously not mine. I shed the feeling of present loss like a snakeskin and moved into foreboding, a realization that the future would look very different from what I thought it would be. In discerning whether I am called to sacrifice my health or my desire for another child, this fear is telling. Fear is never from God. When I start comparing myself to others and feeling like I “only” have 9 children, when I start feeling inadequate because I didn’t have a certain number of children, when the desire for another child overshadows my gratitude for my existing 9 amazing children, when I start feeling less, when I see a mother of 10, 11, 12 as more worthy than I am, I know that I am idolizing a larger family, that I am beholding a golden calf. Sacrifices should not be easy. When getting pregnant despite the health implications appears easier than accepting the end of my reproductive years as it is, I know where I need to direct my spiritual gaze.

 

And thus I will give until it hurts, a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing, as I know that it will be returned to me in eternity where I will finally meet the children I never had.

Canada Parachute edit

Requiem for a blog

~ Veronique ~ 5 Comments

I killed my blog. It happened without me noticing, a direct result of being a near computer illiterate. I mentioned in my last blog post that I could no longer upload pictures to WordPress. I had recently reached the storage limit of my media library so I started deleting pictures. The error message changed from “You have reached the limit of your storage capacity” to the cryptic “HTTP Error”. A quick search on support forums revealed that an overgrown media library could bring this message about so I set out to delete even more pictures.

Before I started deleting pictures, I checked to see if deleting pictures from the library would also delete them from the blog itself. That’s where I made a mistake, wasn’t sufficiently thorough, or maybe just didn’t have a clue. When I checked my blog, the deleted pictures still appeared on the page. I went ahead and deleted my entire media library. Today I found out that the pictures I saw on my blog pages were probably a “cached” version, or some mystery to that effect. In reality, the pictures are gone. Gone from the library, gone from the blog, my posts eviscerated, some of them no longer making any sense.

I poured a lot of my blood, sweat and tears on these pages since July 2011. I shared the early months of my twins, the birth of my ninth baby, our moves, homeschooling and my recent miscarriage. Some posts were wildly popular, others just touched a few hearts but touched them deeply, some were like a tree fell in the forest. Some readers shared their stories back with me and as my community of readers grew, I felt less isolated, more connected. This blog, the writing and the friendships that were born from it, has kept me firmly grounded as I sailed through some of the most intense and beautiful moments of my life.

After coming to the realization that my blog was irreversibly damaged, I spent some time exploring my options. I came to the conclusion that Vie de cirque had outgrown the basic WordPress platform I was using and it was time to ditch the training wheels and to move this wonderful community to a platform better suited for its growing potential.

Some things will change along with the hosting service. Most importantly, the name will change to “Fearless Family Life”. I know that many of you like “Vie de cirque” but it doesn’t lend itself well to search engines. I get many hits and messages from people looking for a French language blog on life in a circus. I need a title that is more evocative and easier to communicate.

Our family is at a juncture where it needs to diversify its sources of income: you know what they say about eggs and baskets. My husband, our only support, has a lot of very precious eggs in a basket-line that is expected to take a beating under the new Canadian government. My blogging is the most likely way to juggle my vocation and our need for diversification. As a result, I decided to take my focus off my writing for the next little while as I work on launching Fearless Family. I will find a way to archive my Vie de Cirque posts so that they are still easily accessible, I’m also planning to re-publish the most popular ones. I will still keep in touch via my YouTube Channel, my personal Facebook page and Instagram.

This is not an “Adieu!’ but an “au revoir” until we launch something that has the ability to grow with our family. In the mean time, please indulge me as I share one of my favorite musical pieces of all time, from Mozart’s Requiem. But don’t cry: we’ll be back soon.

 

 

 

Mixed Nuts: Election Day in Canada 2015

~ Veronique ~ 3 Comments

I started this post the day before the election and since I don’t have the luxury of writing as the results come in (because: bedtime) I decided to start writing Sunday night. The unfortunate colateral result is that I will be writing in light of the most recent polls as opposed to the results of the elections. If the last campaign is any indication, those will be wildly inacurate. Why?

Uno. The “Shy Tory Factor” is something that is consistently throwing pollsters out of whack. I think that this opinion piece from The Guardian is accurate and the source of much handwringing and hangover the day after conservative electoral victories. On Tuesday, before you clutter my Facebook feed with your outrage, remember that I told you so.

Dos. Three years ago, when the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) started cranking out attack ads aimed at Justin Trudeau (the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada — LPC), I was working on Parliament Hill as a writer for a local Member of Parliament. Attacks ads went after Justin Trudeau’s vacuity, lack of substance and absence of platform. As a writer, I had to write a lot of things that annoyed me, such as explaining politely to a variety of Mrs. Lalonde’s that her federal MP could not help her with her hydro bill, school bus issue or culvert. I regurgitated my Grade 5 Civics more times than I care to remember. Yet, nothing was quite as repulsive as having to reply to letters criticizing attack ads. I had to craft a reply that communicated our concerns about Justin Trudeau without wholeheatedly endorsing the more puerile aspects of the ads. Thankfully my boss was ok with it, I’m not sure how I would have dealt with having to write a cheerleading endorsement of the ads. All this to say, part of me is secretely jubilant that Justin Trudeau and his team were able to play these ads to their advantage. If it wasn’t for the part where they were so successful they might win the election, I’d be cheering for them. But my husband is packing us up and moving to Texas as I write so…

Tres. How did Justin Trudeau turn the attack ads around? It’s simple. All you have to do with attack ads is to not prove them right. The challenge is that attack ads are not made out of thin air, they are rooted in reality. The image of Stéphane Dion as a weak, dithering, out-of-touch professor came from somewhere. As did the image of Michael Ignatieff as an oppotunistic, temporary leader. Both former Liberal leaders walked right into the sterotypes the Conservative ad machine had made them out to be. Justin Trudeau defied them because he kept his cards very close to his chest. His absenteism record in the House of Common was notable but allowed him to duck more than a few potholes on the road to the campaign. His refusal to lay down a party platform ahead of the election campaign was also criticized by friends, foes and journalists alike. Yet, it gave no new ammunition to the attack ads machine, leaving it to work with Justin’s hair and Justin’s car and Justin’s former job as a drama teacher. Not only did the attack ads run out of steam and credibility, but Trudeau was able to prove them wrong. Which wasn’t hard at all.

Cuatro. Why wasn’t it hard? Because 3 years of attacking his credibility with almost nothing to go on has lowered the expectation of the public toward Trudeau to such an extent that he exceeded them just by showing-up with his pants on. (If the image of Justin Trudeau strolling on debate stage without his pants on just made your day my work here is done.)

Cinco. Faced with a negative campaign about Justin Trudeau based on image, Trudeau’s managers were able to duck most of the negative characterization of their leader by running a very tight and disciplined image campaign. It was so good, it was bad. Kelly McParland explains why in this piece. As a student of political campaigns, I can’t help but take notes. That said, if you expect elected Trudeau’s handlers to feed him freely to the Parliamentary Press Gallery,  you will be sorely disillusioned when you realize that Stephen Harper’s tight media access rules were just the warm-up. The Conservative learned partisan politics from the Chrétien Liberals.

Seis. Does this mean that Trudeau-for-Prime-Minister is a done deal? Well, by the time you read this piece, it might be. But for now, my call of a Conservative minority with a NDP opposition still stands. If you looked under the hood of elections statistics, you might be surprised to learn that many close campaigns are decided by the advance polls. It is enterily possible for a candidate to lose election night and be bolstered over the wall by advance polls results. The NDP and the Conservatives can boast of the best and brightest committed voters. The Liberal appeal is to the mushy middle, the same people who don’t vote on election day. We have seen unprecedented levels of voter participation at the advance polls and while it might point to a higher voting rate overall, my guess is that this was the result of Conservative and NDP campaigns ferrying their committed  voters to the advance polls. You know what they say about a bird in hand.

Siete. All this said, this has been an exciting election campaign and last minute swing voters might brave the cold and the waiting lines to cast their votes. I’m not sure the charm of Justin Trudeau’s inexperience will last long under the harsh light of reality. Minority governments, which is the best the Liberals can aspire to, are long, frustrating, and unproductive campaigns. Minority is not a healthy state in Canadian Parliamentary democracy.

Posting this before heading to the polls. It will be an exciting, nail-biting, evening and while worried about the spectre of a Liberal government I am also very curious to see if some dead wood will be replaced and how.

(If you wonder why I wrote my numbers in Spanish, it’s because WordPress kept indenting my numbers. Drove me nuts. I’m one of those old people who believe that machines should do strictly what they are told.)