Women & Wellness

Women & Wellness
Kathern G. Lawrence

Tobie Martin, Kathern Lawrence, Claudette Goguen

Three of us, Deaf ladies, were much thankful and delighted  listening to the stories interpreted while several women were narrating about their personal experiences . We would love to attend social events with interpreters available, more often. Deaf individuals often feel the lack of information that is always disseminated to the public at lectures or seminars through the voice; that blocks the Deaf from the freedom to communication equality. We always need interpreters as our visual accommodations to gather information but we always face funding problems for interpreters or the shortage of interpreters and thus, we are not able to attend such social functions. However, we had the perfect opportunity to attend Canadian Mental Health Association's 9th gala event for women, hosted at Bernice MacNaughton High School on the February 4th, 2012, Saturday, to raise funds and also to promote the need for services for mental disorders, including depression, alcoholism, drug addiction. Approximately 500 women flocked to hear the stories of two women guests who experienced distresses. Wine, appetizers, and chocolates were served by high school students.

 

Storytelling took place. The first lady whom I did not catch her name talked about several people she knew committed suicide. The second part was a thought-provoking speech by Coralee Smith supported by Kim Pate, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fye Societies that advocate for women and girls in Canada's justice system. Kim explained that she investigated the case of Ashley Smith, Coralee's daughter that she committed suicide in the Kingston Penitentiary and was able to view videotapes of Ashley's past behaviour problems that can be viewed online. Coralee was angry that the prison guards watched Ashley killing herself. Ashley was temporarily on counselling therapy that she seemed happy until her psycharist was on a vacation. For 27 out of 37 months, she was placed in isolation where there were no TV, books, and computer because of her behaviour problems in the prison. She could only sleep and do mother nature in that room. Imagine yourself in her shoes. How would you feel without such essential stimulation? You would go insane for sure, and so would I.

Coralee Smith speaking; Kim Pate listening

Ashley Smith, troubled girl

A positive side of the story followed. Coralee and her husband gladly donated $20,000. to the Canadian Mental Health Association to help people with mental disorders. She narrated about Ashley having a kind heart for less fortunate people. Once, she noticed that some food was missing from the refrigerator. She asked Ashley what happened to the food, and she shrugged and shook her head. A few years later, Ashley admitted that she brought some food to the bum living under the Gunningville Bridge, and that made her feel better. Shortly after Ashley's passing, Coralee thought about the bum, and looked for his name. Finding him somewhere, she told him that Ashley was gone, and suddenly he shed tears and commented that she was very kind.

The next day I was much interested in Ashley's case so I looked up in the Internet. A lot of stories about her were up on the screen. I learned that she was adopted at the age of 5 months, and she did not cause any troubles until the age of 13 years. From then, she had always been troubled, but she never got any help at all. It appeared to be her mental illness that caused her troubles. She was placed at Youth Centre, Provincial Centre, and Federal Prison for the number of years until she died at the age of 23. I read chronicles of her incidents that showed how troubled she was. She must have cried for help, but no help from the society was brought to her. The society did not understand her, but punished her by sending her to the prisons. Poor soul!


At the end, Janice Butler marched up rhythmically to beats upon the stage. She is known as a motivational speaker with energetic inspirations like Ellen DeGeneres.  She has been travelling to give lectures on positive outlook on life. As she asked us what made us happy, she showed several slides of those moments of pleasure in her life: making an angel in snow, skyriding, traveling, painting. She explained that we did not need to end our enjoyable moments that we remembered what we did during our childhood. Contemporarily, we could replay those activities. She encouraged us to write happy notes as we retired in the evenings every day so we would always live with positive thinking.

Janice Bulter, acclaimed motivational speaker

The last part of Janice's speech was about visualization board. She described her experience of using the board. We could dream up something, but it did not have to be the exact dream, but the basic dream could happen in our lives. She loved Tuscancy, Italy, which she dreamed of going to. She posted up pieces of something relating to Tuscancy one a time: a copy of videotape "Tuscany Under the Sun", a picture of Ellen DeGeneres whom she wanted to have an interview with, and other pictures. She viewed the videotape with her sister and husband. Later on, as she was recognized for her speeches, she was invited to be on a TV in Quebec and to be interviewed by a leading French-speaking man (I don't watch the Quebec TV Program). Janice was interviewed instead of Ellen. Janice still dreamed of going to Tuscancy, and would think she would save some money to tour with her sister and husband.



One day, her sister and husband excitedly came to her saying that they could join a contest to win flight tickets to Tuscancy so they applied for it. They were assigned Symphony 104 to do something for a TV program (name of that?); they were not familiar with that symphony so they checked it out in the Internet. They found out that it was created by Franz Joseph Haydn, the composer, from the1795's. Unfamiliar, they had to listen to his music in order to decipher the beats, and they could identify each beat from Symphony 104 to today's beat. They had one week to collaborate hard on the blend of beats in their acting; On the stage, the three people came up, and the program commentator surprised them that only one would do the act. The colored spotlight flashed over from one to another person standing and wating, and flashed back around several times until the light stopped and spotted at one person. Who performed? It was Janice with her eyes closing and performing each beat while listening to every beat - a very talented actress. The group won the ticket to Tuscanny! Janet's dream came true.

She is on the list of her websites, running her own business and travelling around the world entertaining audience with her amazing stories and changing people into a new positive outlook of their lives.