Welcome to My (new-ish) Corner of the Internet.
I’m writing from Day 4 (or 5) of Social Isolation/Distancing during the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.
I am currently at home all day with an 11 year old and a 13 year old.
I work from home most of the time, so this does not feel like a big deal for me (yet). But these tween/teens just want to eat all day long and are always on a device and when I say enough, then they are bored every 10 minutes and I refuse to be a short order cook and their sole source of entertainment ideas during this time. (I swear, it’s like they are toddlers again - without the naps!)
Also, it’s almost 3 PM here and I just told them it might be time to have some lunch.
How is it going for everyone else? Share your social isolation/”stay the eff at home” survival tips and tricks with all of us in the comments!
In the meantime, I do have a couple of announcements:
1 - As you may have noticed, the name of my blog has changed. It’s no longer The Stay at Home Feminist. I mean, yes, I still stay home quite a bit and yes, of course I am and always will be a feminist, I just felt like it was time to be ME online. So…. this blog is now called Natasha Chiam Writes.
2 - Also, about a year ago I started a consulting business. I have been doing social media consulting and management for a handful of clients, as well as some web and copy writing, and a bit of personal styling as well. I am finally making the business officially official with its own dedicated website. You can now find Natasha Chiam Consulting at NatashaChiam.Works. (A big thank you and shout out to Elan Morgan for all her work designing both of my sites to reflect all these changes!)
I know the next few weeks and maybe months are going to be hard. But just remember, we survived the #zombiemom years and that shit made us resilient AF! WE CAN DO THIS. Also, never before have I been happier to have this little corner of the internet to be able to communicate with so many people all over the world. We need to keep all these lines of communication and connection open and flowing now more than ever. I know it’s not the same as IRL, but remember how many friendships and relationships we’ve forged through these platforms alone and how many great ways we can connect now that we didn’t have 10 years ago… Hello, NETFLIX Party anyone??
It has suddenly gotten eerily quiet around here, so I’d better go see what’s up. Here’s hoping my kids have discovered napping again…
Take care my friends,
XOXO,
N~
Political {parity} is so VERY PERSONAL (and partisan)!
PARITY in politics.
That’s the goal: to get as many women in the seats as men. To make parity a non-issue and just the way it is supposed to be. 50% of the population = 50% of the representation.
Last night in our city, a wonderful organization had an event to encourage more women to run for our municipal election in 2021. Disclaimer: I did not attend this event. I currently have no intentions of running for public office (seriously - a deep dive into any of my SM feeds and you will see why), but I am a staunch supporter and champion of the women who do intend to run. I’ve worked in the background on campaigns before and I will again.
The keynote speaker at the event last night was Leela Aheer. She is the Minister of Culture, Mulitculturalism and the Status of Women for the Alberta UCP Government. A government that on the regular, for the past eight months they’ve been in office has continued to make life more difficult for women in our province.
Here are just a few examples of what the current Government of Alberta has done that primarily impacts women in this province:
Discontinuation of the $25 a day childcare pilot program.
Cutting AISH and Income Support payments and also changing the date that these are delivered. Did you know that most people who require income support are single parents, the majority of whom are women?
Cuts and lays offs to nursing jobs - again, primarily women.
And just this week, deciding what medical procedures are “of limited clinical value”and targeting tubal ligations and breast reductions in particular.
It is not a great time to be a woman of limited means in this province.
Quite a few of my friends were at the above event and I was happy to see them there. It gives me hope for the future when strong women stand up for what they believe in and make the moves to do the hard things. And then I saw one particular quote from Minister Aheer’s speech was being tweeted over and over.
“Parity isn’t Partisan”
HA!
I mean. Okay, I get the thought behind this statement, we want those running to have parity, the representation to have parity, but also - ummmm, WHAT?
Maybe in municipal elections there exists a certain luxury of being non-partisan and running on your own merits and values, but PUL-EASE, UCP Minister for the Status of Women, who has been noticeably silent on the many issues facing Alberta women with the policies and legislation being brought forward by YOUR government…. DO NOT FEED US THAT LINE OF BULLSHIT.
Parity is ABSOLUTELY partisan if you are nothing but a mouthpiece for the patriarchy and can’t even see the writing on the wall in front of you. Parity is partisan when you constantly look the other way when your government is actively and negatively impacting the lives and livelihoods of women who are your constituents and whom you claim to represent.
My fellow WOMEN, we can not be the TOKEN feminists of the patriarchy. We can not claim we want parity in politics and then continue to support the policies that keep women “in their place”. We can’t demand parity, get the spot on the team and then play by the rules of the old boys club. We have to change those rules. And doing so will ruffle some pretty established feathers. PARTISAN feathers.
The truth is, it is going to take some very multi-partisan legislation to actually get parity quotas on our constitutional books and blast open the doors for more women in politics. The case for forced quotas is made in this article from 2018 about political gender parity In Quebec… (I’m particularly tickled by the tweet they quoted)
“The insistence that we let things naturally progress prompted a viewer to tweet, “No one is against merit. But believing that gender parity is just going to happen in politics, is tantamount to believing that oil companies will self-regulate for the environment’s protection.” Touché!
That tweet, however, is the truth right there. Women are sitting here patiently waiting for the rules to change so they, too, can also equally play by them, when the rules were initially put in place by men. It’s not going to happen because the game was rigged from the get-go. Despite progress, the old boy’s club is alive and well and continues to benefit men in many unseen ways. Those pretending to protect the merit of the current status quo are making the grave mistake of assuming that those currently in power only got there because of their competence. What if privilege and connections and systemic sexism had a little to do with it too? Parity laws aren’t there to reward or promote incompetent women, they are there to ensure that competent women aren’t pushed aside because the old boy’s network has made sure they won’t be allowed to get in. Gender parity in politics won’t facilitate mediocrity; it will protect against it. ”
I truly believe that gender parity in politics is essential to our future and I hope that I live long enough to see it in my lifetime. I also believe that until we are willing to dismantle the system that currently exists and have the political and PERSONAL will to elect people who will do that from the inside, we are going to keep hearing from these ‘mouthpieces of the patriarchy’ and continue to see the issues that face women be the targets of “conservatism”.
I’ll leave you with some words from my fellow Twitter politico and also ask that in the future, when we ask for (DEMAND) parity in politics, we also ask for some HONESTY as well.
Go forth and run for office my friends - I’ll work on your campaigns with you! And remember… the personal is political (and yes, partisan in our current day and age).
XOXO,
N~
the resilience lie
A friend asked a question on Facebook the other day about what resilience means in the context of health and fitness and recovery and, as I have recovered from multiple health and surgical related issues in my life, I have some thoughts on this topic. On the expectations of what we think recovery should look like and why I feel like this is something that needs to be talked about a whole heck of a lot more in the recovery and rehabilitation community.
She also posted the dictionary definition of the word RESILIENCE and the more I look at it, the more I think it’s one of those words we use often, but in the vein of Vizini, from The Princess Bride….
The dictionary defines resilience as the capacity to recover QUICKLY from difficulties. Toughness, elasticity. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL…
Okay, I am fine, I have picked myself up off the floor.
For some people, and in some situations, recovering from life’s difficulties can be quick. They can easily spring back to where they were before “the thing” happened. Maybe “the thing that happened” was just a blip, a temporary oops in the universe, and springing back to normal is just that, a simple rebound, a course correction, and BAM! back on track. Good for those people. I am so happy for those people. I am not talking about those people.
The best way I can describe what I mean is by talking about my knees. Yes, my knees, and my knee replacement surgeries and my recovery from these surgeries. But the story started way before that…
As you know, I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was diagnosed at 19 years old, something my rheumatologists have now agreed was likely a late diagnosis of Juvenile RA. A disease that unlike the regular RA that hits people later in life with the usual characteristics of gnarled arthritic hands, JRA likes to target your BIG joints. Hips, knees, shoulders, elbows; you know the ones that let you move like a human being and not a robot. At 23, a mere four years after my initial diagnosis (and remember, a late one for JRA), I took a semester off from University and had both my hips replaced. I was the youngest person the nurses had ever had on the unit getting not one, but two hip replacements. And aside from my messed up hips, I had the body of a typical 23 year old. In other words, I was bouncy and elastic (ie: resilient) A.F!
The part about the definition of resilience and my own resistance to the whole “bounce back” narrative, is bounce back to what? At 23, sure it was easy to bounce back after having hip surgery. I was back at work and school within a month of each hip and dancing on speakers at Rebar* not long after that. I didn’t have to think about my resilience at this point in my life, because who isn’t a bloody elastic in their mid-twenties? But there are limits and restrictions after this kind of surgery (and any kind really) and no matter how much I wanted to get back to “normal” after having both my hips replaced, that was never going to happen. To put that kind of pressure on myself was a terrible burden, one that I carried around for a long time. I thought I had to be like everyone else around me, pretend that I didn’t have a chronic disease, didn’t have two major surgeries in under three months, and didn’t need to think about them anymore and could go back to regularly scheduled content. I convinced myself for more years than I like to admit that I wasn’t ever going to let this disease, these surgeries, DEFINE me.
Fast forward 25 years, and in 2016, I was once again facing the prospect of double joint replacements. In my mind, I had convinced myself that I’d get these damn knees of mine replaced and just like that, I’d be pain-free and fully mobile once again. RESILIENCE EXPECTATIONS Y’ALL!
And once again, being a young-ish (by joint-replacement standards) orthopaedic patient, I recovered from these surgeries rather well. I was in and out of the hospital with no complications in under three days for both knees. I did all my exercises as prescribed by the physiotherapists and at my three months follow-up appointment, I impressed everyone with my almost full range of motion in my knees.
The thing was (and still is), NO ONE EVER ASKED ABOUT THE REST OF MY BODY!
Picture this - you have RA in your knees and for years the tissue and joint space is degenerating, at one point you have an arthroplastic procedure to “clean it up a bit”, but the damage continues. It continues to the point that your gait is affected, your knees start to buckle and you become visibly knock-kneed. When you finally make it to the surgeon and on the wait list for knee replacements, he tells you not to worry, he will straighten out your knees and you’ll be good as new after surgery.
Here is a visual for you. These are not my knees, but mine were very similar:
Think about what this immediate change in alignment does to the rest of the body
My surgeon wasn’t wrong about my KNEEs being as good as new after surgery, but what he was wrong about and what I think is lacking in the orthopaedic/joint replacement world is the acknowledgment and proper PRE and POST OP training and rehab for the rest of the body.
I am three years post-op from my last knee surgery in 2017 and I am STILL dealing with the fallout of what re-aligning my knees did to my back and every muscle in my body below my belly button. Six months after my first knee surgery, my husband was literally lifting me out of bed every morning while I swallowed my screams from the pain shooting down my legs. Multiple X-rays and ultrasounds showed no mechanical reason for this amount of pain and I was once again sent for physiotherapy and given pain medication. I spent the next two years jumping from one form of therapy to another to try to deal with this soft tissue and nerve pain and find answers as to why this was happening to me and how to fix it? I am not joking when I tell you that maintaining myself at a functioning level of life during that time was a full time job - so much so that I had to quit my actual part-time job. And by functioning level, I mean that on a pain scale of 1-10, I was spending most days hovering around a 6-7.
I’ve had cortisone injections into my SI joints. I’ve had prolotherapy injections into my lumbar spine to “jump start” an immune response and healing (not a great option for the immunocompromised BTW). I’ve has so much IMS that I think I became addicted to the “hit” of a well placed needle and the short-term release it afforded. I’ve been to all manner of massage therapist and I’ve had more epsom salt baths than a normal person probably should in their life time. I am not saying that none of these things helped, they all did to varying degrees and for varying lengths of time, but the pain persisted.
You guys, I am resilient AS FUCK, but nothing has been quick or bouncy about this healing process and the traditional definition of resilience in this situation simply DOES NOT APPLY! And because I have been so bloody resilient in the past and bounced back so well from my past surgeries and experiences, the expectations I had placed on myself were that this time would be the same. Fix my knees, fix my life.
HA!!
It has taken me three years to accept that the lower half of my body was literally REBUILT on an operating table and the old ways of moving said body were just not going work with the new hardware and the new alignment. It has taken is me this long to realign both my expectations and my body. Three long years spent on therapies that were never going to work long term, on testing and health care expenses that never provided answers (because nothing was “wrong”), and three years that kept me in a state of perpetual anxiety and frustration and yes, depression. To say I was MAD about this in a gross understatement.
Six months ago, I met Toni Harris. “Toni is a certified Personal Fitness Trainer through the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, and is a Corrective Exercise Specialist through the National Academy of Sport Medicine trained through NAIT’s outstanding Personal Fitness Trainer program.” and she has made all the difference in my recovery. From explaining how my muscles and fascia works, to helping me understand the brain-body connection more and how to work this to my advantage, to reframing my restrictions and limitations because of the orthopaedic surgeries. She has also gently pushed me past my patterns of physical and mental resistance with her patience and ability to explain why my body does what it does. I am stronger now than I have been in a VERY long time (if you recall - I mentioned jumping a few posts back) and it makes me wonder how much further along I would be if Toni had been part of my PRE-hab and post-op rehab life three years ago.
This post is about resilience in the face of health challenges and I guess my point is this: if the expectation is to GET BACK TO WHERE YOU WERE BEFORE, to be all fixed and good as new so to speak, I believe we will always fall short and be disappointed. Major surgery changes the internal structures in your body and regardless of how seamless the healing process is, some things are just not going to work like they did before. Trying to jam a square peg into a new rounded out hole will not work and along with the resilience that we want to have with any health challenge or injury recovery, these expectations have to be tempered with the reality of how our bodies heal.
Had someone explained to me the impact that realigning my knees, and thus altering the way my body used muscles different from the ones I’d been using to move for the past 20 years, I would have been way more prepared for the challenges I faced post-operatively. I would have understood the need to RETRAIN both my muscles and my brain and the connections between the two and not have spent so many years (and so much money) looking for a reason for the pain and something to fix it.
I know I’ve been talking about my experience and my specific surgeries in this post, but I believe this concept applies to many kinds of health challenges or injuries and “bouncing back” from these. When we better understand why the body does what it does and why (hint - most often done to protect), that is when recovery and rehabilitation will truly be transformational for people.
I know it has been for me.
XOXO,
N~
*you have to be a certain amount of years old to remember Rebar and my dancing on the speakers. Both were epic!
My Social Media use in 2020
For the past few years, I’ve been doing this thing where I try to keep my social media profiles quite separate.
Instagram for images and inspiration and stories and where I spend most of my SM time.
Facebook for… well, mainly for clients actually. I rarely post to my personal page anymore and when I do, it’s a call to action for something (psst…. you should go check out what I posted yesterday.)
And Twitter for all my political rage and the odd subtweet (I know, I know, petty).
I am not sure if this has been a good strategy or not, but it is what I’ve done up to now to keep my sanity intact.
Someone posted a tweet the other day asking if the person you are on Twitter is the same person you are in real life. It made me realize that the people who follow me on Twitter might think I am nothing but a very rage-y, profanity-laden, liberal snowflake.
And let’s face it, at this time in Alberta, with this government doing all it can to undermine the very nature of our people and province, they wouldn’t be far off. And don’t come at me with all the “but Natasha, Oil and Gas IS the nature of our province” because NOPE. We are SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT. And what frustrates me more than anything else, is that this government has decided to be so narrow-minded and narrow-focused in it’s policies and it’s treatment of its citizens, they refuse to even consider how Alberta could and SHOULD be exploring/developing/innovating all of our MORE-ness, now more than ever. (that was a lot of MORE-I’m such a good writer😜)
Now is not the time to deny science or make up lies about simple economics that my 6th grader can see right through. Now is not the time to tie us to a sinking ship while rich CEOs take their companies, jump said ship and leave us listening to the band on deck lulling us to our inevitable downfall. Our province continues to lose jobs (in all sectors) and our government is actively attacking professions and their livelihoods and risking another huge brain-drain for Alberta. They’ve taken over pensions that no one asked them to and are investing these in industries no financial planner in their right mind would ever suggest to you in our current world economic climate. This government in it’s infinite stupidity is going to make it so that the rest of the world will surpass us in diversifying economies and energies and we will forever be playing catch-up. And who do you think will suffer even more because of this lack of foresight? It’s not the rich CEOs or the government ministers with their 6 figure jobs and guaranteed pensions, I’ll tell you that!
The one MAJOR difference I see in the social platforms I use, is the level of compassion and empathy granted to others. On Instagram it’s all flowers and pretty and messages of kindness and love and some kick ass feminism too (well, for me it is, because DUH, I’ve curated it to be so). On Twitter, people are MAD AS HELL (and often funny as hell too), but what I’ve curated on Twitter is also a reflection of what matters to me. Some people will tell me I’ve created an echo chamber and anything I tweet is just being said to those who already agree with me. GOOD! I have over 4600 followers on Twitter, if that many people are worried about the state of our world and want to make it a better place then I am all for my little chamber of echoes! And anyway, I prefer to think of it as a pond and if I drop a pebble in it, maybe one of the ripples will make it to someone’s timeline and will be the thing that makes them change their mind, their behaviour, or at least maybe engage in a conversation and be open to learning things from a different perspective. Then again, maybe I give people to much benefit of the doubt. I’m an optimist goddammit!!
It’s kinda like this…
I’ve also been worried (for years actually) about sharing too much on social platforms that would deem me as “unlikeable” for certain brands or companies or publishers and therefore restrict me in terms of who would hire me or publish my writing. I can now say that the level of FUCKS THAT I GIVE about this are relatively zero! Go ahead and look me up on social media and you will know that I am an unabashed, unapologetic, INTERSECTIONAL feminist and a left-leaning Liberal (that’s a Democrat for all my US peeps). I’m also a very privileged white woman who will use my platforms to fight for any and all who do not have the privileges I do, and to amplify the voices of marginalized folx and those who know more about issues than I do. I like social justice, pretty things, and the work FUCK and I’m not afraid (anymore) to mix them up.
Because there really is no time to pussyfoot around these issues affecting us anymore. Our world in on fire, both literally and figuratively, innocent people are being shot down in planes because of war-mongering egos, Puerto Rico has been hit with over 200 earthquakes this month alone (did you even know that?? I didn’t until today), our local conservative government is LYING to us daily, women still make 65-85 cents to every dollar made by a man, and this blog post went a little deeper than I had originally anticipated.
I don’t have the answers to all of this, expect maybe one.
Kindness and compassion. Can these please be the leading values/virtues we take with us into every conversation, every post, every meeting, every way we can make even the slightest difference in this fucked up world?
Pretty please?
With a motherfucking cherry on top!
XOXO,
N~
It was a two-post-year...
You read that right. I mean, if you are even around here to read anymore!
Sheesh.
WORST. BLOGGER. EVER!!
I swear I had such good intentions to get back here and write more.
But alas, 2019 was the year of “other things”.
I mean, the year wasn’t a total bust. I did start a brand new consulting business and have been flexing my creative muscles in areas related to other peoples and businesses social profiles and online spaces. And I did it without completely going in the red, so, whooHOOO for me!
But to be honest, it was a rough year for me physically and emotionally. I spent the first 6 months of it in a constant fog of pain, running from this therapy to another and back again. I swear to all the goddesses, if someone had told me sacrificing an animal to the old gods and bathing in its blood would have helped, I would have tried it. I’ve likely spent the equivalent of half a years salary on all kinds of therapies and treatments and no, you can’t direct bill my insurance company because I blew past my yearly limits in 2 months! Let’s just say it was a very physically, emotionally and financially exhausting first half of the year.
I am VERY happy to report that the latter 5 months of 2019 were MUCH better. This is thanks to a winning combination of intense coaching, reframing, therapy, and brilliant personal training, I am feeling stronger than I ever have in the last three years and I am llooking forward to being able to DO so much more in 2020. I JUMPED the other day and I felt like a 2-year old who just figured out they could do that!
It has also been a year of this…
I am here to tell you that YES, it is indeed perimenopause and wow, is this ever a ride no one talks about! I mean sure we talk about “the change”, but what about the ~5 years before “the change” when your body is preparing you for “the change”, and by preparing I mean throwing you every flipping curve ball it can possibly think of: chin hairs, PIMPLES, something called adenomyosis (which essentially feels like your uterus, on its way to its eventual demise, is bound and determined to take you with it with as much pain as possible!) just to name a few. Oh and did I mention the migraines? No? WELL, THERE ARE MIGRAINES. BIG, UGLY, all day in bed, DO NOT TURN ON THE LIGHTS or talk to me or make me move kind of migraines. So, yeah, this has been going on too and it took me a while to find the tools to help with all of it. Acupuncture is a big one and I can’t say enough about my acupuncturist and how much she has helped me in just a few short months. I braced myself for the migraines and the debilitating cramps last month and you know what? NADA! It was such a welcome surprise that I kept just waiting for all the PMS and it did not happen. Here’s hoping it keeps working! Change is good and I am also going to embrace this time in my life, ease into it with as much grace as I can, and learn what I can from it and share these lessons with everyone. (Fair warning - it could get graphic!)
I mentioned REFRAMING a few paragraphs back and I want to tell you more about this and how much it has helped me approach all aspects of my life this past year (and moving forward). The simple truth of life is that, we are what we say we are. I am tired, I can’t do this, I am weak, I am not doing enough, I am a fraud, I am too busy, I can’t jump (see above). I have said all of these things and more (worse) to myself over the years and have been convinced of their truth. And I am here today to tell you and, let’s be honest, to tell myself once again, that none of these things are true. Jillian taught me about reframing and it’s the best lesson I think I have ever learned. I am what I say I am and this reframing of negative thoughts is a powerful kind of magic. I didn’t have a crazy busy holiday season, I had an abundant one full of friends, family, food and love. I am not weak, I am building new strength in my body after seasons of dis- or mis-use. I am not a fraud, I am taking the time to educate myself and become the best I can be in my chosen professions. I CAN FREAKING JUMP!!
(I just want to point out that the power of blogging or journalling or writing in any sense whether for public consumption or for my eyes only is seeing these words on the page and then FEELING them and knowing the truth in them.)
So, yes, it was a two-post-year. Because it had to be. Because the path back here, to words, to stories I believe in, to a me I believe in, had to be cleared. There is still some clearing to do and as always, I am a work in progress, but I am back baby! And I can’t wait to continue this journey of writing and sharing and growing. I hope you’ll stay with me.
Oh yeah, also, I just turned 48! Happy Birthday to me.
XOXO,
N~
P.S. This site will be changing in the next few months. I will continue to feature my writing and will incorporate all the details about my consulting and business services as well. It’s going to be great! I can’t wait for you to see it!