Write Canada 2014: An adventure on the road to recovery from Workplace Abuse

Write Canada 2014.

I cane.  I saw.  I stayed.

I pushed my limits ... and had a whale of a time.

I reconnected with people I'd met in 2013 ... and made new friends.

I took pictures ... and gave away home made gifts to those I had connected with last year and others I met this year.

I came with business cards listing my blog ... and handed them out unashamedly.

I told people unashamedly and boldly what my platform is:  workplace abuse.

I told my fellow writers and attendees about my blog.  I was not ashamed that I'm with all these people who have written books, published books and/or are editors and article writers.

I. Am. A. Blogger.  Maybe in the future I'll expand.  But for right now I. Am. A. Blogger. on the way to recovery.

I learned that I'm not exactly a Christian writer.  I'm a Christian who writes.  There's a difference.

I picked up some really good nuggets unexpectedly - including the one above.

I came away tired both mentally and physically.  OK, OK, let's make that exhausted as my bed and I have been best buds since I got home.  But hey! it's a good tired.  A good exhaustion.  Because it means that I did something challenging on the road to recovery.  Healing occurred.

I came away with hope.

Hope that I can build this blog into something more.

I came away with the realization that I not only have a story to tell but that it's everybody's story.

My story is the story of everyone who has gone through workplace abuse.  Yes, there are differences in the specifics, but there is a common thread between my story and your story.  Or the story of the loved one you are trying to navigate this journey with.

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We are all travellers on the same journey.  We just take different side trips and have different means of getting there.

Note:  This is not the blog I intended to write today.  That posting in its infancy ended up being cut and pasted onto a new blog.  I'm sure it will see the light of day sometime ... even probably sometime soon.  But for now, I wanted to reinforce the victory of this experience.  The positive.  Forget the prose.  Forget the background.  

Experience the present.

That is what I did this past weekend at Write Canada 2014.

See you tomorrow for more of the story.

Coming Back to Life after Workplace Abuse

Most of the last several years I've preferred to remain like this - a shadow figure.  Seen but not really seen.

I feel a bit like Snow White, waking up from a very long sleep.  Actually, it's been more like coming slowly out of a coma - by minute increments.  A piece here.  Another piece there.  Connecting the dots.  Learning to live again.  To come awake - fully awake - to both the injustice and the beauty of life post-bullying.

Unlike Snow White there is no Prince Charming.  No kiss.  No dwarfs.  There is no happily ever after.  With workplace abuse, there rarely is.

There is, however, the vain, jealous queen aka co-worker peering into her looking glass inquiring who in the workplace is ... the brightest, the most competent, the most well-liked or well-established ... or whatever.  There is also a group of disenchanted townspeople or villagers aka bystanders willing to look up to, admire and follow the queen wherever she goes and believe without question whatever she says.  After all, she's the queen.  Who would think for themselves when someone else can think for them?  Isn't it easier all around that way?

For me, the awakening is about reclaiming myself from midst of the debris of my self-esteem which cloaks me like the wrappings around a mummy.  Or like an early morning fog.

Forced into silence by fear, my greatest awakening is realizing that I not only have a story to tell but a right to tell my story.  It's my story.  Uniquely mine.  Yes, it involves others who behaved in negative ways - ways that caused a lot of internal psychological and emotional damage and trauma - but that is simply a prop to propel the story of recovery on.  To make sense of the journey of recovery.

If the injury had been caused by a physical accident such as a car crash, there wouldn't be any issue in that regard.  It would be a no-brainer.  I would certainly be recognized as having a right to tell the story, to show the cast - or the bandages - or the bruises - or the stitches.  If the accident was traumatic or newsworthy enough, it would have been featured on the local news in which case there wouldn't be any questions of slander, libel or defamation of character.  But workplace abuse is different.  Because it's non-visible.  Because it operates best in a culture of silence.  Because too many people are willing to let it.

For me, the most consistent piece of the recovery process has been an attempt to move forward by focussing on my dreams to become a writer.  Lifelong dreams sidetracked years ago by the realities of life.

To start, I've taken two on-line courses:  Social Media 101 and Blogging 101.

Social Media was a fearful adventure for me.  I had to write a bio.  I had to get onto and learn how to use various forms of social media:  LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

I'd been on LinkedIn for several years, but was consumed by fear.  After all, if I could see others' profiles on LinkedIn, so could those who had caused all this damage.  What would they do if they saw my profile on LinkedIn and accessed this blog?  How would they perceive it?

I lived in fear.  I still do to a degree.

I was starting to slowly come out of the paralysis of fear when I signed up for Blogging 101 which has made me realize that the focus of my blog is on my years-long, on-going journey of recovery from complex PTSD.  Not primarily on what happened but what has been happening since then and because of it.  However, the two - the bullying and the recovery - are irrevocably intertwined since I couldn't be recovering from one without the other.

I value - and invite - your comments.  What would you like to see covered in this blog?  Would you be willing to tell me your story and have it featured on this blog?

I invite you, the reader, to join me on this journey.

Part of reclaiming my life - I can't ride a normal bike because of the affects of the psychological trauma so I had a bike shop adapt this one for my needs.  Thank you King Street Cycle, Waterloo, Ontario