Episode 2: The Future of Love and Intimacy

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Rick Ezekiel:

Well, welcome everyone to our event called Love in the Time of Corona. We're excited to facilitate this dialogue with our group of panelists and attendees today. And this being the second event of what's evolving into a series of discussions about navigating connection, intimacy, and finding ways to foster human connection during all the challenges that come with a pandemic. And we're really excited to be able to bring a diverse group of speakers and really talk about this dialogue in a way that bridges multiple different faith practices, community practices, identities, and relationship structures in the ways that we find and foster human connection during these times.

Rick Ezekiel:

So as we dive in, we'll just share a little bit of context about how this event came to be and what prompted our thinking that this was a need, for more discussion and more opportunity to connect and learn from each other. As many of you remember back in March, when we first moved into the different impacts to the public health pandemic, particularly relating to uncertainty, isolation, loss of a number of our coping mechanisms, including the loss of human connection and human intimacy. We recognized this element that there was limited public health guidance on how we might go about meeting intimacy and connection needs, and some of what was going out there wasn't all that inclusive of diverse communities and diverse ways of connecting.

Rick Ezekiel:

So with recognizing that gap in some of the advice we were getting and seeing some good harm reduction resources coming out of groups like New York Public Health talking about safe sex during a pandemic, and I'm sure we can all think of the interesting recommendations that came out of BC that I can imagine being fun and great for some populations, but maybe not in line with everyone's interests. I am talking about the glory hole recommendation article. First cheeky comment of the event. We thought it was important to really broaden the ways we talk about human connection. Of course, including thinking about sex and physical connection, but also other forms of human intimacy, community connection, and how we're all navigating this from those different perspectives. So that's why we're here today and we're excited to extend the first conversation we had back in June.

Rick Ezekiel:

So as we dive into the discussion, we really want to enter the space with humility and realizing that we're each entering the conversation with different aspects of our identities, the ways we connect, the ways we engage in relationship and intimacy. And in doing that, we'll be starting off with Amita and I, and then our panelists sharing their social locations and the worldview and perspective they bring to this issue, just so that you have the chance to get to know us a little bit better. And we're hoping that the conversation will be able to model and bring in some vulnerability in the conversation. And we thought that doing this first was an important way to let you get to know us and to model some of that vulnerability.

Rick Ezekiel:

So in terms of myself, my name is Rick Ezekiel. I am the Director of Equitable Learning, Health, and Wellness at Centennial College. In terms of some of my identities and connection to the topic today, I identify as a queer, specifically gay, cisgender male. And I have white skin and of settler ancestry. I grew up in a very loving working class family, where my parents didn't have access to complete high school or attend post-secondary education. And they come from very large extended family backgrounds. And in those extended family backgrounds, we had high rates of experiences of mental illness, of experiences with substance abuse, and some experiences of historic and contemporary trauma. And that played out in lots of ways in my own experiences as a kid that have informed of the ways I connect with others, and build identity and engage with intimacy.

Rick Ezekiel:

I think for me, growing up in an environment, both home and school environment, where there's rampant homophobia and where it really modelled a lack of safety to be authentic and to share emotions and desire for connection in the ways that would have actually felt good for me at that time, really meant that building good intimacy and authentic connection and being able to engage in vulnerability had to start with building self-worth and forging identity. And getting a bit comfortable with vulnerability, and realizing that there were safe places to be vulnerable and let my own guard down with other people and other humans in the context of family, friendships, partnerships, et cetera. In terms of my own relationship styles, I practiced multiple relationships structures and styles over the years, including monogamy. And most recently, critical non-hierarchical polyamory, where I guess before the pandemic, was navigating multiple intimate connections. And of course, the pandemic has shifted ways of engaging in those types of relationships. So meaning finding creative ways to connect with folks who have been sustained or ongoing partners.

Rick Ezekiel:

So with that, I'll pass it over to Amita to share some more about her, and more introductions of the panelists and how we're going to structure things.

Amita Singh:

Thanks, Rick. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Amita Singh. I identify as a cisgender heterosexual woman of color. I am currently living on the lands of the Haudenosaunee and the Mississaugas. During COVID, I have been navigating isolation with my husband. I try and stay as safe as possible because his work is in essential service and he works outside of the home. At Centennial, I am a counselor with the Center for Accessible Learning and Counseling Services, or CALCS, as well as the Sexual Violence Coordinator for the college.

Amita Singh:

So in terms of housekeeping items, before we get too far into the meat of things, the Q&A is open for your questions for the panel. So please do join in. And you can also use our Padlet, which I will link in our chat for learnings that you are taking away from the discussion as it goes on. So as you all know, today's forum is about navigating love and intimacy during this time where connecting with others, and even with ourselves, has proven especially challenging. And our panel will be engaging in brave sharing of intimate stories of how they are navigating this time. So we ask that we treat this forum as as confidentially as possible, taking the learnings or keeping any personal details of what's discussed to yourselves.

Amita Singh:

And speaking of a brave space, I would like to share with you this piece by Micky ScottBey Jones, who's the Justice Doula based out of Nashville, Tennessee. And you can find her on Twitter @iammickyjones. And I can also post that for you if you're interested. So her piece is titled An Invitation to Brave Space and it reads, "Together we will create a brave space because there's no such thing as a safe space. We exist in the real world. We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds. In this space, we seek to turn down the volume of the outside world. We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere. We call each other to more truth and love. We have the right to start somewhere and to continue to grow. We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know. We will not be perfect. This space will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be, but it will be our brave space together and we will work on it side by side."

Amita Singh:

And with that, I'd like to turn it over to our first speaker, Sean Kinsella.

Seán Kinsella:

Okay, am I muted? Tansi, everyone, migizi nindoodem. Waazakone maskiki. N'dizhinikaaz. Nêhithaw, nêhityaw, otipemisiwak, êkâ ê-akimiht n’daaw. Tkaronto [Indigenous language 00:09:09] n'doonjibaa.

Seán Kinsella:

So I'm Sean Kinsella, Director of the Eighth Fire for Centennial College. What I just said in Anishinaabemowin, which is one of the languages that I am learning, is that one of the spirit names that I go by is the Medicine that Light Brings. I told you that I am several different... Although my colleagues tell me to stop doing this flavors of Cree. So I'm from the people who are Woods Cree, Plains Cree, and then also up around James Bay. I'm also Plains Ojibwe, and I told you that I'm Bald Eagle Clan under the Anishnaabe [Indigenous language 00:09:53] people.

Seán Kinsella:

So I think what I wanted to start by saying... So I'll get to my social locations in a little bit. But I wanted to start by acknowledging the different lands that all of us may be coming from. And I'm going to take that a little bit differently and bend it a little bit. So often, it is a good practice for folks to engage in land acknowledgements when we're gathering together. But what I want to recognize is that what I just said is a land acknowledgement. So when I am speaking in my language and introducing myself to all of you, I'm also introducing myself to the territories and the ancestors that you are all bringing with you at the same time.

Seán Kinsella:

And so what I would encourage a lot of folks to do, and Centennial, as an example, has a land acknowledgement that was gifted to them by a number of Indigenous nations that have collaborated. So folks often ask me, well, can I change it or can I adjust it? And my answer to that is no, because what's in that land acknowledgement is specifically gifted to the institution by knowledge keepers and community folks, and had a lot of consultation.

Seán Kinsella:

What I will also make the subtle argument for, though, is the land acknowledgement is not for me. So as an indigenous person, the way I'm introducing myself is a land acknowledgement. And I want to recognize that currently where I am sitting is in the territory of the Mississaugas. Centennial college also sits on the territory of Mississaugas, which are part of the Anishinaabe Confederacies. And that would be the name that they had before Mississauga, because Mississauga is based on a river up north that they came to and from based on their hunting lands. I also want to recognize that this is also a territory of Haudenosaunee people, so we’re pretty close to Tyendinaga, as well as a number of communities that are here. These are folks who have cared for this territory and this land since time immemorial.

Seán Kinsella:

I also want to acknowledge that currently, it is a time and a place where we all gather together because of colonization. But within that, there's an opportunity for us to all sit and learn from one another during this time. And so I'm grateful for that opportunity, and I'm grateful to see people from around the world and from all different continents represented on the call, in addition to those who may be joining us as well. And acknowledging that when we talk about treaties, and this'll go into what I'm going to talk about a little bit later, but when we talk about treaties, we're also talking about what everyone's responsibilities are, both as people who may be indigenous to these territories, or in my case, a guest.

Seán Kinsella:

So as I said, I'm Plains and Woods Cree. This, at one time, would have been... This is Anishinaabe territory, and my people are part of the Anishinaabe Confederacy, but we go back a little bit. So we were from around the Great Lakes, especially the Nakawé. We're from Lake of the Woods typically, and then went up to Sault Ste. Marie and on to the Plains. But it's been a little while since we inhabited this area, as we went for a long walk that has lasted a couple hundred years. And so I want to acknowledge that those are the people that I come from and to speak to those ones. And also recognize that those experiences and the people that I'm speaking from is both from my own perspective as well as that.

Seán Kinsella:

I also identify as someone who is what we would call in the language aayahkwêw, which translates to one who is between this notion of gender. Sometimes in the English translation, I will talk about myself as being two-spirit, although that doesn't work when you translate it back into the language, because in the language we have one spirit, at least as I was taught as an Anishinaabe person. But on my Facebook background, I have a little, I don't know if folks are into Futurama, but there's a part where one character explains about how... Because Nibbler is the character and his true name is asked, and his response to one of the main characters is, "It would take me basically forever to explain to you the pieces of my name, because it's infinitely complex and full of galaxies." And so I think of my gender that way. And that I say two-spirit, but it's because to translate what we actually mean by when we talk about how we introduce ourselves into English would be mildly insulting, probably, to those.

Seán Kinsella:

English is a very limited language and it's a very gendered language. And so when we're talking about those things and bringing things into those, those are things we have to consider and be aware of. So I fall between those. I told you what my clan is, and so those are also the people that I am accountable to and responsible to, is the Bald Eagle Clan, which is a leadership clan amongst the Anishinaabe people.

Seán Kinsella:

I'm also someone who engages in lots of different relationships. And I'll save that piece for later on when I have a little bit of time to speak about that. But just recognizing that when we talk about relationships and setting a context for me, we're talking about not just the relationships we have with other humans, but we're also talking about the relationships we have with the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world, and those elder siblings that we talk about in that way. That we are part of a long continuum of history is what we would call modern day humans. And we have stories that trace all the way back for billions of years around how we came to be here.

Seán Kinsella:

And so those are the contexts of which I think about when we talk about this idea of isolation and community and connection, just the siege around that. That we are also acknowledging the relationship we have with the entire human family. So everyone that's present today, all of our ancestors, as well as all the legacy of the atisokan/atisokanak, which is our legends and beings that live in our legends, that also are part of these narratives and stories too. So I wanted to acknowledge those things before I handed it off. And then when we get to my little part, I'll talk a little bit more about how that gets actualized and practically happens for me and in my community. But I wanted to just take a few minutes there, too, for myself to set the stage and tell you a little bit about who I am in a traditional way. So I'll stop there and say êkosi, which is “that's it, that's all”. And pass it along.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Thanks, Sean. Hi everyone. I am Dr. Silvia D'Addario, and I use she/her pronouns. I am the Manager of Equity and Inclusion programs at the Center for Global Citizenship, Education, and Inclusion at Centennial College. I identify as a questioning cisgender woman in a monogamous long-term relationship. I'm a mom of two, and I've found that navigating connection as a parent and also as a partner during COVID has been quite challenging.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Myself and my family are settlers on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe. I grew up in what is called Markham in Ontario in an immigrant household, and my experiences with connection were marked by feelings of being out of place. We spoke a different language growing up at home, which made it difficult to understand where I belonged. I had a heightened sense of dislocation, not feeling a sense of belonging here or in an imagined homeland. I developed as a person within the strict confines of sexism and patriarchy as a normalized part of my culture. And I am a survivor of gender-based violence. And so I value and practice trauma informed care in all that I do.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

I approach the work that I do and the life that I lead with an acute sense that our bodies have been socialized to support massive systems of oppression. This includes the way that we connect with ourself, connect with others, the way that we honor our bodies, and ultimately, how we come to understand the degree to which love is abundant across a variety of facets in life. And so I'm passionate about the work that it takes to acknowledge, heal those deep programmed layers within us that may contribute to the everyday and institutionalized forms of oppression for all folks. As an intersexual feminist, I know that my equity work includes working towards liberating all bodies, all forms of oppression, and recognizing and respecting the intersecting ways that our experiences play out. So I look forward to talking a little bit more about that, but for now, I will pass it off to Monique.

Monique Chambers:

Thank you so much, Silvia. Hi everyone. My name is Monique Chambers and I use she/her pronouns. I'm the Coordinator for Student Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives at the Base Program at Humber College. I spend most of my days by empowering black students to create programming in a way that is reflective of our own identity, so that their counterparts, my counterparts, that we feel like we too belong at the college. Principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion, fostering places and feelings of belonging, has always been important to me. It's, I feel like, the core of who I am, because I know what it's like to not feel like I belong. I think I've struggled with that feeling for a long, long time.

Monique Chambers:

I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. My parents are from Jamaica, but I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A black girl in a very white province. And so I think that speaks for itself. I was raised in a very white populated area. When we moved to Ontario, I was raised, actually, in Curtis, Oshawa, and even Bowmanville, I went to junior high. And then eventually, we moved closer to Toronto. We moved to Pickering.

Monique Chambers:

So right now, I currently reside in Ajax, Ontario, which is situated on the land of Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Mississaugas. I mention this because although I spend countless hours speaking and teaching on oppression, countless hours, often from the place as the oppressed, operating from this place of being oppressed, I want to acknowledge that I am a settler on this land. I want to acknowledge that I'm a part of a system that systematically oppresses, literally dehumanizes oftentimes the original inhabitants of this land. And I do not believe that it's lawful. I believe it's unfair and unjust how this system, that I am often complicit in, treats different groups of people. And so I do my best all the time to learn, unlearn, and act in a way that advocates for all people.

Monique Chambers:

In acknowledging my positionality, I'm a part of a group called the those who are oppressed at times. And yet at the same time, I inhabit this unique dichotomy. It's like I'm part of the group that's oppressed, but yet part of the group that's an oppressor. And so I actually exist in the space of duality, and that can cause one to question themselves and their actions, and this is what I often do. It can cause one to feel like they don't quite fit in or they don't quite belong. And so these feelings really resonate with me.

Monique Chambers:

Growing up black, but not being black enough for my black friends, growing up black, but then being too black for my white friends, had me literally spinning in circles. And so that insecurity moved beyond my social arenas and it actually spilled into my academics. And so I did horribly in high school. I didn't have many friends because I was so insecure about who I was as a person. And then I didn't do well academically as well. I didn't start doing better, actually, until about third year of university when I started to see myself represented in the curriculum. And then once I went to grad school, it was a game changer, because I literally saw people who looked like me who were teaching the curriculum that I could see myself. And so that was really powerful for me.

Monique Chambers:

So again, I go back to creating places where all people feel like they belong is really important to me. And so this is why equity and inclusion is so important to who I am and what I do. And so whether or not I'm working in the social services, because I did that for 20 years, or if I'm counseling or working in education, my aim has always been and will always be to foster feelings of belonging for all people.

Monique Chambers:

That being said, I'm happily married to a wonderful man and I'm a stepmother to two wonderful teenage boys. I believe firmly in work-life balance. But my husband, who is a pastor, is still grasping what this actually means. And so spirituality is really important to me. It's paramount. It governs how I see and operate in the world. So this time at home has actually given me more time to engage in my creator. And in that engagement, I'm learning more about me. It's encouraged me to ask questions like who are you? Who are you called to be, Monique? And how are you expressing that calling in this earth? I think when so much has been taken away, that it forces us to focus on intangible things, things that we can't really touch, things that really actually matter. Things like love and connection.

Monique Chambers:

COVID-19 has definitely added some unique dynamics to our home and to our marriage that we've had to navigate, like a lot of people. But overall, I would say that for me, love has always been an action word, and I'll talk about this a little bit more later on, regardless of whether or not we're separated by time or space or even geography. You might have to get a little creative. But the question is for me, how are you expressing love? And to what end are you willing to go to to demonstrate your love to those who matter? And I think in attempting to answer those questions, it frames my ideas around intimacy, because it speaks to who matters in my life and how I let them know who matters.

Monique Chambers:

Corona may be around for a long time. Who knows? We don't know. But this might be a good time to reconceptualize our ideas of love and how we express that love so that those who we value, who really matter to us, know that they are truly loved by us. I think that's really important. And so I will pass it along to Aaron.

Aaron Brown:

Thank you. Going last is really hard because there's so many things that I'm reflecting on that folks have shared in their own introductions, and so my mind is spinning right now. My name is Aaron Brown and I'm the Coordinator for Sexual Violence Prevention and Education at Humber. And I'm actually also a student right now at UFT. My pronouns are he, him, and his, and I identify as a queer cisgender man. I'm also a white settler on this land, and I grew up in very white towns of Midland, Berry, and North Bay before moving to Toronto.

Aaron Brown:

As a queer person, I think a lot about intimacy in some of these reflections that other folks have been sharing. It's really interesting when I think about my experience in these small towns. And for me, I always laugh because in high school, I thought I was straight, which like, LOL. I was definitely the last person to find out that I'm queer. And then being in North Bay, I think was also really challenging for me. When I think about these ideas of intimacy and love, and in particular with romantic and sexual relationships, because at least at the time, it certainly wasn't North Gay. It really, I felt in many ways, isolated there and alone through that journey and through that reflection. And so I think that that plays a big role in my ideas around intimacy.

Aaron Brown:

And I think about when I view romantic relationships, I am someone who has never been in one longer than two months, and it should not have even lasted that long. And so in many ways, I think that there's still a lot of learning and a lot of uncovering that I'm doing with myself. And so when I think about how I identify, I lean towards monogamy, but I also think that I haven't had an opportunity to really understand what a monogamous relationship looks like in many ways. And so I think there's still a lot of learning happening there.

Aaron Brown:

When I think about my experience with COVID, I spent the first four and a half months of the pandemic in Buffalo, where my mum was receiving treatment, and then back in Berry with my mum and my stepdad after we returned from Buffalo. And there's a very different sense of intimacy in that, in being home with family for the first time in a very long time living in the house together, which is really an adjustment. And I think that those relationships look very different for me than how I perceive other people's family relationships. And I think that there's a lot of closeness that had been lost in my family. And I think in many ways, there was a lot of isolation within our family unit. And so COVID has brought a real opportunity to explore that, a bit by choice a bit by not choice. And so that's been really interesting.

Aaron Brown:

Now I'm back in Toronto, and I do have a roommate, but she's never around, which sometimes I really love because I love having my own space. I was a very introverted person. But also being very isolated in the city now has also been a real moment for reflection and thinking during this time, particularly because now 4.5 months into the pandemic, when I finally came back to Toronto, a lot of folks have already found their bubbles and that sort of thing. And so it's been a bit of an interesting experience, particularly thinking forwards to the winter. And what does that mean? And where should I be during that time?

Aaron Brown:

When we're having these conversations of intimacy, I find that I don't think of physicality at first. I really go to this idea of vulnerability, trust, comfort, and openness. Intimacy to me is about being able to let our guard down with another person and feel a sense of connection. But physicality is also a part of that. And for me, that's even just that piece of proximity. I feel like you can feel something in the air with another person, and I think that's something that I'm really struggling with right now.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:30:04]

Aaron Brown:

I think that's something that I'm really struggling with right now during COVID-19, because I'm not able to be around anyone to some degree. There is an element, of course, of touch both sexually, but also just I would like to give anything for like a super good hug right now. Those are fantastic. And then those feelings that come from that, I think, are so important. And that's something that I value so much when we talk about love languages, minus physical affirmation, and it's something that I feel really starved for right now.

Aaron Brown:

As I mentioned, I tend to be very independent and very introverted. And I think, for me, community has been a really interesting experience because in North Bay, I feel like I was really able to build up a great community as a student and then as an employee at Nipissing University and leaving that community has been very challenging and coming to Toronto where I don't feel really any sense of community has been really adjustment. I think that the people that I associate with, like my people in Toronto are very much people at work and I love them and I know some of them on the call and like, love you, but in many ways, that's also challenging and trying to find that work-life balance that Monique mentioned that and what is that experience.

Aaron Brown:

In some ways, it's helpful that most of the important people in my life are spread out across the country, very few are here in Toronto. That sort of helps prepare one for a pandemic where we can't see those people. But I'm also someone who struggles with long distance communication. And that's been a bit of a journey that I'm undergoing right now as well. And how do I navigate during this time where in many ways I think that I really need to rely on that and that engagement. And so that's been a real piece of exploration for me right now.

Aaron Brown:

I think, touching on these ideas of spirituality, I'm someone who feels very connected and restored when I am by water. I'm not a religious person. I don't have a specific faith, but I find that those pieces are really restorative for me. And again, I'm thinking about what that means as we move into the winter months. And I am not a winter person. The people who are, I don't get it, but good for you. I love that for you. But I think that that's something that I'm also trying to figure out is how do I find that opportunity to be restored without frostbite? That's something that I would really like to figure out.

Aaron Brown:

And so I think that these are all sort of things that are really spiraling in my mind and trying to figure out what the next six months for me are going to be and I think we're going to be in this situation much longer. I am not an optimist in that sense, perhaps, but I think that's really, for me, it's like how do we plan out and how do I come up with a plan for my wellness needs that during the next six months. That's sort of where my brain is at, but I will save the rest for my little chat afterwards.

Rick Ezekiel:

Thank you, Aaron and huge thanks to all of our panelists for joining us. I was thinking even as we were just going through the introductions with lots of good sharing to come, how fortunate we are to have this group join us and be so willing to share of yourselves, to facilitate conversations and learning for the rest of the group.

Rick Ezekiel:

And should share a little bit in terms of format for next steps or the rest of the session. Each of our panelists will be sharing some more about their experiences with love, connection and intimacy during the pandemic. And we'll sort of give our panelists an opportunity to speak a little bit further to that particular topic. And again, reiterating for our audience members. You're welcome to use the Q and A and ask any questions that are coming up for you along the way, and also visit that Padlet link that that has been shared in the chat.

Rick Ezekiel:

We also want to just let folks know that we will be talking about lots of different experiences that folks might've had, including experiences with mental health challenges, with trauma, sexual and gender based violence, et cetera, et cetera. And to what I mean to share to earlier, really encouraging the audience to navigate the space in a way that feels good for you and feel free to step away and engage with supports as you need to and take care of yourself as we go. And we will be sharing links to resources, to follow from the event as we kind of summarize and come to conclusion.

Rick Ezekiel:

With that, and having met all of our wonderful panelists for the day, we'll hand it over to Silvia to share first.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Thanks, Rick. All right. Let's dive in. I'm really excited to about this section, our second edition. Okay. As we explore love and connection, I think it's important to reflect. Let's start by reflecting on what those two words mean, love and connection.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

I want to tell you about my love story, not a story about being in love, but a story about how I have come to know love and we'll circle back to COVID, I promise. We all have a love story, a narrative about how we receive and give love, how love was first presented to us and whether we know barriers to being in the presence of love.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

I grew up the middle child, which if you're a middle child speaks for itself. I was a middle child in an immigrant household, and we often felt like we were of two worlds, not quite at home here and not entirely belonging to elsewhere.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

My parents were racialized when they came to Canada and worked hard at fitting in. In fact, much of what I remember about growing up was about keeping up, blending in and working harder than the next person. My parents worked really hard. They worked factory jobs and they worked a lot. As in many immigrant families, my grandmother was my caregiver and probably my first love.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

It was hard as a young child to breathe in love when my parents time was just so limited. The expectations on us were clear. We grew up in a sexist home with strict gender norms. Conforming to these expectations was important to our story of fitting in and belonging.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

In The Five Love Languages, Dr. Gary Chapman describes five ways that we uniquely give and receive love. My mother's love language has always been acts of service. Her migration story and long arduous hours on the assembly line was her service to the family. As a young child, I didn't see her experiences as brave at the time. I looked upon them with contempt. The world was taking my parents away from me is how I interpreted their absence and their exhaustion.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

My love language is quality time. I later learned to really resent capitalism and the logics of neo-liberalism for forcing my family to be so absent in order to be able to survive, afford housing, put food on the table. When I was young, I learned that love was a zero sum game. And so just to recap, zero sum, it means that someone's gain is balanced by the loss of someone else. The total of all losses and gains is zero. With limitations already placed on my parents time, I felt that as my siblings gained adoration, which the oldest and youngest always do, mine was diminished. Love as presented to me was like a pie, more for others meant less for me.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

And so as a young teen, I developed personal mechanisms to deal with the pain of feeling starved of love and connection. Growing up Italian, presence and connection were abundant during times when family gathered over food, holidays, birthdays and religious celebrations. My mom's attention was abundant around food making. Love seem to be passed through the hands and into the artful creations of food, so food became love for me.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

From the age of 14, I developed a soul ravaging eating disorder, oscillating between bulemia and anorexia. I would overeat food in attempts to catch a glimpse of security to fill this void, and conversely, restrict what I ate as the ultimate act of self defiance, to remind myself and the world around me that I was not worthy of any kind of security and safety. I battled this form of self abuse for 18 years until I was ready to begin to peel off the armour that rendered me numb to the pain of feeling broken.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Each November I celebrate remission from eating disorders. This is 10 years, so yay. I used to call it remission actually, I should correct myself, as though I was rid of some condition. I know it now to be healing. The healing really took shape when I began to recognize all the ways that I had been asked to be in this world, all of the ways that I had bent away from love, for fear of not being enough to deserve it. I began a process of unbecoming, of unpeeling the layers. These layers protected me. And here's the revolutionary piece for me. The layers that protected me were also mechanisms that fed into the machinery of sexism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism, ableism. The layers asked that I reinforced the stereotypes that wounded me in the first place.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

I was taught to role-play gender norms, to stay quiet in the face of adversity and to be silent when I knew it was wrong to be silent. I'm not the exception. I know that as a woman, my experiences have always been the rule and I was not equipped with the language to speak out against my experiences of sexual violence. In fact, only recently, did I recognize them to be experiences of sexual violence, because many of us are taught that these experiences are our faults. We internalize those gender norms. Love was a scarce resource.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

And the healing took form when I came to know this question, who am I before the world told me who I could be? Who am I before the world told me who I could be? It has been a deep part of my personal journey to see where I have learned to reproduce systemic harm. We often don't believe ourselves to be implicated in the big harmful, violent systems of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, like Monique alluded to in her introduction. But we also don't see how much these systems rely on our silence, our shame of disassociation and separation, ultimately on our undeservedness of love.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

The overt slurs, jokes, microaggressions are harmful, but from where I stand, they account for a very small portion of how the machinery of systemic oppression actually operates. Riots and violence rely on our silence and self-doubt, on our exhaustion in a relentless social system that praises independence, marriage and strength, and ultimately, self-regulation away from this feeling of brokenness. It teaches us that we are unlovable and that it is us that needs to change and search for it until we get it right, until we are lovable again.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Coming back, the story is about how I navigate the unfamiliar terrain of COVID. It's how I came to learn, to make space, to grieve. The world literally feels like it's imploding right now. The earth on fire, burning forests, communal pandemic fevers, heated bigotry disguised as political banter. COVID continues to amplify all that no longer serves humanity. In times of uncertainty, inequality is amplified. The pandemic has had disproportionate impacts. You're seeing this on women, LGBTQ2S+ folks, people with disabilities, black, indigenous people of color.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Here is why I needed to tell the story, maybe to introduce this bigger discussion, because at some point our bodies all learned it wasn't okay to be broken. And so we hardened and that hardens the world. I learned that love wasn't available to me, so I numbed myself, which kept me separated from the world. And this is how we perpetuate hate, violence, divisiveness. We stay hard to what is happening around us.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Healing from a pandemic and acting in the face of inequality requires that we feel it first. We implicate ourselves in it all first. My greatest moments of showing love to myself and to my community has been in the peeling back all that I was taught to be that serves and perpetuates the hardness of this world.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

I encourage us all to think about a few things. What deep barriers exist for us to fully receive love in our lives? How are these barriers connected to stories that also require some sort of attention, healing, maybe self compassion? And lastly, how might that healing in ourselves have amplifying impacts on our community and our response to COVID and on a more honest, authentic connection with one another?

Rick Ezekiel:

Beautiful, I'll hand it over to Aaron for sharing next.

Aaron Brown:

When I think about the future of love and intimacy, I struggle with this a lot. I sort of laugh. I don't know if people remember the show That's So Raven, but I loved it when I was growing up and I used to sing That's So Aaron and pretend that I could see the future, and unfortunately I can not. But I am really thinking about what I'm doing in the present that's setting me up for success in the future, and what are the ways that I am already starting that recalibration. And I think for me, I'm really thinking about that because I feel that this is going to be our reality for the foreseeable future. And so I think that that's really where my mind is at these days.

Aaron Brown:

I will say, as someone who gets paid to spend a lot of time talking about consent, that I'm excited about the ways in which I think COVID is prompting more discussion around wants, needs and behaviors, and I do feel like I'm seeing a lot more communication with folks. Whenever making plans with friends, there's typically a conversation around what everyone involved is comfortable with. Do we dine indoors versus outdoors? I laugh, in our last panel after I learned how unfortunate it is to be at home and not be able to have sex and how much I miss that and now being back in Toronto, I can, which is great, but I've seen stuff in guys' Grindrs profiles for instance, about how they want to hear about what safety precautions someone is taking before they meet. And I think that conversations are so exciting to see, and the ways that folks are setting those boundaries, I think are really great.

Aaron Brown:

I am cautiously optimistic that these sorts of consent and boundary conversations will continue past the pandemic again, partially, because I think we're going to be this, in it so long that these habits will hopefully become ingrained. But I'm also really hoping for a future where love and intimacy is really much more communicative. It's mutually agreed upon. There's respectful boundaries. And so that's one of the things that I think I am really excited about this time.

Aaron Brown:

When I think about the ways that I'm adjusting and considering love and intimacy in my own life, I'm sort of seeing it in three sorts of orbits. And so I'm thinking about like the inner, the immediate surroundings, and then the longer distance.

Aaron Brown:

In our last chat, Silvia shared a lot about her journey inward and exploring intimacy with herself. And I feel that now I'm in a place where being away from home and being able to sort of be with my own thoughts, because that doesn't happen a lot at home, I feel like I am really able to turn inward a lot more. It's a lot of time with just me right now. And that's not always super comfortable. As someone with a history of depressive episodes and thoughts of self-harm and suicide, solo time is not always the best. And I think without being physically at work or in a classroom, it's really me in my bedroom right now, a lot of the time. And so I'm having to get real comfortable with all that time alone with my thoughts and a lot of that reflective time and how do I be intentional about that and set myself up for good habits with that.

Aaron Brown:

Something that I have been trying to spend a lot more time doing is activities that I find more restorative and trying to romance myself in a way. And so taking long baths, listening to Nora Jones and having candles lit, going for long strolls. I did a 10K walk on Sunday, and I regret it because my hips are so sore from it, and I did not wear proper footwear. But trying to do these things that I find really helpful for me and trying to get acquainted with new parts of the city and exploring, and that's been really helpful. I'm trying to spend a lot of time by the water when I can. And I'm trying to be more leisurely in my strolls as well, as opposed to speed walking.

Aaron Brown:

I'm someone who's trying to cook more legit meals and attempting to love that process. I'm not there yet. I always see Silvia posting all these great photos of all her meals and I'm not there. And I think it will be a long time, but I think that those are ways that I can make the most of this time, and I think build some intimacy into this opportunity.

Aaron Brown:

I don't currently explore any guided reflections, but I am trying to practice more mindfulness and really pay attention to both my body and my mind. Given the physical isolation of this pandemic, trying to maintain a healthy and loving relationship with myself first and foremost, has really been, I think, the mission that I'm on and who knows if I'm doing well yet. We'll see. But I think that there's this real turn inward. And I think that other folks will be experiencing that during this time as well.

Aaron Brown:

I also am trying to find a way to establish meaningful connections. And so as I've noted, I don't necessarily feel a great sense of community in this city. And when I say I'm an introvert, I really mean that. Back in the world before COVID, whatever that was, I can't remember that, but I'd get home from work and not want to see nor say a word to anyone until the following day, because I felt like I expended so much social energy at work. And I specifically remember when I lived back in North Bay, I had a roommate who had a really terrible day and wanted to vent to me, but I'd also had just a really exhausting day. And so I was like, "Cool, you get 10 minutes. And I'm not going to say anything. I'll just sit and I'll listen. And then I need to go to my room and I'll see you tomorrow." And so I think that that context is really important. And then I'm a person that spends a lot of time in solitude and isolation.

Aaron Brown:

But given that I don't get that social interaction during the day anymore, I'm really feeling starved for it, partially because I also feel there's only so much I can do alone. There's only so many things on Netflix. There's only so many books to read. And I also, I mean, capitalist society always feeling the pressure needs to be productive, but I am trying to focus on more meaningful connections than with chatting with people for the sake of it.

Aaron Brown:

And so part of this for me was actually deleting Grindr and Tinder, and while I was having a lot of great conversations with a lot of people on the apps, I was also finding that I was wasting a lot of time there. And I was also having a lot of mediocre conversations on those apps, too. And so thinking about where am I spending that energy and what is this serving me has been really important. For me, it's also... I mean, I know that there's people in my life that I can always connect with for sexting or sex. And Instagram is also basically a dating app. It's nice that I still have those avenues if I need them. But I think for me, I'm really trying to figure out who are the people that I've fallen out of touch with, because of distance and how do I start reestablishing those relationships. Part of that has also had to be being cognizant of how they might feel given that I have been more distant and how do we reestablish that? And what does that negotiation look like? But I'm really trying to foster those opportunities.

Aaron Brown:

I'm also someone who used to hate patios because I don't like sweating and I don't like sunburns, but I've also had to acclimatize to that because it's one of the main ways I've been able to connect with friends in person right now. And so I used to go a month at a time, maybe even more, without really seeing people outside of work, class or texting. But I'm really trying to book time into my calendar to reconnect with folks. And that for me is how I need to do that, because I live by my calendar. That's been really important and really trying to nourish myself in that sense and those relationships.

Aaron Brown:

And I think for me, that's also exploring, extending beyond that typical handful of people that I spent time with as well, and exploring some of those new connections with folks where I've been like, "You know what? I always felt like there was something here, but we just never took the time to explore this dynamic," and seeing what we can make of that and figure that out.

Aaron Brown:

And then for me, this is also a bit about reconnecting across distances. And so as I said, I am total trash out long distance communication. I text a few of my best friends maybe once every six weeks. It's really not frequent. It's not my forte. And it's something that I'm really trying to push myself to improve on. And I don't think it's necessary for everyone, but the most important people in my life are mostly not in Toronto. And so I'm recognizing that it is a need for me in this. And I don't think I'll ever be stellar, but I consciously booking that time, checking in with people I value. For me, if people are comfortable with it and not burnt out from Zoom fatigue, trying to do FaceTime. I think that that's really important, wanting to see these people again.

Aaron Brown:

For me, this also means responding to my mom's texts on a regular basis, even though I would say her content is usually subpar and she could step up that game. It also means calling my dad instead of always waiting on him to call. It's really recognizing that I haven't always historically invested in these relationships in a reciprocal way, or sometimes even at all, and holding myself to account for that and then putting that work in.

Aaron Brown:

And so I do really think that for a long period of time, our communication is going to be remote. And so for me, figuring out what does that look like? What works for me? What doesn't? And how do I negotiate that with the other people in my life? I'd say that those are sort of some of the reflections that are on my mind and as I'm looking forward and doing those recalibrations right now, I don't know that I can see what the future of love and intimacy looks like in 12 months from now. But I think that engaging in these sorts of practices are really important in getting us to that point.

Aaron Brown:

At this point I will pass it along to Monique.

Monique Chambers:

Thank you, Aaron. I don't know if it's an introvert thing, but I'm having to put a lot of effort into my relationships as well. And it's a lot of effort. Oh my goodness. Thanks so much for sharing and Silvia, your question of who am I, who am I before the world told me who I could be really resonates with me. And I think that for myself, my ideas around love and connection started at home as well. And I think for a lot of people it kind of started first... We were introduced to love in the home. As I mentioned earlier, love for me is an action word, so love is something that you do, you demonstrate. Love is something that I give.

Monique Chambers:

I grew up in a household that express love, not by touching or feeling or hugging. I actually rarely saw my parents hold hands, kiss, or even hug, very rarely. And so I saw their marriage as more of a partnership between two good friends or two people who just agreed to walk life together. That's what I saw their marriage as.

Monique Chambers:

Growing up, I didn't realize how much I longed for that type of love that I had seen expressed on TV, in commercials or even movies. Even though I longed for it, I realized in my relationships, I had a really hard time initiating that type of love. What I was hoping to experience was very difficult for me to initiate it, because it's foreign to me. Right. And so I'd often hear growing up, my boyfriend say things like, "Yeah, but I don't really feel like you want me," because they're looking for a certain expression of love, an expression that I was completely unfamiliar with. And so I would be confused when they'd make [inaudible 00:59:46] like that because I'd buy them the world, right. I'd be buying them shoes, clothes, jewelry, you name it. I'm buying them gifts because I'm demonstrating my love. For me,. That's what expressing love looked like.

Monique Chambers:

Now, when I think about emotional connection-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [01:00:04]

Monique Chambers:

Now, when I think about emotional connection, I believe it's something that is seen. Aaron, I think you were sharing that. You can just tell that there's something in the air, right? So I think that for emotional connection, it's something that is seen, but it's often developed through conversation over a period of time, or just over a period of time, spending time with each other, right? You build an emotional connection with somebody.

Monique Chambers:

I think connection is definitely amplified through our physical touch or physical expression of love for each other. Hands down, I totally agree with that. But I do think that you can have a deep, emotional connection with someone you've never physically touched before. This is why I believe the intangible outweighs the tangible. It's what makes emotional affairs so dangerous. It's been said that it's harder to break off an emotional affair with someone than a physical affair. Because it runs so deep.

Monique Chambers:

My husband and I, I would say, have a deep, emotional connection. We've always seen each other as each other's soulmates. And I think it just has to do with how we first got together. We got together as friends. There was on my part, no physical attraction whatsoever. He would argue otherwise, but there was none on my part because I just didn't like him in terms of his personality. And then eventually I got to know him a little bit more and we became really good friends to the point where we became best friends. And then it grew into something so much deeper. And so my husband and I would say that we have a really deep emotional connection.

Monique Chambers:

So while at the beginning of the lockdown, during COVID, we were all over each other because we've got all this time to spend with each other, like many couples that quickly died down because we were in each other's spaces all the time. In each other's spaces and just so much more than we would've liked to have been.

Monique Chambers:

It's nice to be able to leave the home, go to work and come back and, "Oh, there you are? I haven't seen you in such a long time." Two hours, right? COVID didn't allow for that, for us anyhow. And so things kind of calmed down.

Monique Chambers:

So we found ourselves having to ask, how do we show each other love without bombarding the other, without it becoming just too much? What does that expression look like? And how do I respect one space and time when oftentimes our space and time is shared and those lines are often blurred? How do I do that?

Monique Chambers:

I can't help but reflect upon the five love languages. My husband's love language is physical touch. And my love language is words of affirmation. Of course, right? I recognize these needs can actually be met in our monogamous relationship because we were both living with each other and trust for each other, trust for us, isn't an issue. At this point in time, it isn't an issue so we can feel each other's tank. That is a possibility. When we are actively filling each other's love tanks, we are saying to each other that, "I value you, you belong here in this relationship." And I believe that that's really important.

Monique Chambers:

But what about the others? This is where my lens comes in. I'm just kind of checking my privilege here. What about the others? What about folks who have the love language of receiving gifts, but can't leave their home to purchase a gift or the materials to create a gift. Or folks who are single and their love language is physical touch and they're literally longing for somebody's physical touch. Or folks who are in relationships that are receiving the physical touch that they aren't longing for, the touch that makes them cringe, the touch that makes them feel further isolated and further disconnected from themselves and even this outside world. That unwanted touch that renders them vulnerable. What about those people?

Monique Chambers:

I can't help but think about these things and how privileged I am in the area of love during a time that has been so difficult for so many people. Perhaps corona is prompting us to rethink some ideas around love and connection and how we choose to engage in helping others feel like they belong in our relationships. Maybe this is a time to reflect on our own needs and how we've come to develop those needs or how we've come to develop our ideas around love. Where did that come from? Where does that stem from? I love the narrative that Sylvia shared earlier. Where do our ideas come from?

Monique Chambers:

Maybe this is a time for us to reflect our own needs and how we've come to develop those needs or those ideas. Maybe this is a time for us to just stop. Just stop with the familiar, but to be courageous enough to move into the unfamiliar.

Monique Chambers:

Maybe Corona is pulling so much out of us, so much more out of us and maybe that's what's actually making us feel uncomfortable. We're moving into unchartered, unfamiliar ground because we're now having to reconceptualize our feelings and our ideas about love, connection and belonging. But is that such a terrible thing? Maybe this discomfort is forcing us to unlearn so that we can let go of what we've always known about love, so that we can be then introduced to another layer or dimension of love. Maybe that's what all this discomfort is really about. Letting go and really embracing what's being introduced to us. Another layer or another dimension of love. I don't know, but these are some of the things that I'm kind of thinking about. And I want to encourage you all to think about some of these thoughts as well.

Rick Ezekiel:

Just, I was quickly thinking and sort of paused before you Sean, all the brilliant things that are coming up and the questions that I feel like we could pause for five minutes of reflection after each of our speakers and unpack so much of this. Encouraging folks to jot down what you're wondering from Monique, from Aaron, from Sylvia and all of the brilliant sharings that you've brought to the group in conversation, and some of the amazing questions for reflection as well. I know lots of them are running through my head. So I'm encouraging folks to just jot those down and share with us in the Q&A as we go. With that, over to you, Sean.

Seán Kinsella:

So I'm going to start a little different than my little talk. So, tânsi, everyone, migizi nindoodem. Waazakone maskiki n'dizhinikaaz. Nêhithaw, nêhityaw, otipemisiwak, êkâ ê-akimiht n’daaw. Peterborough or Nogojiwanong n'doonjibaa.

Seán Kinsella:

When I think about what all of the panelists have shared, and I think about the notion of connection, I'm going to take it a little bit different and I'm going to reverse actually in some ways what I would probably typically do, which is that I would start sort of talking with the personal and then work my way out to the more systemic pieces, but I'm actually just going to go a little in reverse there.

Seán Kinsella:

When I think about how we move towards connection, and I wanted to pick up on that notion of love being an action word, that Monique was talking about. In our languages, in many of our languages, Anishinaabemowin in particular, as well as nêhithawêwin, we talk about how our languages are action-based and they're not based on gender, but they're based on this notion of what is alive or inanimate. So I think one of the difficulties of understanding a lot of these concepts from a settler-colonial perspective from my interpretation, is that you have taken a language that is based in description and is not necessarily based in verbs and you have imposed it on us. And it's an incredibly limited and confusing language for anyone who's had to learn English as a second language. It doesn't make sense. There's lots of parts where it makes sense in the context of its own rules, but it doesn't really make sense intuitively in ways that other languages do.

Seán Kinsella:

So I want to make, again, clear that that's that thing that I'm thinking about. When we talk about community connection, so for me, first and foremost when I think about connections, I think about community and I think about what the community connections look like in a time, today and in the last couple of days, where we have cases spiking. The cases have gone up to 700 today in Ontario. They keep going up.

Seán Kinsella:

Although no one probably wants to say it out loud, there's a good chance that we're heading into another lockdown soon. And I think about what does that look like when those size limits for community, gets imposed on community because of... I'm going to say this because there's different ways, there's different First Nations and other folks that dealt with all of this, but in particular a lot of the behavior is coming from urban settings. A lot of behavior that is in particular increasing the numbers right now is coming from urban settings of people going to bars and other places that maybe necessary for their mental health to some extent, but also are putting at risk folks who have to work as servers in those places. So there's a whole lot we can unpack there and that will be a whole other webinar I'm sure in and of itself.

Seán Kinsella:

But what I think about is how do we carry knowledge that has been pushed to extinction because of settler colonialism? For some folks I know, a lot of folks I've heard talk about the pandemic, that it's a chance of pause and reflection, but for us it has become a barrier for transmission of knowledge that very few people still hold because of what's happened to us and the genocide that's occurred to us over 150 years. So how do we honor and understand our relationships to our family, to our community when our ceremonies... When we do ceremony, we're not necessarily just doing ceremony for ourselves, although that's a big component of it. But we talked about how we do ceremony for the land to keep the waters clean and safe, to keep the earth safe and clean and doing what its job that it has always completed and always done. And that's part of our obligation.

Seán Kinsella:

When all of a sudden you have public health saying, "People can only gather 10 inside, or 25 outside" and we have ceremonies that we're doing, that actually that makes it illegal for us to do that. It makes us have to make some very difficult choices around rights that are protected for us under treaty.

Seán Kinsella:

So how do we undo the acts of racism and genocide that has meant that 95% of our population has been decimated by pandemics, right? So that's the history of our country, of this country and of North America, is that 95% of our people were destroyed by the pandemics that were brought. And so there's also that memory, I think, of the ways that we dealt with that in our own communities, the medicines we use. But it is important for me to acknowledge that any indigenous person that you see walking around, we are the survivors of an apocalypse and there's no other way for me to put it. So I think about that a lot around when people really love zombie movies and stuff, we also do, but we look at it like, "Hey, that's a reflection of our experience manifested." That literally is, we are survivors of horrific things. Orange shirt day is tomorrow, so thinking about that too, of the residential school system and all of these things were designed to sever us from our connection to each other and to the land.

Seán Kinsella:

So to me, we can't talk about this notion of COVID without acknowledging that whether it's intentional or not, that some of these discussions and pieces that don't take these things into consideration, that is the end result of them. That is the impact on them.

Seán Kinsella:

We've also lived through isolation, through things like the reserve system, through the road allowance system and other pieces. And we have to acknowledge that the governments have never honored the treaties that they signed with us. My family were a signatory to treaties four, six, and eight, and those treaties have never been honored. Instead, we have had our cultures outlawed and the transmission of the made illegal for many years. Depending on the area, it could have been anywhere from 60 to 70 years that that was the explicit policy. So a lot of our knowledge systems and the things that folks carried, those things had to be hidden for a little bit. And we are just in a stage now where we can start to share those things openly with people.

Seán Kinsella:

So I think a lot about how, if this is our new reality, how do we continue to do that work that we need you, that our old ones were thinking about and dreamed about?

Seán Kinsella:

Then the other thing I think about along that vein is how do the limits that are arbitrary and not based on science, from what I understand from a public health policy perspective, how do those limits actually get weaponized against us when we're doing things like protesting? When we think about all of the things that were happening in sort of March and April, when we think about what's going on with 1492 Land Back Lane, with Mi'kma’ki right now, with the fishing and the racism that's coming up from those things.

Seán Kinsella:

I wrote a poem a few months ago about my frustration about what happened at Trinity Bellwoods Park, when the things were starting to open up again a little bit and how there were no tickets handed out there. And I can tell you that I know for a fact, I know people who have been arrested and removed from lands that are their ancestral territories. And so how policy gets weaponized against us is an ongoing thing that we have to consider. That's a piece of it.

Seán Kinsella:

The next thing I think about is this notion of what does it mean to have connection? In that way, I think about the Anishinaabe term [Indigenous language 00:14:54] which is this idea of, "We are all related to one another." And we know based on our teachings, and I'm not going to go into a lot here because I'm not an old person or an elder, so I'm going to very subtly skim the surface of some of these things to just acknowledge that the knowledge systems that we had around these things are very old, very ancient and brilliant.

Seán Kinsella:

So we talked about how, as an example, the way we understood the way humans are made up, that all humans need sex, affection and love, but all humans need to eliminate waste, need to eat food and need to drink. So we have thirst. And when we do things like fasting ceremonies or other ceremonies, those are the things that we deprive ourselves of because first and foremost, we're what we call sort of spiritual beings. And so if we all need love, and I think about how Creation's love is unconditional and absolute, then there is this piece around, yes, we absolutely need connection with other humans, but then how do we make sure we're also still connecting with our lands and with the beings that are not just humans, right? And so some folks have talked about how getting outside, being in nature, those sorts of things are really important for us.

Seán Kinsella:

And I think it can be critically important when we're feeling isolated, because there's a tendency that we have to forget our humanity, I think, and our connection to other people when we end up stuck in our houses for a long time. And I say that as someone who is culturally, who our people were stuck in small dwellings with family for a long time. So when you think of some of the people that my family comes from were Plain's Woods Cree and Anishinaabe in the North, winters are eight months long and there's eight to 10 feet of snow, so you're not going anywhere. So what we did is we found ways like storytelling and other things to pass that time and to teach each other and to learn lessons and pieces. So there's a lot you can learn, I think, from indigenous peoples around how to survive extreme isolation for long periods of time.

Seán Kinsella:

So it is kind of funny to me when people are complaining. They're like, "Oh, we've been on lockdown for a month." I'm like, "Okay, we used to historically be in small family groups of maybe one or two families for eight months of the year. There's a lot of lessons there. And I know Inuit folks and those folks that are even further North, they have a lot that they could talk about in terms of what it means to be isolated from each other and have small families for long periods of time.

Seán Kinsella:

We also know that we're responsible for more than ourselves. So while COVID is largely impacting us as humans, it's also, I think, been paradoxically this really necessary break for the planet. So I know when we were stuck inside for a while there, there was a really cool thing where the skies cleaned up a little bit, the waters cleaned up a little bit, it was actually a really good break for the earth.

Seán Kinsella:

And I think that should probably tell us a message about the impact that we're currently having on our environment around us, because when sort of the industrial complex stopped, the earth healed. This is the intention, actually, to some extent, every winter. It's capitalism that has made it that we go through 12 months a year nonstop, but the idea is that's what winter was, winter was a time to stop and let the earth heal itself. I'm thinking about that as it comes up into the future.

Seán Kinsella:

And I think about how capitalism-centered colonialism has divorced us as Anishinaabe people, which when we say Anishinaabe, we're not talking about just indigenous people, we're talking about all people. And there's a lot of ways you can break down that word and that term. But some of it is about that we are reflections of the Earth itself, we're many versions of the Earth, little beings of water is a way to think about it.

Seán Kinsella:

And that we have days upon days, upon days, 28 days of relationships teachings, our creation stories take 12 days to tell, or some of them, some longer, and that's not even sort of going into every detail. That's just a skim. And that we also specifically have teachings around things like sex and affection and how we biologically relate to each other in an explicit way in a community setting. So those are also teachings around consent and free will that were present here before settler colonialism removed them.

Seán Kinsella:

So in some ways, what's interesting for me is thinking about consent education now, doesn't know really that this is a thing we had already. This idea of freewill and non-interference and consent were bedrocks of a lot of our nations. I know for sure, like nêhiyaw and Anishinaabek, but that there's, again, a lot of lessons that we can learn about how you can structure societies, that it can exist for thousands of years on a territory and on a place.

Seán Kinsella:

For myself in terms of relationship structures, I identify as someone who engages in relationships that are critical and non-monogamous and I take a lot of insight and articulation from scholars and brilliant indigenous folks, such as Dr. Kim TallBear, where it's grappling with what it means to exist in relationships that are consensual with everything around us. Not just humans, not just who we live with, but when we pick medicines, when we take firewood, we're supposed to put asemma down or tobacco as a way to ask, and we're supposed to talk to whatever it is that we're harvesting to explain what it is that we're doing and why, to ensure that the being that we are disturbing, that is alive, that they understand why it is that we're asking for and what we're doing.

Seán Kinsella:

So I think about this, if that's what we do when we're picking medicines, how much more do we have to think about that in context of humans, where we're dealing with things like freewill. What it has meant during the pandemic for me, looking at the ethic of those things, is a lot of conversations with potential partners and dates, figuring out what safety means and how comfortable we are visiting other people. And also for myself as an Anishinaabe, nêhithaw person, a mixed person, it's also figuring out how do I set relationships with BIPOC folks. For myself, it's really important to make sure that I'm spending time with particularly indigenous people, but also sort of BIPOC people as partners and as friends. Because I think that that experience is really important for me, reminding myself of my own humanity because of the collective oppressions that we've experienced under settler colonialism.

Seán Kinsella:

And I also have an Ashkenazi Jewish partner that I live with as well as another roommate and three cats, so we're also figuring out how do we live in that environment safely? So we are living in what I think probably for our communities traditionally would not have been an untraditional way of living around more than just yourself and your partner and kids and whatever living together. But certainly that is not the story of the public health is designing for. They are not equipped to deal with the fact that there are people who are not living in sort of very nuclear family situations. So even the talk of bubbles and the best advice is not centered around those kinds of things. It doesn't give us a lot of basis for how to have those conversations with each other around consent and around what people are comfortable with. It's a lot of communication.

Seán Kinsella:

As I started seeing and dating some new folks during corona, there was a lot of conversations and working through fears and concerns. Those would already be a lot of conversations and particularly for non-monogamous folks and for folks who believe in that freewill piece, that it already takes a lot to do that, but then you throw in corona and all of a sudden it's a lot more expansive conversations. I think on the other side of that, it also makes those conversations real because it is, I think, pushing people to really prioritize and figure out for themselves what is actually important to them and what has value in terms of what you're willing to take a risk for. For myself, it's that having a lot of conversations so I can spend time with BIPOC people, if that's going to ceremony and figuring out the way I can best protect myself and others within the context of our teachings. Those are all a lot of labor that we have to do.

Seán Kinsella:

Admittedly, what I will say as well is that I was not always great at maintaining those connections either. For myself, there'll be consequences to be dealt with for as long as this goes on around that. So I have to own and recognize the fact that there were relationships and connections with people that this has disrupted. I don't know for myself if those relationships and connections will ever be what they were before corona. So for me, there's also a lot of frustration about that because especially when it's with other BIPOC people, it's hard enough for us to even date each other. It's hard enough for us to date each other, if we're non-monogamous and we add all of these different identities, so for myself, also a mixed person, as a crip person, as a queer person, as someone who is non-binary in English, all of these things make those relationships much more difficult to navigate without this added fear that's coming in from other places.

Seán Kinsella:

So for myself, I'm also thinking about how do we balance being prudent and careful, but also not living in fear, because we also know from our teachings and our articulation, that fear makes you sick. So we talk about how you can't live a full life and even mentally speaking, you can't use other parts of your brain if you're in fight or flight, it's pretty simple that way for us. So I think it's that piece around, we have a lot of "rituals" I'll call them, or ceremonies, around living with fear and working through those things for yourself.

Seán Kinsella:

Those are also things that I'm thinking about in context to all of this. So I'll sort of wrap there and say, êkosi, thank you for that time.

Rick Ezekiel:

Many, many thank you to Sean and all of our panelists. As we were hearing each of our panelists speak, I was sort of reflecting on the huge complexity of this topic and not just the topic itself, the complexity of what each individual human brings to it and really how we need to create these spaces for dialogue and understanding, in terms of how we approach relationship, intimacy and connection, but then also hearing so many themes of how that translates into the connections and intimacy we are creating with the people in our lives and that our panelists were willing to share with us.

Rick Ezekiel:

Seeing that to sort of re-echo, I think, my huge thanks to our panelists and to our audience for entering the conversation and really being able to share your process in doing that. And I was just kind of writing down a few themes that sort of intersected some of our discussions, and maybe we'll share some of those as a kind of introduction into our first question for the panel.

Rick Ezekiel:

And while we're doing this, really encouraging folks to use the Q&A to add more questions that were coming up for you as we go. Some of the themes that I was really hearing was, across all of our panelists, really realizing the impacts of our developmental histories of connection, connection with family, friends, intimate partners, on how we engage in relationship. Some of that coupling with how we process and grapple with and understand the impacts that trauma might've had on us. And how that might show up in relationship with each other and with other humans now, even potentially many years after previous experiences and how we develop strategies to sort of navigate that.

Rick Ezekiel:

A resource, I'll actually post it in the chat shortly, but a number of folks posted, that need to develop an understanding of how we feel love and how we help others around us feel love, and love languages as a source of sort of coming to some of that awareness and understanding.

Rick Ezekiel:

There's been a really fantastic resource called Roots of Safety developed by a Toronto-based social worker that was just featured in Healthline by a writer, Gabrielle Smith, that sort of looks to extend that kind of idea of love languages in a trauma-informed way, in a tool that kind of enables sound self-reflection and reflection with others. And that sort of leads into, I think, a theme across many of our panelists that need of self-reflection and personal transformation first, and getting comfortable with vulnerability before those deep connections are possible. Sort of coming back to Monique's point about, and I love this language, "personal unlearning to deepen our ability to engage in connection and love." And how the pandemic and the space we have, while coupled with fear and uncertainty, can provide some space for some of that unlearning.

Rick Ezekiel:

And last, but certainly not least, I think a lot of themes around sort of being intentional with our time and our energy and sort of the ways we connect with each other, the ways we connect with land, the ways we connect to culture, to community, to sort of energize ourselves and in ways that can be restorative.

Rick Ezekiel:

So out of many, many learnings, that those are a few that I sort of jotted down and distilled in hearing from our panel. And maybe a question to kick us off, it comes back to sort of woven themes through all of that, was that concept of vulnerability in love and intimacy and connection. Thinking about that concept of how we have to take our guard down, Aaron, as you said, and Monique, what you talked about in terms of sort of unlearning and Sylvia in your commentary around overcoming histories of maybe love not being fully shared or shown, and then the intersections in terms of Sean's comments on colonization and that sort of thing. I think you've all modelled that vulnerability immeasurably in our panel today, you've clearly done a lot of personal reflecting yourselves to kind of process just what you've shared today and how it comes up for you in a relationship and how you're comfortable bringing it forward to an audience like ours today.

Rick Ezekiel:

So I'm curious, if you're comfortable sharing, and we can start with whoever is open to it, what that looked like for you. What was that process of reflection and getting comfortable with vulnerability and getting to the place where you could do it so skillfully today to benefit others? And do you still struggle with it at times? And what do you do when that comes up? Maybe thinking about the vulnerability hangovers we'll all have after our session today.

Rick Ezekiel:

Yeah, we'll throw that open to the group.

Seán Kinsella:

I can go first to give folks some time to think. So I would say for-

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Seán Kinsella:

...and I think. So I would say for myself some of it is culturally specific. I can say the way that I grew up, as I said earlier I'm mixed, my dad's Irish, and my mom is Anishinaabe and Cree and Irish as well. And so for me growing up, the example I kind of got from my mom was just sort of that you can have open conversations with someone that you can trust. And I remember having some, looking back on some very deep, probably uncomfortable conversations. I remember having a conversation on Mother's Day, at some point, when my mom was asking me if I was having sex and we were handing roses out outside of an IGA, or something like that, and so I was like it's a little bit of, be careful what you ask for, because then we then had a conversation about it.

Seán Kinsella:

But I think about... There's that piece of how I saw growing up at home and then culturally, a lot of our ceremonies that I've been participating in, really the last, a little bit over a decade, that a lot of those ceremonies are about specifically sharing. So everyone's voice matters, everyone's opinion matters and you know, I'll use the example we're not doing it this year because we're doing some other ceremonies, but we have a yearly ceremony that we call Biinakwii Giizis, which translates to Falling Leaves Moon, and it's this idea in October, it's kind of like the end of our year. It's our year end for Anishinaabe people. And part of that ceremony is you recap your year, and you go around the circle and it's in a teepee or in a lodge, whatever the case is.

Seán Kinsella:

And each person talks and each person talks until they're done. So like you can buckle in that it might take a while, but every single person there has the opportunity to talk about what their year was and honestly, that can be a range of things. So you can imagine we also have a lot of, and this is what I was alluding to with my mom is, I was raised to tell the truth, and not...truth can be tricky. So you have to be careful with honesty that you're trying to, I think from my perspective, do it in a kind way, but you know, that there's a real power to being authentic and telling the truth. And so you can imagine we've had situations where someone's reflecting on the fact that they've lost a child over that year or lost a job or lost a parent or lost mentors, anything can happen over that year. And so everyone has a chance to recap it.

Seán Kinsella:

So, when you see that example illustrated that this is just how this is the kind of conversations you have. It, I think, gets you very used to vulnerability and around sharing. Where I get the vulnerability hangovers is when I'm in non-indigenous spaces and when I say something that is very clearly unwelcome or is too much for non-indigenous people in the space, right? So particularly ones who have been very influenced by settler colonialism and this notion of having an agenda and keeping things really close to the chest.

Seán Kinsella:

That's, for me, the trick that where vulnerability is tricky and I've seen that, right? I remember because I always tell this story of I was running a friendship center and we had a partnership with a children's aid society for a while, and it didn't work out very well. They weren't really ready for an actual community consultation piece, but we had a closing feast and it really, it was myself and the president of the local sort of like Métis council who went there. And that was pretty much it because everyone else, community members wise, didn't feel comfortable going, but we felt it was important because we were representing our organizations to be there. And I remember walking in and getting midway through a story. And I...the president talking about how he, his foot was hurting a little bit and his daughter was going to school and how he was like, really anxious about that and really frustrated and sort of worried about her and like all of this systemic stuff, getting organized. And I remember sitting down and starting to eat and then realizing afterwards what had happened was that one of the children's aid workers had made the mistake of asking him, how are you?

Seán Kinsella:

And when you ask that question in indigenous communities, we will tell you how we are, especially if we trust you, like we will give you the full gamut. So he probably went on for about 15 or 20 minutes and I was just sitting there eating and I'm like, "This is fine." But I could see as the time went on, the look on her face got more and more aghast and it started out, she's like, "Hmm," and then she's like, "..." and she realized that he was going into what were quite intimate details of his family. And I think it was very shocking and surprising for her. So I think there's an example that I always think about, of both is when I educate people about communities like being careful, when people are like, "How was your weekend?" Right?

Seán Kinsella:

Like this sort of under capitalism, we don't really want the answers to those questions. We want to ask them because we want to be perceived as being polite and collegial, even though we're not, even though, and that's true, all of us are like that, where you're on the way to a meeting and someone stops you and they're like, "How are you?" And you're like, "Well, you know..." And the look of horror on their face, when you start to actually answer the question. I do that sometimes just to mess with people, by the way, it's harder over Zoom. But certainly, certainly I will play with people that way a little bit, which probably says a lot about me. But I think, there's those pieces around when you're, enculturated that vulnerability is just a piece of what you do, because it's also about how you learn and it's also about being able to admit what you don't know, right?

Seán Kinsella:

So culturally speaking, we talk about how there is so much in our life to learn that there is no one who is an expert on anything, really. And I, that's the thing that sits to me when I think of our knowledge is someone can spend their entire lifetime learning medicines and they can know thousands upon of medicine, and there can be someone else who shows up and knows like 1,001, or shows newer or knows one more medicine than that person, so there's still something that person can learn. Even if in our communities, they would be held up as the ultimate expert on this, right? So it's very humbling, I think, to really reflect on those things that we all bring our own experience, we all have our own valuable insights and we all can bring those in and have a role to play in our communities.

Seán Kinsella:

And so that's how I think about vulnerability around, that is part of our role and part of what we're asked to do. With the balance of it, I think is. that as I said earlier, settler colonialism has taken us away from our spirits. So when we talk about our spirit in the language, we talk about how the spirit is the thing that feels and is thoughtful about the future. So we think about how that idea of being able to sit with folks and understand how they really feel and be present in that, that's really hard, right? It's really hard to sit and be present with your feelings. So, that's what we talk about a little bit. I think about vulnerability is like what that's being asked to, but also like carefully, there's a container for that too, right?

Seán Kinsella:

So I think that's the other thing, if we're walking around vulnerable all the time, that also can be really hard for all of us. So that's where I think about, for me, I really appreciate the opportunity to do ceremony and to bring those kinds of ceremonies to the conversations I have, one-on-one with people too, right, because I think of those conversations are ceremony. So when I'm having a conversation with a partner and trying to sort things out, it sucks, right? Like COVID sucks. There is no, I'll say it on record and it's being recorded, COVID socks. This is awful. It's disrupted things that were already difficult. It sucks. But, if what comes out of it is people having to be a little bit more authentic and real about their experience in struggling with working at home and managing family demands along with being on Zoom all the time, if the things that come out of this can also be positive, then in that way, I'm grateful for that, as well as for that opportunity for the earth to take a little rest. So, that's what I think about and hopefully I've given enough time for the other panelists to formulate something. So you're welcome.

Rick Ezekiel:

Thank you, Sean. (laughs) Silvia, ready?

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Thanks and I always get so much out of Sean's responses and wisdom. So I super appreciate all of your wisdom. When I think about vulnerability, I think the first thing that jumps out at me is, I like Renee Brown's emphasis on vulnerability and courage and that aligning of those two processes. And I think it's similar, but I think about, for me, vulnerability is really stepping into understanding what is my relationship with fear. And I know I grappled with this for a long time. I think that it's rooted in indigenous wisdom, but it's also just rooted, for me, in spiritual practice and intuitive practice that there really is, and Sean mentioned this which I appreciate, there really is no conditions on love from the creator there really is no conditions on love for us as human beings.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

And that, to me, is really, it's always in contention with how we've been brought up and how we've learned to be and exist in this world and when he talked a lot about that, as well. And so for me, this process of facing vulnerability is really challenging all of the ways, as I mentioned before, that we've been asked to show up in this world. I know that fear to me shows up as illness. It shows up as self abuse. It shows up as the absence of psychological safety. And I think it does for a lot of us. And when we can separate those experiences and look at it as an outcome of our relationship to fear, it helps me lean into vulnerability. It also helps me see, as I love talking about, the ways in which fear is a perfect ingredient for all of the ways in which systemic oppression requires to exist. We need to live in fear in order to perpetuate those forms of opppression.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

We need to, we need to buy in to all of the lies that colonialism has told us, as John has mentioned, that notion of meritocracy, that notion of separateness, all of that requires that we live in immense fear all the time. And so the opposite of that is really looking into how do I...my vulnerability is my power. And I think my power is my vulnerability because that actively asks me to reassess how much I'm willing to live in that fear. And so I think to that point, vulnerability is really about revisiting and reframing my relationship with fear.

Monique Chambers:

Oh my goodness, Silvia. (laughter) [crosstalk 01:41:10] Oh my goodness. Okay. So, all right. So you really have me thinking here about vulnerability and what my process looks like, but then you threw out and, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I want to get, make sure I get it right for you were saying that vulnerability for you is related to how you sit in the face of fear. Is that what you said? Something along those lines, Silvia?

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

It aligns with my, yeah. It's about my relationship with fear. I have like, assessing our relationship with fear and being able to really face it, head on requires vulnerability, right? So vulnerability is that ingredients of facing a fear.

Monique Chambers:

Yes, absolutely. So interestingly, I was writing down a couple of things that I wanted to share, but then I'm going to go in a completely different direction because he threw this out there and it's hitting home to me because I'm, as I said, I'm a Christian and I've been really kind of engaging with my creator. And I have found that anytime I feel uneasy, I'm sitting in a place of discomfort, which causes me to be vulnerable, right? And it's so true what you say, it's having you, when you are in that, for me in that moment, it does have me assess my relationship with fear and it causes me to acknowledge that I'm sitting in a place of fear. And so I'm finding more than ever. I'm saying things like, "But God, I trust you." Because it's my way of acknowledging that I'm not in control and that there's something else that's greater, that's in control.

Monique Chambers:

There's some things that are just beyond my control. And so I think that when I say, "But God, I trust you." It's my way of acknowledging that I am literally being confronted with fear. I am vulnerable. I don't like what I'm feeling. I'm uncomfortable with it, but it's okay. I got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And so I think that, I think Sean had mentioned that for him, vulnerability is it's almost like cultural, like I guess maybe culturally encouraged. And so with me, it just wasn't like, we didn't talk about, same way how we did a touch. We didn't talk about feelings, like forget it. And so I think when I was really young, I learned to write down my feelings. And so I began to journal and I carry that to this day. And so I feel as though, and maybe my husband doesn't even know this, but I'm actually more vulnerable with my journal than I am with my husband, because my journal doesn't judge, right? It's just my eyes and that's it. And so I think that's one of the ways I kind of process my vulnerability is that I'm just real about how I'm feeling, where I'm at. And I think that's one of the ways that I am attempting to be comfortable in the discomfort of this all.

Aaron Brown:

I...I guess what I'm thinking about my journey to vulnerability, I think first and foremost, I had a lot of people be vulnerable with me. I often had people coming to me with support and letting their guard down so that they could access me for conversations. And so that, to me, I think in a way role modelled that, I think about my mom I've been her support person, the person that she goes to for everything. Since, like grade eight. And so I think in many ways, I never had to be vulnerable first. Someone else did it. And then, and I think that that was helpful. I also think about, for me there got to a point where like, I mean, my depressive episodes were so bad that for me, vulnerability was life or death, really, where like I needed to make that choice if I wanted to continue to live.

Aaron Brown:

And so, sometimes pressure necessitated that. I think about, I mean my background is in Residence Life where we have a lot of vulnerable conversations and so I think that that was something that was coached. I know that like Sterling is on the call and I used to work for him and he role models, a lot of vulnerable conversations and reflection and having that role modelled for me was really helpful. I also, it's sometimes I feel like vulnerability for me as a tool, in that if I am trying to have a support conversation with someone, for instance, by being vulnerable, I feel like I am able to help that person along the path. So we'd like to meet sometimes vulnerability truthfully is a means to an end, in a way. And I'm like, is this authentic vulnerability? I don't fully know if I'm using it as a tool. But I think for me, that's been part of that processes. What does this accomplish for me? What does this result in? And how do I benefit from that? I suppose.

Amita Singh:

I am constantly in awe of the knowledge of this group. I'm just sitting here like, it's washing over me. Thank you all so much for that, your eloquence in those answers...So in navigating your personal and the space within you and the space outside of you, we have a question that came up in the chat and just in interest of time, I'm thinking maybe keeping answers equally as eloquent, but just as much this like a little bit brief. So the question or the comment is being cognizant, that we're all in different boats. For some of us, this may be a contemplative time, while for others may have never had less time to think. Given, so full disclosure, high needs children at home, primary partner at home and care resources are thin, putting the comment are firmly in the latter group of having no time to think how might some of our panelists navigate their active expressions of love and engagement with partners, while also making time for their own reflection and development in these circumstances,

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

I'm just going to call it a Chris Jackman because Chris, I feel like you are one of the most conscious parents I have ever met. And Dr. Shefali Sabari writes about conscious parenting and Chris, I'm sure that you've read her book. You model it so well, I don't know if you want to put the link if anybody wants to put the link in the chat. So, I feel like I'm talking to the converteds. For me, I've learned, I can't speak for all parents, but Aaron just said something recently that this work is a matter of life or death. So I prioritize this work because that's the only way I know how to show up as a parent is to be able to show up in and allow my kids to see this struggle, this vulnerability and to do it in conjunction with them. Because I wake up and I realize every single day, I feel like I'm a really empathetic parent. I pride myself on conscious parenting, but none of us know what it's like to parent during COVID. And so I wake up with that level of humility every day and just say, "All of it is what it is and it's going to be in the best case scenario for our kids, as we can model that vulnerability." And I don't know if that really gets to your question, but really doing the work is the parenting, is the showing up for parenting for me. So I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Monique Chambers:

I'm just going to peak to make sure I'm going to answer this correctly. Yeah. So I was going to say again, I don't know if this is the answer, but I'm just thinking someone wiser than me once said, "Monique, you have to plan everything. You have to be strategic with everything. And if you're not, then you're not going to get at least most of what you want to get done," right? And understanding that we are in a season of uncertainty and you can plan all you want it's like, things are just happening beyond our control. But I would really encourage, I think anybody and I'm encouraging myself, even as I speak to be strategic, right.

Monique Chambers:

I, my husband and I went out the other day and we went to the movies and there's like nobody in the movie theater, but we went to the movies and I kind of just kind of grabbed his arm, keep in mind. My primary love language is not physical touch. So I grabbed his arm. And I was like, "Oh my God, this feels so good." And then all of a sudden it's like I'm well up on him while I'm watching this movie. And, and I think in that moment, I realized we just aren't touching and connecting in that way, the way how we used to. And it's because as you said, there's just no time to think. There's just no time.

Monique Chambers:

And so one of the things that I'm going to be doing, and I've been putting the bug in my husband's ear, is booking time off so that him and I can just connect, right? Like I said, October 15, 16, this is it (laughs). Like two days, right. So I would just encourage being strategic in that way. But I do recognize that that comes with money and flexibility and all that good stuff. Something else I want to say as well, but being not having time to think, I find so irritating with the season, personally.

Monique Chambers:

And so as much as I love to be Netflixing for longer periods of time, I'm finding in the last two weeks, I'm actually saying, "Okay hun, you can keep watching, I'm going to go read." And I'm finding that reading time is my time to just settle. And so I'm just doing a little bit of reading. I'll even jot notes down while I'm reading, because it's helping me process and think. And so I think I'm feeding myself in that sense, at least intellectually and emotionally. And so that's what's been helping me. And so I've kind of encouraged anybody just to continue to be strategic. And maybe sometimes it means change the strategy.

Seán Kinsella:

Also, throw in, I'm not a, I'm going to be a front, I'm not a parent unless cats count. So terms of the time piece I cannot speak to that piece. What I will say though, is I think in thinking about it this way, and this is something that we talk a lot about in our communities is that what makes healthy communities is healthy families and what makes healthy families is healthy individuals. I think that, and this is like an interesting thing about culturally for us, as we talk about in relationship teachings specifically, we talk about how, if you're a parent that actually you, as a parent and your partner needs to come first and the kids need to come second, because if your relationship isn't healthy or you're not prioritizing that to some extent, then it sort of creates an unhealthy dynamic in terms of that piece, which again, probably is much easier to say.

Seán Kinsella:

And that's an ideal, I think, and I think it's something to keep in mind, but for me, I think it is still that as individuals, we have a responsibility to be healthy, right? So taking the time we need to to do that because and I know this for myself, because I've also worked in student affairs and student housing. And so there were weeks and weeks and weeks where I was not, I had no time off, right? I would work like three weeks straight, like pretty consistently. And I know at the end I was not a particularly in a good space, right? Because I had taken literally no time for myself over that time period. And so we have a lot of ceremonies and a lot of things we do specifically to center you or your growth in your work as an individual and, and sitting with, and, and all that kind of stuff that I won't get into now.

Seán Kinsella:

But I think recognizing that that's something we've always, we've always seen and always recognized is that the individual is, is critically important to the rest of that. So if an individual is not healthy, you're not going to have a healthy family. You're not going to have a healthy nation or clan. You're not going to have a healthy community. So doing what you need to do to prioritize that is not selfish. It's about actually equipping yourself so you're able to fully help people and do that piece. And it's hard, right? Because I think that's...it's not an individualistic sort of peace, but it is that time for reflection that time for sitting that time for connecting with creation. That's the kind of thing when you're putting yourself first, I think, rather than distracting, because that's also a whole other thing. So yeah, I would say fur babies are also great and taking the time with whatever people in your life, because it doesn't, kids are a piece, but then it could also be parents. It could also be family members. It could be nieces and nephews. It could be, or niblets, it could be fur babies. It could be whatever it is, right? But again, balancing that I think is also important in that context too.

Rick Ezekiel:

Fantastic. Thank you to our panelists for diving in a little bit more on that and mindful that we had scheduled ourselves until three o'clock and that some of our audience members might need to step away. So just opening that door. And I think we had a few closing resources that we wanted to share with folks who attended just in case your kind of seeking additional supports. And I mean that we did enter into a brave space and talk about lots of vulnerable stuff today, so wanting to give folks avenues to next steps as well. So we'll toss it over to Amita.

Amita Singh:

Yeah, I will be sending out resources to everyone. So please do look out for those. I can also, the last summer I tried to put them in the chat and it didn't quite work as well. So I'm going to be sending them out individually. And if anyone has any follow up questions, please feel free to reach out to me over the email or you will get the resources from, but I think we, you were, we are right on time. So awesome job panelists. You all are so wonderful. And thank you so much for all of your sharing and your courage and your vulnerability and your spirit. It just, it all just shone through. And then I don't think I speak for myself when I say I am totally in awe of you all, let's say in all of you. So until next time, I think you can wrap this up. So thank you all. And thank you all to our participants for joining us. Take care and stay safe for everyone.

Rick Ezekiel:

Big thanks to everyone who joined into our panelists.

Seán Kinsella:

Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining.

Dr. Silvia D’Addario:

Thanks!

Contact Information

• Lesbian, Gay, Bi & Trans Youth line
  1-800-268-9688
  For people aged 26 and under; Sunday to Friday, 4 pm - 9 pm
• TalkHealing
  1-855-554-HEAL (4325)
  Specific to supporting Indigenous women.
  Keep Me Safe
  1-844-451-9700
  A confidential, voluntary and free counselling support service available to you through the college.
• Good 2 Talk
  1-866-925 5454
  Provides confidential support services for post-secondary students in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Choose an option below for more info.
• Assaulted Women’s Help Line
  416-863-0511
  Provides 24/7 crisis counselling over the phone to women in 154 languages. The use of a TTY line also available for deaf women.
• Toronto Rape Crisis Centre
  416-597-8808
  Provides 24/7 crisis counselling over the phone. Counsellors also answer emails.  Counselling, legal advice, support groups and a list of hospitals where staff can administer rape kits.
  Open to all genders.
  crisis@trccmwar.ca
• Support Services for Male Survivors of Abuse
  1-866-887-0015
  The Support Services for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse program provides help for male survivors of sexual abuse, both recent and historical.
• Telehealth Ontario
  1-866-797-0000
  Free, confidential, speak with a nurse
• Place for Reconciliation for All Our Relations, Centennial College
  416-289-5000 ext. 2370 
• Humber College Resources
  A list of off-campus resources
• Tkaronto Indigenous Peoples portal
  A centralized location for access to services, events, programs, businesses, and more.
• Toronto Innuit Association
  Provide support in language learning, cultural awareness, family services, employment and health services to Inuit and their families.
• Native Child and Family Services of Toronto
  Supporting Indigenous youth in healthy and positive transitions into adulthood
• Native Women’s Resource Centre of Toronto
  Providing community and supports for Indigenous women and girls
• Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Centres that are connected to 7 hospitals:
  • Women's College Hospital
  • Mount Sinai
  • Toronto General Hospital
  • Toronto Western Hospital
  • Michael Garron Hospital
  • St. Michael’s Hospital
  • St. Joseph’s Hospital
  • Sunnybrook Hospital

Articles

• We Need a Plan for How to Have Casual Sex Again
• Unlimited Intimacy, Raw
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• Nationhood Interrupted by Sylvia McAdam Saysewahum
• This Accident of Being Lost
• As We Have Always Done