Expertise

My first day of expertise. I'm beginning to find, through my studies, through my meetings of new people and observations of new situations: expertise is a frame of mind. No one person can be identified as an expert without their consent to this level of referral. An individual may be deemed an expert, but the pivotal moment of their acceptance or declining of this naming decides the longevity of their honorary value. Today, sitting in the hospital clinic room with a 7 year old girl in a hot pink sweat suit and her loving family members staring and watching my ever move... I waited. Through drawings of hearts and stories about playing computer games... I watched her small back. Eventually shifting to my view, I got a smile. I got a smile from the youngest person I would encounter all day. After hours of speaking to physicians and nurses and people who spent years writing and reading and testing themselves and testing others and publishing their work, I stepped into a room with the wisdom of a 7 year old. She brought me back to the wisdom of simplicity to the foundational roots of what makes each person in this world human. Feeling. And she reminded me of the essence of human interaction. feeling. It was the moment she smiled at me and drew me a heart on my pad of paper and told her mother she "could stay with 'the doctor' Emily" while the rest of the family went to dinner... or better yet... asked me to join the family for dinner at Hungry Howie's that I had recieved, all the validation in the world. If I could help a crying small girl with her back towards the world invite me to Hungry Howie's, I've got the ability to alter Feelings. I've got something. worth. giving. I have got. expertise.

out with the new and in with the old

A flight to Michigan brings me in around 2 a.m. I slept for some hours, bought car insurance and hit the road to Vermont. Arriving at 6 a.m. brother Brian wakes moments before my arrival. It is surreal to be back in a place of great nostalgia and old memories. some worth forgetting some new ones arriving with an old friend's hand held tight and firm. I will visit a few more friends before I am en route back to Michigan for school. Mentally preparing to sit and read and sit and read and write and read. Trying to filter what becomes stagnant in my mind.... A kind transference of warmth from my work in Toronto. This is what I would like to keep in memory for everyday wholeness. My fingers are eager eager and aching to move across ivory keys and build upon the song I wrote for sister Geechie-Bum and my heart aches to connect with a new child a new friend. It is wild the comfort that a stranger, a moment alone does for a feeling a safety. An enigma to me and ever so true. The wonder in what can be new, what is yet to be found. "We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion and now we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble" Khalil Gibran.

warm and fresh

A trip west with new found friends that we met on the road, at their gigs. An upright bass player and Spanish/English/Portugease singing phenomenal woman. Ana B and the Heartbone(s), Bronwyn my friend friend Toronto and I became quite the family. swimming and canoeing around Emerald Lake, Lake Louise, breathtaking scenery.... we finally all made it to Vancouver, after the band van breaks down, kind strangers to help, we arrived to meet my highschool pal Ali and found a new family-German and French and had days of silly silly. In the moments where language can be a barrier... we can all find ways to connect. it's powerful. Today we road bikes around the park peninsula that is Stanley Park, ate fresh, wild, warm blackberries, crawled inside tree trucks... besides the sun burning me as I fell alseep today and the popped bike tire.... these past 2 weeks, this trip, has been glorious.

ROcky mountain

in alberta. banff. running into the same faces. over and over. and climbing new mountains and finding new envisions of what a day could be. torquoise waters and snowy tops of peaks and peaks of delight and happiness. good to be out of the city, the hustle and bustle and movement. to gentle conversations and rolling around in grass with dancing drums and blissful people and the freedom of the road that nothing compares.

love to all of my specials out there. i think of you in folds of rocky canadian mountains and caves of memories.

Lemurs Leaping

Yesterday I sat in the "Hollywood Theatre" of the hospital with patients, families and staff waiting for connection with the international spacestation. It was an exciting event organized by the hospital and a European radio program. We spoke to a Canadian astronaut and one by one all eight children were able to ask questions which were answered with sincerity and humor. One event of many at this hospital which makes children struggling with great health challanges, excited for the day. Next week I will attend the hospital theatre production of "Tails" a play that was written by a physician here many years ago. It will be the goodbye evening to my Syrian family. In our last conversation, via interpretor, the father told me that he is forever thankful for my help and that they will miss me. I feel great sadness for these goodbyes. These connections that will be "terminated"; a term used by social workers that I despise and dread. Goodbye letters and closing of cases, I worry about all this unfinished business but my African friends help me to not worry and my Buddhist friends help me find peace and my supervisor tells me that this sadness is symbolic of the great work I have done and the meaning of my relationships with my clients. And it is good. I finished my interviews today with staff urologists, genetics, endocrinology, child life, nurse practitioners about medical photography for our patients in urology who are born with ambiguous genitalia or other conditions that may be stigmatizing. I feel enlightened by different contradictory perspectives that have allowed me to have unbiased and well rounded ideas about this subject.... something that since Amsterdam in 2006 I have been investigating in my own mind. For possible research in the future, these interviews are fundamental to my career and I think the colleagues I've had here will be also- willing to help me and support me. I'm leaping (as a lemur) forward, accepting the movement, constant and irreversable, this is what sustains us, propelling ourselves from branch to branch to find a different view, a NEW view.

a trickle of wind, a pour of rain

And it hit me today that this fabulous experience, in Toronto is coming to a close. In just 2.5 weeks I will be saying goodbye and packing my things. I have never been so upset by an ending. Usually the last days of any experience, any home that dissipates, any change such as this creates an overwhelming sense of satisfaction in my heart and body. But perhaps it was the anticipation and the accomplishment- of reaching this goal, providing myself this experience that I wanted more than anything.... My liaison from Michigan told me recently that when I told her I was going to study in Toronto through the school of social work and design a placement for myself that had never been done by a student at UMICH she doubted me. But now she says, she thinks I can do anything and obtain anything if I want it enough. And I did want this enough and I still do. A feeling of satisfaction that does not dissipate or fade. The children and families that I must now say goodbye to have filled my heart with such passion and love for the goodness of people- it troubles me to think of goodbyes. But the first of many today as the Nigerian family boards the plane tomorrow leaving the family they created while here in the bounty of hope and prosperity. They fear the bleakness of the following days. This city energizes your muscles and strengthens your bones and I know this, will stay with me.
On August 12th I will fly to Kalowna, British Columbia with my friend from Toronto and travel to Nelson, a small town in the desert, a spirited town the Dalia Llama believes is now the center of the earth, and then travel to the Canadian Rockies to camp and hike and blissfully be. I will more than likely then head more west to Vancouver and Victoria to scope out the home-ability of the cities before I head back to the east- hopefully for a visit to Montreal and Vermont before school starts September 8th.
To all the time that passes and all the time that comes, the time that is now
is all that we have.

fully belly and a place to lay your head

Every day a new face- a new knowledge- a new understanding of life outside myself-my world- a new understanding of life inside myself-all there is to learn and know- and grow-
My supervisor told me today that her co-worker encouraged her to hire me after I graduate. She continued to say that she thinks "they" need you in the States and that she's training me to join a specialized team at a teaching hospital in the US. My response of course....but I don't want to leave! My list of reasons......long and long. I have been extremely busy as of late; I'm organizing a support group for teen girls born with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) and I've been attending Gender Identity clinic assessments with a team of psychologists at one of the local hospitals. But most of my time has been spent with a refugee family from Syria, a 5 year old boy and his father. They came here 4 months ago after the father was unlawfully detained by the Syrian government for one month- unable to communicate with his family and speak to them about his whereabouts- or the fact that he was still alive. He has eyes of sorrow and trauma and my heart is even more saddened by the fact that many people I work with across organizations and disciplines do not believe his story.And weren't finding an interpretor, weren't attempting to understand! His fight for his son, after 2 horrific surgeries before the boy was 4 (he was born with epispadias) that indeed made his situation worse and when the father spoke up for him a connection between surgeon and government official= prison time without justification. And so they fled for their lives from Damascus, their home... to Canada.... for a better life.... as my anscestors generations and generations ago did to place me where I am today- with English as my first language, the privilages and advantages equivelant to the most fortunate of lives. I explained to him my last name- El Haddad---he points to the metal frame around the window and a huge smile crosses his face- we are all connected. It's the little things that I have learned that bear the largest weight on my heart. Their last name and first names written differently on all documents as English speakers botch it and write it without care- and I tried to explain to the father- this will be your name here.... to pass on and on.... how do you want your Canadian-Syrian name to spell? I think after days and days of traveling and searching... having a third member of the group who spoke English and had a "Social Worker" title, I saw the father and his son feel ease. It was hard to leave the young boy; away from his mother, with his large sweet eyes we have a special relationship at this time- with but few words to speak between us "Hello, how are you?" he laughs and smiles- we understand- and walk together and sit together and when I said goodbye to them yesterday.... they laughed and giggled towards the park where they could finally rest. full belly and a bed to lay when the sun goes down. And I can say now- I know suffering from these people who teach me about life- and I know joy.
On a completely different note:
Today was the first day of a city worker strike that includes garbage collectors, daycare workers, summer day camp counselors, ferry lines attendents, public gardens maintenance workers, etc.About 30,000 municiple workers are picketing for a slew of issues but most attention has been placed on the local goverments reduction of benefits that a retiree would recieve in regards to payment for sickdays that haven't been used. Apparently a stike in 2002 left the city at a stand still for about 16 days.... as the police force and firefighters do not have the right to strike they've taken to the streets with a different approach.....I saw 5 or 6 bicyclers pulled over today for petty traffic violations.....in a measly 25 minute bikeride.