thorns
\ˈthȯrns\ n.
7. a source of irritation
(esp in the phrases a thorn in one's side or flesh) [13]
There are moments that mark the beginning of a profound change in one’s life. They stick with us.
“You know the word therapist, Pamela explained, “breaks down into the words the and rapist.”
Bernadine
\ˈthȯrns\ n.
7. a source of irritation
(esp in the phrases a thorn in one's side or flesh) [13]
There are moments that mark the beginning of a profound change in one’s life. They stick with us.
“You know the word therapist, Pamela explained, “breaks down into the words the and rapist.”
Bernadine
The morning sun shimmered through lace curtains and it danced over Emma’s bedroom wall leaving elaborate patterns of light. As she opened the window, hot air hit her nostrils. It carried the familiar smell of her home and, just outside, her community. Already the heat from what would be another scorching day on Windsor Street warmed her skin. Emma offered up a silent gratitude for the gift of this new day.
All night she had sought the comfort of sleep. Several times she had awoke overwhelmed in the sweat of an unsolicited sexual edge. By 1:45 am, she was pouring water for coffee (strong and dark). Her head throbbed with a migraine. Emotional pain had settled into her bones. Anxiety screeched through her. Its focus: Pamela Sleeth, her partner. Emma was standing in the middle of her own kitchen and yet felt as if she was drowning in something thick and dense. At 2:33 am, she stared down the barrel of what seemed like her own bad choices and fixed another coffee as her orange tabby rubbed up against her leg. He wanted treats. At 3:40 am, the sky began to lighten. The customary songs of early morning birds inexplicably plunged her into sobs. Emma had worked hard, over many years, to push her ill-fated union with Pamela into what now appeared to be an even more ill-conceived future. In the months to come, the pretense and denial she had been living in would become obvious. But, in this moment, all she could ascertain was that it was not the loving, healthy relationship that she believed they had been working towards. Instead, Emma felt hostage to a familiar mental fog whose edges she could never find.
By 4:00 am, Emma crawled back into bed hoping that sleep might find pity on her before the world awoke. Her feet searched for the cool air just outside the bottom of her bedsheets. She prayed for sleep but instead drifted back to 1988 when she first met Pamela. The Women’s Research Centre (WRC)[14] was speaking to women about their experiences of child sexual abuse for a book called, Recollecting Our Lives.[15] Emma was a survivor. In addition, for the last couple years, she had given several local public talks raising awareness around this issue emerging into the contemporary, social consciousness. The WRC asked if Emma would participate and assigned Pamela as her interviewer.
Pam welcomed her at the door, “Glad you could make it. Come in.” She ushered Emma up some creaky, wooden stairs to an empty office with a dreary coat of blue-grey paint. As they settled into the metal chairs, Pam continued, “So, a little about me. I have an MA in psychology from Antioch University.” She looked up from the paper she was referencing, “Cold Mountain? Cortez Island?”[16]
Pamela clearly thought this should mean something to Emma. It did not.
“I’m a lesbian. I have a feminist-based, private practice working mostly with survivors of sexual abuse.” Then Pam paused long enough to take a sip from her coffee. She placed the cup down on the small secretarial desk stuffed into the corner of the office and said, “… and I co-founded VISACS.”[17]
Emma’s ears perked up. “Wow, VISACS.” Inside she thought … she is so open about stuff. Emma came from the bald, Canadian prairies where people used quiet voices for these words.
In the early 80s, VISACS was a cutting-edge organization in Vancouver that dealt solely with the issue of sexual abuse. To Emma, it denoted real change for traumatized children. So far, she was quite impressed with Pamela Sleeth.
Pam continued, “I designed and now facilitate a program at the Justice Institute that offers training to counselors around sexual child abuse and I was the Supervisor for the first transition house here in Vancouver.”
…more firsts, Emma thought.
“I’ve worked with Car 86 responding to domestic violence calls and, before that, as a social worker working with street youth.”[18] Pam reached for her coffee cup once more and then settled back into her chair. “So, now you know who I am. Let’s talk about you.”
As the interview proceeded, Emma found herself in awe of this woman. Never had she been in the company of someone who had so successfully combined her personal, political, and work lives. In contrast, Emma’s small world had been overwhelmed with a terrible childhood. As a single parent of two small children, her parenting obligations and full-time job took up every available second. Back then, she never (ever) had enough money. Her world was chaotic and metaphorically held together with rope woven from absolute determination and a finely-honed ability to juggle life’s challenges.
It was generally understood that a childhood impacted by sexual trauma required therapy. However, for Emma, the cost was prohibitive. The few times that she had found counseling for a nominal fee or free, it was impractical. Most of the limited sessions were taken up providing background information with little left over for actual healing work. Consequently, Emma fashioned a way to process her childhood trauma. Alone she acknowledged whatever old experiences were triggered forward. She embraced them. Then, she allowed them to just be without modification, rationalization, or (and this was often the hardest) denial. Eventually, she could see how each one had impacted her life and, from that, she made changes. Of course, blind spots remained a problem. But this was the best she could do given her circumstances. So far, it had worked.
Then, months after her interview for the book, Emma stumbled onto and into a horrific, traumatic memory. While she couldn’t quite recall the content she was, nonetheless, debilitated by its impact. Emotions flooded her body bursting past any psychological walls that had once contained this material and, thereby, allowed her to function on a day-to-day basis. Her psyche floundered from competing snippets of images attached to traumatic recall for which she had no framework. She came unglued. Her tried-and-true method of processing her childhood was ineffectual. More so, it seemed to be making everything worse. No matter how she scrambled to internally shut it all down nothing worked. She was reduced to an emotional puddle. Each day became a struggle to survive.
After months of this unbearable state, in February of 1989, Emma reached out to Pam. The counseling she offered quickly took on a routine. Throughout the week, Emma noted in her journal the memories or feelings she experienced. In counseling, she reviewed that material with Pamela who then provided much-needed feedback and insight. In time, Emma re-established her equilibrium.
Pamela was a large woman. At 6’2”, she towered a good six inches above Emma. There was nothing about her foreboding frame that was womanly, small, soft, or fragile. She had dirty, blonde hair that was already sprinkled with grey streaks around her strong, angular face. Her hands were large but feminine. She often dressed in men's clothes right down to her wing-tipped shoes. “They were cheaper,” she explained, “and are of a finer quality and they fit better.”
Pamela was different than any other woman Emma knew or had known. She took up space in the room. She held eye contact without wavering and sat comfortably in her own skin ignoring the usual social expectations of being pleasant and receptive. She expressed her feelings, whether they were positive or negative. If angered, she got mad regardless of the provocateur. Emma, on the other hand, was raised during the ‘60s and ‘70s in farm country where women were subservient. In the company of men, they smiled and kept their eyes cast downwards. At the remotest indication that a man – any man – was upset, they scampered to please or placate. Back then, men tacitly gave women permission to speak and they verbally reprimanded or intimidated those who didn’t comply. Emma had survived by learning to be ‘invisible’ and then ran away as soon as she could.
As Emma sank into her comfy bed, she smiled recalling these details about Pam. She had idolized her. Their interactions used to be consistently pleasant, supportive, and based on mutual caring. Now signs that their life together was self-destructing were irrefutable. This was not the first time Emma lived through the end of a relationship. But, this one was simultaneously ordinary in its progress and yet devastating in its impact.
So, what had changed? Emma thought to herself ruminating through the life events in her memory.
While Emma continued lecturing, writing, and consulting around the issue of childhood trauma, she also attended counseling with Pam. Slowly their relationship transformed to include a quasi-friendship. Then one day, Pam asked if Emma would accompany her to a workshop to speak with therapists. Eventually they were regularly co-facilitating workshops and consultation groups for other therapists even though Emma continued to see Pam personally for therapy. After eight more years, while Emma was still her client they became (what Pamela would describe) ‘life-partners.’ As Emma sifted through that series of events, she tried to identify where or when the different aspects of their relationship began or ended. It was near impossible. Everything blurred.
Outside, a shadow cast by the noonday sun drifted across the lawn. Sitting in her bedroom chair, Emma’s big toe on her right foot played with something on the carpet in front of her. Her lack of sleep left her feeling drugged. She tucked her legs up under her body. Like every partnership, theirs had ups and downs. Right now, it was clearly in jeopardy. Anyone else would have been able to immediately understand what was at the root of their problems. But, for Emma, those answers were elusive. Every time she tried to take it apart and explore it a familiar cognitive fog set in.
Not just therapist/client.
Not just colleagues.
Not just friends.
Not just lovers.
Not just partners.
Their once therapist/client relationship had breached so many ethical boundaries that the descent into a sexual one was almost without fanfare. Emma knew a sexual relationship or partnership with one’s therapist was considered inappropriate by other professionals. Consequently, this aspect of their relationship became a secret protected from any social interactions. In conversations, she constantly deflected questions like, Who is Pam? Are you partners? Her life became a daily exercise in duplicity as she edited out any reference to a closer relationship than that of ‘friends’ between them. That one secret hardened the silence around her truths preventing them from slipping out. It created parameters around her predicament that were set and then extended to even her own children who didn’t and couldn’t know this truth about her.
Emma sincerely trusted Pam. It was trust born within her therapy. As such it was the kind a child carries for a parent who cares for them and ensures they are safe. So, when Pam said that they, more than any other two people, could navigate the complicated duality of this relationship and work towards a healthy, loving one – Emma trusted Pam’s insights. Even when she didn’t completely understand how something was true she, nonetheless, accepted Pam’s authority, knowledge, and conclusions.
Fueling that trust was a sincere belief that she had gained emotional parity with her counselor: that grueling work in therapy had paid off. It was what she desperately wanted to be true. If their relationship succeeded then the deception was, in Emma’s opinion, ultimately worth the cost. She clung to this belief based on Pam’s assertions.
Equality, Emma thought. Right?
But they were not okay. No longer did anything seem to be okay.
As she searched through a mental list of her friends, traffic noise began filtering into Emma’s world from the open window. With no one aware of their relationship, Emma realized there was also no one she could confide in to sort out her confusion. It was the first time that Emma realized a disconcerting truth: Once she had begun therapy, she had let her other relationships drift away. Except for Pamela, Emma was isolated. She couldn’t speak to her counselor because Pamela (her therapist) was also her 'life-partner' and the very reason for her angst. She considered seeing another counselor, but hesitated because she wasn’t prepared to disclose their secret. She wracked her brain trying to recall any advice Pam might have offered her in sessions about creating relationships with healthy boundaries. To her alarm, she could not remember any.
Hmmmm, Emma thought to herself, even if I had made friends those relationships would have already been obstructed by my inability to share that Pamela was my partner.
“Perhaps the whole thing about keeping this a secret should have been a Red Flag,” Emma said out loud to herself as loneliness enveloped her. I fooled myself into thinking I didn’t need anyone. I thought Pam was all I needed, she concluded while absent-mindlessly rifling through some papers on her side table. A letter, in amongst the old journals she had just unearthed, caught her eye.[19]
“Pamela,
I feel emotionally lost. I went down like a top, twirling and twirling into a spiral of terror until I drowned. My brain felt like it was screaming. It seems all my screams are silent these days. Like trees falling in an empty forest, no one notices. I cannot do this anymore, Pamela. Not one more day, week, hour, or minute.”
Can’t do what? Emma questioned and then searched the document for some context. She caught the date: March 1996. Ahhh …ten years ago and what..., Emma was adding and subtracting in her head, a year or so before we became lovers. I’d been in counseling for what… seven years? Right, she thought. Pam needed to change how we did therapy.
Emma continued reading her letter.
“I cannot wait. I have waited for months for you to be able to hear me. I have waited hanging onto your promise that you would be here for me – that it was important to you to complete this therapeutic journey. I waited because I knew that life was hard for you right now and that you needed time.
Just prior to writing this letter, Emma had worked 24/7 for several months on a feature film as a production coordinator. It left no time for traditional counseling sessions. In addition, Pam’s mother was dealing with Parkinson’s and it was getting progressively worse. She was no longer able to handle her own affairs or even live alone. Pam had hired full-time care but was also spending three days a week with her in Bellingham. All of that was exacerbated when Pam was diagnosed with diabetes and polymyositis.[20]
“You said you didn’t want us doing memory work because it was too difficult for me right now. I beg to differ believing the more accurate picture is that it is too difficult for you right now. I ask for sessions, but you don’t have a regular time for me any longer. What you schedule for me often becomes time for you to discuss your issues and chit chat – but no clear time when I know it is okay to speak about what is happening for me.
My life is currently unbearable and unlivable. Waiting is too hard. The anxiety is too high. I am scared and hurt. I fear there is no place for me here in this world. I will not survive doing this the way you want.
Emma"
Those words…
no place for me
will not survive
unbearable
unlivable
... they all scrambled around in her brain setting off emotions that had no place to land.
In response to the letter, Emma recalled Pamela being conciliatory.
“I am so sorry. Of course, you feel this way,” Pam said. “How could you not. I was worried about my mom and not paying good enough attention,”
Her words lessened the pain in Emma’s heart. Hope sprang up again.
“I will change this,” Pam assured her. “I might not do it perfectly right away so give me some time to get it right. OK?”
OK? Emma agreed cautiously.
Therapy began again. Sessions were irregular as Pam worked to rearrange her busy, weekly schedule amongst clients. The psychological walls that Emma had erected inside between them, softened. Nonetheless, within a short period of time, Pamela’s issues re-emerged in Emma’s therapy sessions.
“I know what we can do.” Pam offered, “Come with me to my cabin on Salt Spring Island. Nothing will bother us there. We can focus and work on whatever comes up for as long as we need.”
So, for the next several years, sporadic appointments were held in Pam’s office. Then, they would spend three days or more, every six weeks or so, at Pam’s cabin. It was isolated. A ninety-minute ferry ride transported them from Tsawwassen to Long Harbour on Salt Spring Island. Each knot produced waves that melted another level of stress away from Emma. As Pam’s old 1964 Classic Volvo clambered over the ferry’s apron, Emma’s body relaxed as a child-like glee washed over her. On the first visit, they arrived after night had fallen. A ten-minute drive up SSI's Mount Maxwell brought them to an exit marked ‘No Trespassing.’ It was secured with a padlocked chain strung between two huge trees on either side of a gravel road. Pam hopped out to remove the barricade. As the car climbed the last leg of this mountain road, headlights illuminated small patches of road, trees, bush, or grass. Just beyond that, however, the world turned pitch black. It was a type of opaque darkness that Emma recalled from childhood, but one Vancouver BC could not offer. Pamela geared down the car to chug up the almost illegal grade. Just as Emma thought they would not make it, the driveway leveled out and bent around an old cottonwood tree. The headlights revealed a small blue/grey building with red trim. It was only then that Emma realized that Pam’s cabin was nestled inside an entire forest. As soon as the car stopped and the lights went out, blackness consumed everything again.
“Come,” Pam said as she grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment. “I will open the door.”
Pam walked over a narrow, wood deck that bridged a small ditch between the driveway and back door. Emma followed. They entered a large room. It was cold. Really cold. Pam lit a candle. It revealed a small wood stove with decorative, blue cast-iron embossed panels and a very long, black stack that shot up to the ceiling. Beside it was a pile of dry, chopped wood in a rack and some scrap paper.
“Brrrr, I’ll start a fire,” Pam flopped into an upholstered sitting chair and began piling crumbled newspaper in the stove.
Clutching her coat tight, Emma looked around. Just inside, there was a tiled area that wrapped around the floor of a rudimentary kitchen fashioned from an old wood table and sketchy shelving. It had a propane camp stove. Off to the side was a large, blue water jug with a spigot that held drinking water. On the wall, was an antique grandfather’s clock flanked with two old pewter candlesticks. The dining area had a round wooden table and four chairs. It sat in front of three windows that wrapped around a corner and faced not just north but to the east and, more importantly, every sunrise. In front of her was a second entrance. Two large wooden doors took up half the east-facing wall. They were clearly intended for the entrance of a much larger home, not this small 16’ x 20’ cabin.
“There. The fire’s going,” Pam announced. The door of the wood stove squealed as metal met metal while closing. “Coffee?”
“Sure,” Emma responded as she continued to look around.
A dresser and double bed covered with a blue duvet were located on the opposite end. At the foot of the bed was a brass chest and facing that was an antique buckboard carriage chair where a crocheted multi-color blanket was folded. There were two carpets covering most of the unpainted plywood floor. The largest reflected the neutral color of the burlap canvas that boasted of strange-looking animals. The second was a smaller old, circa 1910, Joshagan-type wool rug which laid in front of a dresser. The unfinished ceiling was covered with clear plastic and revealed pink rectangles of fiberglass insulation in the rafters. A pile of miscellaneous objects and tools sat in one corner.
As the kettle rattled towards a boil on the propane stove, Pamela gathered kerosene lanterns onto the table. She pulled their taps and began priming them. The smell of the kerosene oil reminded Emma of being four years old and dancing in her grandpa’s kitchen in the old ranch’s log house burrowed into the side of the coulee. As the lamps brightened the cabin, Emma could see the gyproc was patched with spackle and still awaiting its first coat of paint.
Heat started to slowly warm the cabin. That first night, they took their coffees and huddled around the stove. With each supplemental log, the fire would crackle and pop. They talked until early morning and, eventually, fell into the bed. Uncomfortable, Emma simply pulled the covers up over her clothes.
The following morning, when Pam opened the two large doors, Emma gasped. The world seemed to tumble down the mountain in front of her.
“Wow, I have arrived at the top of the world.” The words spilled out of her mouth while any residual stress, she had carried with her from the mainland, disappeared.
In the distance, the Gulf Islands were stacked one after the next between Salt Spring and the Lower Mainland. From the deck, Vancouver was a gleaming sliver along a distant shoreline. The Rocky Mountains from Squamish to Mt. Baker were laid out just beyond the docks of Lummi Bay in Washington State, USA. At her feet, a luscious green forest sprawled over the ground. All day, Emma could hear ferries blowing their horns as they navigated their way through the straits. But what took her breath away was the sky. As she sat in the double Adirondack-like bench with its pink, floral-printed cushions and its built-in table, the sky breathed open revealing the world of bald eagles, hawks, and ravens which lazily glided along looking for prey.
When Emma agreed to therapy sessions on Salt Spring, she had no idea just how much stress would be alleviated by simply arriving at the cabin and donning the matching pajamas that Pam had purchased for them. She also did not appreciated that living in a structure with no running water or electricity would mean whole days were eaten up maintaining both the cabin and land. Emma hauled, chopped, planted, piled, fixed, built, cut, and painted. As resident cook, she modified recipes to be compatible with alternative heat sources such as propane and wood stoves. At first they wrangled time for therapeutic sessions. However, she found herself struggling to willingly set aside this new sense of peace and embrace the horrendous trauma that bubbled up given the chance.
The sound of children making their trek to school forced Emma back to the present and her bedroom. She unfolded her legs out of the chair and moved to her studio. Hesitantly, she opened the cover of a new journal. After having held religiously onto this secret for many years, she grabbed a blue-stick pen and slowly wrote, “I am in a secret relationship with my therapist.” Emma inhaled sharply and then slowly put down the pen. Those nine words in this small act, in this silent moment, caused Emma to shake with fear. She forgot to breathe.
Pamela had become her compass, her guide, and only confidante. As they brushed up against issues that should have made the inappropriateness of their relationship glaringly obvious, Pam would jump in to reframe it as okay.
“Others would frown on our relationship saying it shouldn’t be done. But we are different,” Pamela would say.
Each time she concluded that they were special. Emma mostly just listened and accepted that it must be true. This thoroughly impressive, amazing feminist woman had promised to always be honest, honorable, and most of all to never hurt her. Pamela would applaud their skill at navigating the transference issues. In hindsight, Emma recognized the explicit trust she offered Pamela when instead she should have been asking for details.
‘Special.’ That word took on its own meaning complete with metaphoric, flamboyant shoes and a red hat with a feather that softly slapped Emma’s face if she ventured in too close for a second look at what that word truly meant.
Their relationship, cemented by a secret, developed deep, complicated roots that (she believed) were as positive as they were negative. Lately, more and more, Emma saw how she had also tucked, shoved, pushed, transformed, or just simply numbed everything within her until it matched Pam’s version of reality of OKness. This morning she began to see just how difficult it might be to untangle.
Emma had long known it was her responsibility to not re-enact the trauma in her childhood. This was not her first life-partnership birthed from a power imbalance. The other had been her college professor: a man of her father’s age who held her access to a good grade in the clutches of his authority. While the relationship went on long past college, it began and then ended without examining that inequity. It was a life pattern born out of her childhood filled with sexual trauma inflicted by people with authority. Her choices did not surprise her. However, as she stared at those few words penned in her new journal her relationship with Pam seemed inevitably sad. For Emma, without a shred of doubt, she had come to mean the difference between life and death, survival or destruction, and sanity or not. She depended on her. She needed Pam. While she could acknowledge the secret and see the undeniable markers of a relationship about to implode, she had no insight into the impact that power imbalance had on it or on her. It would be many years before she would understand why no therapist anywhere at any time should be sexual with a client. This would be especially true for those with a history of childhood sexual abuse. However, this morning, that clarity was obscured by the cognitive fog which had descended around her yet again.
Her fingers had picked up and were fidgeting with the blue pen. Her friend Carl had left it behind. Thoughts of him took her back to her night of sexual turmoil. Two days before, in the middle of a stairwell, Carl had complicated this life she had fashioned out of lies by planting an unexpected and unsolicited kiss on her lips.[21]
Decades ago, Carl would arrive at the office they shared by leaping two stairs at a time. He was a film director and easily one of the best in town. Emma had been fortunate to work with him on several TV commercials. They would sit over coffee and spend hours exploring character development, examining story structure, and filling the time with talk about love, life, and art. Carl held one of those special places in her heart. But then life took them in different directions until, sadly, they saw each other only occasionally. Their friendship, nonetheless, had survived the distance that time had imposed.
Carl’s kiss.
Yes, that damn kiss, she thought. What was he thinking?
What were you thinking? shot back at her. Emma ignored it.
His kiss had torn open her carefully-constructed disguise. One minute they were chatting about the new wood moldings on the staircase and the next he leaned over and parked it on her lips. It still lingered there. The touch of his fingers on her hand had now evolved into irresistible ideas and thoughts that tripped through her head. In the weeks ahead, she would be obsessed with thoughts of him. She wanted to explore with him each of the enjoyable sensations his kiss had prompted.
Pamela, in contrast, had shifted from the wonderful person Emma first new into a short-tempered, grumpy, miserable one which continued to deteriorate daily. Her generous, warm, amazing therapist was gone. For years, Emma had tolerated this behaviour but felt starved. Nonetheless, any physical interaction with Carl was beyond the limits of her principles and moral compass. She was in a committed relationship with Pamela. He was off limits.
Why was this coming up now? Emma was confused by its sudden insertion into her life. Why now?
Unlike emotional intimacy, Emma knew that sex could be physically performed with armor. In contrast, the value in sharing one’s emotional self was priceless. These days, Emma felt sadly empty. She trailed her fingers across the cover of her new journal. Depositing that secret – her secret – in it felt risky. As guilty as she felt over her desire for Carl, it didn’t come close to the betrayal she felt she had perpetrated by writing down that secret.
After a full day, darkness fell on Windsor Street. Writing those nine words in her new journal had revealed other truths. However, Emma quickly pushed them all away. Air slowly drifted into the room from the open window. The robins were no longer singing lullabies to their babies off her deck. The scorching summer sun had left her exposed skin reddened and hot to the touch. However, inside, she felt cold and empty. The clock indicated that Friday had officially given way to Saturday. Emma wanted to imagine herself as being in control and unscathed. She wanted the confusion, the questions, and the impending sense of doom that was keeping her company to go away.
It doesn’t matter, she said and then tried to convince herself by saying it again, It just doesn’t matter.
However, she knew it did. No part of her felt intact. Carl had driven a thorn into her fragile façade. The depth of that charade was deeper than she could appreciate at that moment. Serviceable denial had forsaken her. She felt used up. What had been wonderful sensual feelings just a few hours ago, that lifted her away from the deadening truth Pam represented, now were heavy and shameful. Emma wanted to cry.
The phone rang. It was Pamela. She was away working at a client’s home. Her voice held an edge of curiousity: she knew something was amiss. However, Emma knew that Pam would not enquire further. Emma would remain alone in her quandary.
Through her open window, Emma felt a breeze try to gain momentum. It was quickly consumed by the heat emanating off the hard concrete. Her body was still drenched with sweat. The memory of Carl’s kiss again stirred a whole other type of heat within her. As she thought about ending her relationship with Pamela, unmitigated terror quickly banished the numbness she had lived with for years. It propelled her out of that impenetrable cognitive fog long enough to recognize just how far into complacency she had been lulled.
_______________
Endnotes
12. hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, South End Press, Boston MA, 1989. pg 12
13. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thorn
14. https://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/u_arch/womens.pdf WRC was a feminist, community-based organization based in Vancouver involved in studying how to create change in women’s lives. They did a multitude of feminist-based research on a variety of topics concerning women. They dissolved in 2000.
15. Recollecting Our Lives: Women’s Experience of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Women’s Research Centre (Pam Sleeth & forced homeJan Barnsley) Press Gang Publishers, 1989.
16. Antioch University at Cold Mountain Institute closed in 1980 and under the direction of Jock McKeen and Bennet Wong
17. (VISACS) Vancouver Incest and Sexual Assault Centre Society, Vancouver BC eventually brought under the umbrella of Family Services of Vancouver.
18. A program in Vancouver BC that paired a social worker and police officer in a car that responded to domestic violence calls.
19. Slightly edited for brevity and to remove multiple references
20. Polymyositis is a rare inflammatory disease of unknown origin that causes muscle weakness.
21. To simplify the telling of this story, Carl is a compilation of three different people.