Episode 16: It All Threads Through - Sally Chivers
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Episode 16: It All Threads Through
In This Episode:
We say on Wrinkle Radio that the stories we tell about aging matter. But what does that really mean? How do stories connect the grit and the joy of a long life?
Featuring Deborah Young (Instructor, School of Social Work, Carleton University) talking with host Sally Chivers about:
Beading as activism, art, and community building
Storytelling as meaningful connection
Wrinkles in the fabric of life
Residential school survivors across generations
Laughter and home
Show Notes
Expand
Learn more about the Walking with Our Sisters vamp project
Learn more about Deborah Young’s call for vamps honouring the 215 children buried at residential school in Kamloops, BC.
Read more about Deborah Young Being Cree
Transcript
Speaker 1 00:01
You’re listening to the amplify Podcast Network.
Deborah Young 00:14
Oh, my God, that was just this week. I was sitting on my couch. I’m really into sort of crafting these days, I’m crocheting and I’m beading, and I saw this long piece of, like, long white thread, what I thought was some fishing line, because that’s what I used to bead. And it was the same texture, and it was sort of tough and wiry. So I actually managed to thread it. And then I realized it was my hair [laughter]. This big long… Because, you know, my hair is long now. I used to have a, really a pixie cut, but now my hair is very long, and it’s like, I have so much gray hair, and it’s completely in a different texture than your regular brown hair. It’s sort of it’s really thick and wiry and tough. [laughter] Watching my hair come in gray. I love it, but it’s also really strange for me to witness the physical changes that’s happening to me as I age.
Sally Chivers 01:28
Welcome to Wrinkle Radio. I am so glad you’re back. I’m your host, Dr Sally Chivers, joined this episode by Deborah Young. She is going to show you how and why the stories we tell about aging matter. That opening story where she threads her hair instead of the wire and we laugh so hard is a beautiful example. In this episode, we’re going to show a lot of other threads that run through.
Sally Chivers 02:03
Have you beaded for a very long time?
Deborah Young 02:06
No, and I’m really not great at it, but I have been involved in activism and beading for a long time. You talk about women who influence your lives. I got to see the artist Christy Belcourt speak at the University of Manitoba. I was just so moved by her authenticity and her voice and her passion and love for our people and community. And she started talking about this project that she was working on for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, the vamp project. I wanted to be involved somehow on that. never picked up a needle, never picked up any beads. Didn’t even know what a vamp is, which is on top of the moccasin, the lip of the moccasin. But I knew I wanted to contribute. So I organized number of beading circles, and that’s when I first started to bead, and I’ve been involved with a number of beading circles since then, including a project that I did for the School of Social Work to commemorate the children who never came home from Indian residential schools. And even then, I beaded, but I’m not a great beader. Like I enjoy beading. It’s very relaxing. But, you know, my beads are bumpy and they’re uneven, and I’m not a very good artist, so I have to get people to draw images for me so I could bead on the image. I’m just not very artistically inclined. But it doesn’t matter if you are or not. What matters is that you enjoy doing it, right? and I enjoy going and sitting and drinking tea and coffee with usually other women beading there’s a unity in that when you sit in a circle
Sally Chivers 03:55
that’s Deborah Young. There are so many ways to introduce her. She’s a proud Cree woman. She’s worked for the federal government. She’s worked for political parties, she’s worked for the University of Manitoba. She is now a PhD student in the Social Work program at Carleton, where she’s also an instructor.
Deborah Young 04:14
And I actually do beading assignments in my lectures now too. I’ve incorporated that into my coursework. I do a lecture for an hour and a bit, and then we break and then we go into circle, and we read and we talk, and we get to know each other. So it becomes a very sociable endeavor of the class. And you get to know your neighbors, right? And you help, because usually, most of the people that come into the circle don’t know how to bead at all, and so they’re helping each other, and I’m helping them the best I can, because, you know, I could get them started, but as I had just mentioned, I’m not very skilled at beading, but it’s amazing what happens in the six weeks and then they get graded on the actual product. But, you know, usually it’s never below, like 100% because it has to do with the actual physicality of holding the beads and doing it. It has very little to do if it looks not great, right? But we go into a circle again at the end of the process, and they have to share what the experience taught them, and if they want, they could share about what they actually beaded. The story behind the beads, and then they write about it. It’s been really powerful doing it. I don’t know. Beating is magical. It really is.
Sally Chivers 05:40
I had a student start to bring in her beading to one of my classes, and it changed the dynamic so beautifully because it meant other students felt comfortable bringing in their fidget spinners or getting up to take a break if they need to. Like it just opened up the space in these beautiful ways.
Deborah Young 05:57
it does. Sitting with my students, and listening to them tell their stories about the beads and what they’ve learned from it. I found very impactful in a very emotional way, because they realize the beads represent more than just the glass beads itself, it represented life. About three out of 10 students would actually make the effort to call home and inquire about their family and the history of their family, and this is how the beads spoke to them. And that’s impactful, and it’s even more impactful that they were able to have the courage to share that in the classroom with their peers and with me as well, and for me, that is so fundamental to growth and self awareness, which are aspects that we often talk about in social work. But are we good at getting people to talk authentic, authenticity. Authen. No how do I. I’m using that word incorrectly. Are we getting
Sally Chivers 07:09
I think you’re saying, Authentically.
Deborah Young 07:10
authentically, that’s it. Are we getting the students to do that in their other assignments? I don’t know. So from that aspect, I’m learning. I’m learning from the students, and it makes me feel grateful that I was able to create an environment where sharing could be shared in that way. From a family perspective, I was taught by no one in my family. No one in my family knows how to be so I was taught by the community and the people that I sat with and that I was really grateful with.
Sally Chivers 07:48
Listening to Deborah talk made me realize what makes me itchy about intergenerationality. It’s become such a buzz word lately, I absolutely agree there’s great potential in intergenerational programming, but too often it happens that people decide to put younger people with older people and expect a sort of magic to come from that. Too often, they miss the circle that Deborah is talking about here
Deborah Young 08:20
this last project that I worked on for the School of Social Work, the journey of the baby vamps. That was a really phenomenal project that people from all over North America, including a woman, a fellow social worker in England, sent me little, tiny baby Vamp. I was expecting, the beaded vamp, and that was it. But what I got from the majority of the Vamps are stories of what that Vamp meant to them, and they were detailed stories of love, of trauma, of hope, of recognition, of guilt, of reconciliation. It was all of those themes coming in in written form, handwritten notes from all over North America, from women and men telling me their stories. And then I got sick, so like I’ve been wanting to do more work with the Vamps. More storytelling. I was hoping to get a research grant so I could actually make: it’s three big images of 351 vamps going down a pathway. And I wanted to do it virtual, a virtual teaching tool, so I could get people to tell their stories and then tell what the vamp meant to them, because I have that big stack of stories that I was originally going to burn in a fire, but the stories were so beautiful I just couldn’t. They don’t belong to me. Maybe they do belong in the fire and being turned to ash and smoke. But right now I’m keeping them safe, wrapped in cloth and with our medicines with the hope to do something with them. To educate people with those stories. And that’s the power of storytelling, right? It’s sharing and informing and loving,
Sally Chivers 10:23
there’s a very important lesson for me in what you were just saying, because story can, within academic circles, within Dementia Care, become almost a commodity, right? I’m overstating it. Grandma has dementia. We better get her stories, because they help us know who we are. [Deborah: Yeah], I hadn’t thought of it that way, as the story in that kind of configuration is like, it’s a connection between two people, and it’s a piece that gets owned, rather than a work of art that needs to be treasured.
Sally Chivers 11:07
When I started this podcast, I was unwell myself and listening to a lot of podcasts because I couldn’t type, couldn’t read, had to walk a lot, and I noticed a kind of structure within podcasts that I liked, that often were people very privileged, like myself, thinking their life was going a certain way, and then, oh my god, it’s not, you know, something happens, a big rupture. Obviously, the wrinkle in wrinkle radio is a playful way of referring to aging, but it also to me, is that moment that happens in our life, right? These rumples and wrinkles. We do a lot of justice to ourselves if we don’t smooth those out, right? If we learn from them, and we look back at the cloth of our life and we’re like, Wow, it’s really wrinkled. [Deborah: Yeah], I’m curious whether that sparks any ideas for you.
Deborah Young 12:01
Oh it totally does. Like wrinkles, the wrinkle in life, the wrinkles in our face and our chest, you know, as we age, our stomach, our thighs, like, that’s life, right? I’ve had some pretty deep crevices. There was a couple of moments in my life that were life defining. You know, of course, two of them would be when I became a mom with my two kids. I think the biggest wrinkle that happened for me was when my mom died. That was very, very hard for me. Grief. I’ve never experienced anything like that, and I was totally unprepared for the darkness, the veil that came over me for a very long time, and I had a nervous breakdown. I totally had a full nervous breakdown about six months after my mom died. And it was really weird, because it was in May, and it one minute I was there, and the next minute it felt like a steel door just shut down on me, and I was in complete darkness, and I was like that for probably two weeks, like a it’s a good thing my husband was … my husband is such a good man. He’s looked after us all his life. Gave up his career to take care of us. So he was at home when the steel door went shut, and he looked after me like I was in I was almost catatonic for that time. I’m sure our I was almost put into the hospital. Let’s just put it that way, because that’s how far gone I had been. But when I started to come out of that stupor, when the door opened a bit. I realized then that I had to change my life. That’s what brought me into my second career as an educator and working at Carleton, that’s how I got to meet you. In fact, was that I was a PhD student, and I thought this was the life I wanted to do. That was my calling. That was my second calling, I thought. And then I got diagnosed with that brain tumor, and my life changed again, that that was the second wrinkle that happened, big, big wrinkle, and I’m still recovering from that. Everything shifted after when I woke up from getting that surgery, and it’s just been two years. I’ve just went past my two years a few days ago, I’m completely deaf in one ear from the surgery, I still suffer from tiredness and tinnitus and fatigue and brain fog, and I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover from that, and I’m still working. Working on my PhD, and still trying to, well, I’m on leave now because the doctor, I went back and it was too soon for me, so I’m back on leave. I don’t know. I’m just tired. So those are the things that happen. And like, I’m just thinking, Can I do this? Like I’m, I’m, I’m scared about it. I’m scared that I won’t be able to finish what I’ve started and what I thought I’d love. So it’s all of that sort of physicality and emotional stuff, but it’s also looking at the university and trying to find my grounding and my voice in there and just feeling totally beaten up in the process, as well people listening to the podcast applying. What is this woman talking about that we didn’t mention, the fact that I’m Cree, so I’m a First Nation woman trying to find my way in a very white institution. I really don’t know what that means. I’m struggling with that, and I’m older, so I feel like I have a whole bunch of things stacked up against me. So I think there’s a bit of, probably sexism, ageism, racism happening.
Sally Chivers 16:17
What comes up for me, hearing you say that, is a memory of something you told me when we first met about I guess it was your first career, but maybe it was one of many, working for the government, and it was a moment I’ve gone back to many, many times. You know, you never know the effect you have on people sitting in a courtyard where only a few of us showed up for dinner, and you know, it’s like everyone wants to be there. We were talking about political parties, and you talked about having been treated with respect by the, I don’t know what they were calling themselves at the time, but the Progressive Conservatives, there was this sort of divide that I was maybe assuming in the conversation, or maybe it was someone else, and you said something really important in that moment, which wasn’t a redeeming of the politics of a group of people that you may or may not agree with, but it was a reminder that those are people around the table, and that how they interact with you directly can be different, right? There can be this performance of liberal politics, frankly, that isn’t always liberating. And that came up for me because you were just talking about the academy as this white, oppressive institution, gendered, underfunded, increasingly neoliberal. I’m adding those parts, but you had worked in government, including for conservative government. And so that’s a contrast.
Deborah Young 17:45
It is. It totally it is. And you know what? It’s interesting you raised that. I completely forgot about that conversation until you mentioned it. It sparked the brain cell, that one living brain cell tucked way back there. I had such amazing experiences when I was working as a public servant in the federal government, I got to see both sides of how government works, one on the public service side, and then, of course, when I was asked by the late Jim Prentice to come into his office to work with his team. And I’ve never voted conservative, probably never will. Well, not I know I never will. It’s just not how I am. But I did work with two conservative ministers, Jim Prentice and Chuck Strahl, both who have passed. They treated me with such kindness and respect. And you know, you really get to know people when you travel with them, and I traveled extensively from coast to coast to both of these men, and it was, I don’t know, it was just it was a good experience. I never felt morally compromised or ethically compromised when I was with them. I always challenged them, and they always took it well. They listened and then disagreed with me often, but it was always done respectfully, like I will never say anything bad about either one of those conservative ministers. I mean, I could say a lot of bad things about the Conservative Party, but not about those two men. They treated me well, which is kind of weird because, you know, I’ve had the pleasure and honor to sit at many different leadership tables, one of them at a very large university where I was working at the time, that experience at times, wasn’t nearly collegial at all, and I’ve never been able to quite figure out why that is, but it was a good experience working for a party that you politically don’t support. I mean, not a lot of people could do it, but it really teaches you how to engage and listen in a deeper way. It really challenges you, so that’s how I walked away from that experience.
Sally Chivers 20:01
if I’m getting it and hearing you, there was more room for your stories there than you’re finding there is in parts of the academic world.
Deborah Young 20:13
Yeah, it’s very much so, very much so. And the thing is, like, you know, it’s, I’ve always been a late bloomer. I always, I’ve always done things later than, I guess, whatever, whoever else who I don’t know, who I’m comparing myself to. But even with writing, I never really thought of myself as a writer. But I do like telling stories like that’s one thing I enjoy doing, and that’s what I enjoy doing on Facebook, I often write stories, and that’s what I did when my mom died. I used Facebook as my Open Journal, and I wrote what I was going through. I just felt compelled to write at that point, and then people were really responding to my written words, like I was resonating with, usually women, but a lot of men, too. I found that comforting in a way. Of course, writing with emotionality is not how we’re taught academically, I want to change that. I think we could write with emotion and use stories and view that as real, authentic scholarship and research those voices, orally or artistically or written, deserve to be part of the academy. They deserve to have a rightful place there. I think it’s changing. There’s so many Trailblazers that came before me who have laid that foundation for me at walk on and I’m so grateful for it, but I still see resistance from the Academy, and it’s disheartening sometimes.
Sally Chivers 22:08
I think sometimes that pressure can come from people being protective. I’m not defending them. I’m just saying it can be a protection of your future career. You know, like thinking that you need to be able to jump through certain hoops so that you can take a particular path, and if we undo that path, then that can help to open things up.
Deborah Young 22:31
Well that’s true. for the longest time. I thought it was 58 but I’m pointing back. I’m 57
Sally Chivers 22:35
I do that all the time too. I was talking to my student. I’m like, I’m 53 I’m 53 and then I’m like, actually, I’m 52 started rounding up rather than rounding down in my 20s, when I was in my third and now I’m like, always adding another year, right? Like,
Deborah Young 22:54
[Deep laugh] well, that it I was like, and my friend Jill, she just said, We’re the same age or not 58, I was like, I’m sure I am. But when I took the leap into academics, I was 50, I had a plan, a plan of action. I thought for sure I’d be able to get my PhD done. I thought I would give myself five years. Of course, it’s taking longer than that because of the health issues, but I thought this would be the time to take the leap. I love working. I see my dad is in his 80s, well into his 80s, and he is still being a lawyer and activism, like he’s just out there doing what he loves to do. I see my elder going out and working, and she’s in her 80s as well. I actually met up with one of my mentors just recently. And she is 89 I think, and she just retired, like, from UBC, like, it’s just crazy. And I just thought, I want to be like that. I want to work until I can no longer work. This is what I wanted to do. So I figured if I could at least get maybe 20 years in, I would be happy, right that. But then, of course, I never thought about health wise like that was … In my mind that I was going to be healthy completely for those 20 years, it never occurred to me that I might get sick, and that’s hard. It’s hard when you’re sick, when you’re not functioning at full capacity. And then again, I don’t know if that’s a brain thing, or if it’s an aging thing, I don’t know
Sally Chivers 24:44
The way you described it earlier. It sounded to me like, I mean, obviously it was a brain tumor. It was recovery. It was not recovery. It was all of those things together, but the description of it was similar to those things that we do need to accept, over time, right? That we don’t bend the way we used to, or run for health. We walk instead. I’m using some cliched examples, but yeah, it’s too much pressure to say so you get to learn about aging from that, because that’s actually kind of irritating. Maybe you didn’t want to learn about aging in this terrifying, rupturing moment, right? You just wanted to ease into it, but maybe you learned some skills that in your 20 year career that starts again. You know your next career, you learn to live within those limits.
Sally Chivers 25:45
I am curious if there are stories of aging from your family network that you’ve learned from
Deborah Young 25:53
well, not so much aging. It’s not the aging, it’s how we treat our old people, which is, I guess, aging right. But I was always sort of, I don’t even taught, but was never taught. It just is right? The environment that I was raised in that we always treat our old people with respect. We always make sure that they have a seat. We listen to their stories, at funerals, we gather and we honor our loved ones, laughter, crying, with food, with fire. It’s just showing respect, and it’s just part of our community. It’s who we are, right? It’s just loving and honoring our old people. You know, I’m not old, but I’m not young, right? But I know when I’m with my aunties and my elders and people who are physically old, it’s my job to make sure that they are fed, that you keep on asking them if they need some water or tea. It’s just caring for them. That’s what we do, and that’s what I was taught. So it’s not so much about… In fact, I’m really I try to think about, do we talk about aging? It’s just getting old. That’s what we call it, getting old. And you care, you care for our old people, and I, I love that. I love sitting with our old people. I love the humor that our old people have. I remember, even as a little girl, I don’t speak Cree, and that was one thing that residential schools has taken for me was my language, because my dad speaks Cree. He must have decided at some point not to pass it down to me. Well, in fact, he did. Like I asked him one time. I said, you know, why didn’t you teach me Cree? Because language is so fundamental of who we are as a people. And he just looked at me, and I think I was 10 at the time, and he said, Well, I didn’t teach you because I never thought you would ever need it. Like that’s really sad, like to have your whole identity and language sort of tossed aside because he didn’t think it was worthy enough to be passed down like that’s it’s awful, and it’s not his fault. It’s the system in which he was raised. I can’t remember what I was going I went down a different path. I can’t remember what. [laughes]
Sally Chivers 28:40
Yeah, I can remind you what you were talking about, but I just found it interesting in that part that so it didn’t seem like it was fear that he’d been punished for speaking Cree. It was just that’s not what is going to help my daughter learning Cree?
Deborah Young 28:52
No, it was that, but it was also he was punished because he was in residential school since he was at age five. He was, yes, very physically abused as a child, as was my mom. So it was, you know, the whole I’m the passenger of that train. I have no, I have no control over that part of my life being an intergenerational survivor of Indian residential schools, and it’s been a journey for me to reconcile part of that history of my family and how it’s impacted me, and my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my husband and my kids, because it all threads through. That trauma threads through my life. It’s hard to reconcile some of that stuff. I’m … I’m happy that I’ve done the work to help me braid some of that sort of stuff. But it hasn’t been easy, for sure, it’s been really difficult.
Sally Chivers 30:11
I imagine it changes what getting old means for your parents, for your aunties, and the circles your elders and the circles you were talking about,
Deborah Young 30:23
oh, that’s what I was talking about. The humor! When I go back home, it’s … it fills me with such hope and love and laughter, like even with all the shitty things that have happened to my community and to my family, we could still sit and tell stories and laugh and laugh so hard that tears come down our faces because we’re laughing so hard. That’s one thing I miss living in Ottawa, because I don’t have that here. I mean, I have my husband that I love him very much, and we have good laughs too. When I’m back home with my community, I’m just, I don’t have to I just am. And here I’m a Cree woman. Back home. I’m just, well, they always refer to me Debbie, back home in Manitoba here, I’m Deborah. It’s like I have two different identities happening, right? But going back home is complicated too. So that’s it’s that’s also hard.
Sally Chivers 31:31
Do you want to say more about that?
Deborah Young 31:32
[laughs heartily] It’s just complicated, you know? It after my mom died, it was really hard for me to go back. And then my Aunt Shirley died, who I was very close to, and my aunt Norma, who just passed in a few weeks ago, who was my teacher and my educator. I loved her so much. And watching people I love die, and I know it’s part of our journey, like when you’re born, you’re going to die. It’s just the way it is. That’s how life is. How can I explain this? I guess this is part of getting old. Aging is … the people that you love, they will eventually move on, and you’re sort of left standing. I think, for me, when I’m struggle with what I’ve been really reflecting upon is all of my aunties and uncles, as they age and die, that foundation. They were the ones that kept my cousins and I together. I’m an only child, but I have 60, 80 first cousins. That’s who I grew up with. That was … our parents that kept us together for family gatherings, and they were the foundation. They were the glue, as much as the trauma that they suffered at Indian residential schools, they still saw the importance of family and keeping us together. I like to say they’re now moving to the stars. Who will keep us together? I don’t know.,
Sally Chivers 33:17
Yeah. I mean, can you tell me more about the choice to leave?
Deborah Young 33:23
my so, you know, that’s kind of funny. [big laugh] What brought me to Ottawa was a job in the public service. It was only supposed to be for two years. I packed up my family. My daughter was only, she was maybe, I think, 14 months old, but she was very small when we moved here. Two years turned into four years, and then we moved back and forth, I think, five different times, because I was always called back home. The calling was inside of me. I was like, Oh, I have to go home. And then I would go home, and I’d kind of go, Oh, but I can’t stand it here. I’m going to go back to Ottawa. So I would go back and forth. And I did go back. And I worked at the University of Manitoba for six years, and then I came back again. And then my mom got sick, and then she died, and then we just sort of stayed here. Then I really started sort of focusing on what I need to do for myself. That’s when I went and got accepted in the PhD program, and then got a job at Carleton and School of Social Work, and I’m feeling pretty settled here, and I finally made the decision, well, this is where I’m going to stay. My aunties, who I love, and my mom are gone. My dad is living his life. And you want to talk about another wrinkle, probably the best wrinkle was when my son announced that he and his wife were expecting a baby. And they don’t live far from us. They’re in the same community in Ottawa. The baby’s here now. I’m a Granny, like I’m connected now. The root has now been firmly established here. The only way that I would leave again is if my son and his wife and their son moved back to Winnipeg, then I might be tempted to follow them. But right now, I complain about the university, but I’m enjoying it, like I enjoy being with the students. I do enjoy writing, but it’s the PhD, and trying to get things published is just like, really hard. But that little, that little baby, when you look at him, it’s just like, Oh, my God, like that little, tiny, seven pound bundle, is life. Like that … that is life that has been DNA, passed down like he has ancestors back in my ancestral homelands, like, That’s wild. It’s everything, everything. It’s like having all the star dust come together and then you’re presented with this beautiful thing. My friend asked me, you know, do you feel different now that you’re a granny? And I said, No. She goes, No, no. I thought, Oh, my God, I’m a bad person. But I thought, I don’t feel different because it just is, this is what I am now. I’m full of love and gratitude, and I’m hope that this little one will love me the way I love him, but do I feel different? I just feel like me, but better, maybe.
Sally Chivers 36:58
So I think that’s the answer to your question of, who will hold things together now, like you just gave this beautiful story answer of it needs to be in this new place, because that’s where he is.
Sally Chivers 37:21
That is the magic of Deborah Young. She made me feel so comfortable before we started our interview by asking about myself that I tried something a little different. I didn’t want to point it out at the beginning of the episode, but I included more of what I said in our original conversation than I usually do. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoyed learning from Deborah all the things that thread through a life, both the grit and the joy.
Sally Chivers 37:58
This has been Wrinkle Radio. I’m your host. Dr Sally Chivers, thank you for listening. Please tell your friends, tell your grandchildren, tell your circles, tell your government, and remember, don’t panic. It’s just aging
Music 38:18
I wanna grow older.. I wanna grow wiser. I wanna grow flowers in a house that’s made of you. Sitting in the sunset get some wrinkles on my forehead, I wanna build fires in a house that’s made of you.
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Episode 16: It All Threads Through
In This Episode:
We say on Wrinkle Radio that the stories we tell about aging matter. But what does that really mean? How do stories connect the grit and the joy of a long life?
Featuring Deborah Young (Instructor, School of Social Work, Carleton University) talking with host Sally Chivers about:
Beading as activism, art, and community building
Storytelling as meaningful connection
Wrinkles in the fabric of life
Residential school survivors across generations
Laughter and home
Show Notes
Expand
Learn more about the Walking with Our Sisters vamp project
Learn more about Deborah Young’s call for vamps honouring the 215 children buried at residential school in Kamloops, BC.
Read more about Deborah Young Being Cree
Transcript
Speaker 1 00:01
You’re listening to the amplify Podcast Network.
Deborah Young 00:14
Oh, my God, that was just this week. I was sitting on my couch. I’m really into sort of crafting these days, I’m crocheting and I’m beading, and I saw this long piece of, like, long white thread, what I thought was some fishing line, because that’s what I used to bead. And it was the same texture, and it was sort of tough and wiry. So I actually managed to thread it. And then I realized it was my hair [laughter]. This big long… Because, you know, my hair is long now. I used to have a, really a pixie cut, but now my hair is very long, and it’s like, I have so much gray hair, and it’s completely in a different texture than your regular brown hair. It’s sort of it’s really thick and wiry and tough. [laughter] Watching my hair come in gray. I love it, but it’s also really strange for me to witness the physical changes that’s happening to me as I age.
Sally Chivers 01:28
Welcome to Wrinkle Radio. I am so glad you’re back. I’m your host, Dr Sally Chivers, joined this episode by Deborah Young. She is going to show you how and why the stories we tell about aging matter. That opening story where she threads her hair instead of the wire and we laugh so hard is a beautiful example. In this episode, we’re going to show a lot of other threads that run through.
Sally Chivers 02:03
Have you beaded for a very long time?
Deborah Young 02:06
No, and I’m really not great at it, but I have been involved in activism and beading for a long time. You talk about women who influence your lives. I got to see the artist Christy Belcourt speak at the University of Manitoba. I was just so moved by her authenticity and her voice and her passion and love for our people and community. And she started talking about this project that she was working on for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, the vamp project. I wanted to be involved somehow on that. never picked up a needle, never picked up any beads. Didn’t even know what a vamp is, which is on top of the moccasin, the lip of the moccasin. But I knew I wanted to contribute. So I organized number of beading circles, and that’s when I first started to bead, and I’ve been involved with a number of beading circles since then, including a project that I did for the School of Social Work to commemorate the children who never came home from Indian residential schools. And even then, I beaded, but I’m not a great beader. Like I enjoy beading. It’s very relaxing. But, you know, my beads are bumpy and they’re uneven, and I’m not a very good artist, so I have to get people to draw images for me so I could bead on the image. I’m just not very artistically inclined. But it doesn’t matter if you are or not. What matters is that you enjoy doing it, right? and I enjoy going and sitting and drinking tea and coffee with usually other women beading there’s a unity in that when you sit in a circle
Sally Chivers 03:55
that’s Deborah Young. There are so many ways to introduce her. She’s a proud Cree woman. She’s worked for the federal government. She’s worked for political parties, she’s worked for the University of Manitoba. She is now a PhD student in the Social Work program at Carleton, where she’s also an instructor.
Deborah Young 04:14
And I actually do beading assignments in my lectures now too. I’ve incorporated that into my coursework. I do a lecture for an hour and a bit, and then we break and then we go into circle, and we read and we talk, and we get to know each other. So it becomes a very sociable endeavor of the class. And you get to know your neighbors, right? And you help, because usually, most of the people that come into the circle don’t know how to bead at all, and so they’re helping each other, and I’m helping them the best I can, because, you know, I could get them started, but as I had just mentioned, I’m not very skilled at beading, but it’s amazing what happens in the six weeks and then they get graded on the actual product. But, you know, usually it’s never below, like 100% because it has to do with the actual physicality of holding the beads and doing it. It has very little to do if it looks not great, right? But we go into a circle again at the end of the process, and they have to share what the experience taught them, and if they want, they could share about what they actually beaded. The story behind the beads, and then they write about it. It’s been really powerful doing it. I don’t know. Beating is magical. It really is.
Sally Chivers 05:40
I had a student start to bring in her beading to one of my classes, and it changed the dynamic so beautifully because it meant other students felt comfortable bringing in their fidget spinners or getting up to take a break if they need to. Like it just opened up the space in these beautiful ways.
Deborah Young 05:57
it does. Sitting with my students, and listening to them tell their stories about the beads and what they’ve learned from it. I found very impactful in a very emotional way, because they realize the beads represent more than just the glass beads itself, it represented life. About three out of 10 students would actually make the effort to call home and inquire about their family and the history of their family, and this is how the beads spoke to them. And that’s impactful, and it’s even more impactful that they were able to have the courage to share that in the classroom with their peers and with me as well, and for me, that is so fundamental to growth and self awareness, which are aspects that we often talk about in social work. But are we good at getting people to talk authentic, authenticity. Authen. No how do I. I’m using that word incorrectly. Are we getting
Sally Chivers 07:09
I think you’re saying, Authentically.
Deborah Young 07:10
authentically, that’s it. Are we getting the students to do that in their other assignments? I don’t know. So from that aspect, I’m learning. I’m learning from the students, and it makes me feel grateful that I was able to create an environment where sharing could be shared in that way. From a family perspective, I was taught by no one in my family. No one in my family knows how to be so I was taught by the community and the people that I sat with and that I was really grateful with.
Sally Chivers 07:48
Listening to Deborah talk made me realize what makes me itchy about intergenerationality. It’s become such a buzz word lately, I absolutely agree there’s great potential in intergenerational programming, but too often it happens that people decide to put younger people with older people and expect a sort of magic to come from that. Too often, they miss the circle that Deborah is talking about here
Deborah Young 08:20
this last project that I worked on for the School of Social Work, the journey of the baby vamps. That was a really phenomenal project that people from all over North America, including a woman, a fellow social worker in England, sent me little, tiny baby Vamp. I was expecting, the beaded vamp, and that was it. But what I got from the majority of the Vamps are stories of what that Vamp meant to them, and they were detailed stories of love, of trauma, of hope, of recognition, of guilt, of reconciliation. It was all of those themes coming in in written form, handwritten notes from all over North America, from women and men telling me their stories. And then I got sick, so like I’ve been wanting to do more work with the Vamps. More storytelling. I was hoping to get a research grant so I could actually make: it’s three big images of 351 vamps going down a pathway. And I wanted to do it virtual, a virtual teaching tool, so I could get people to tell their stories and then tell what the vamp meant to them, because I have that big stack of stories that I was originally going to burn in a fire, but the stories were so beautiful I just couldn’t. They don’t belong to me. Maybe they do belong in the fire and being turned to ash and smoke. But right now I’m keeping them safe, wrapped in cloth and with our medicines with the hope to do something with them. To educate people with those stories. And that’s the power of storytelling, right? It’s sharing and informing and loving,
Sally Chivers 10:23
there’s a very important lesson for me in what you were just saying, because story can, within academic circles, within Dementia Care, become almost a commodity, right? I’m overstating it. Grandma has dementia. We better get her stories, because they help us know who we are. [Deborah: Yeah], I hadn’t thought of it that way, as the story in that kind of configuration is like, it’s a connection between two people, and it’s a piece that gets owned, rather than a work of art that needs to be treasured.
Sally Chivers 11:07
When I started this podcast, I was unwell myself and listening to a lot of podcasts because I couldn’t type, couldn’t read, had to walk a lot, and I noticed a kind of structure within podcasts that I liked, that often were people very privileged, like myself, thinking their life was going a certain way, and then, oh my god, it’s not, you know, something happens, a big rupture. Obviously, the wrinkle in wrinkle radio is a playful way of referring to aging, but it also to me, is that moment that happens in our life, right? These rumples and wrinkles. We do a lot of justice to ourselves if we don’t smooth those out, right? If we learn from them, and we look back at the cloth of our life and we’re like, Wow, it’s really wrinkled. [Deborah: Yeah], I’m curious whether that sparks any ideas for you.
Deborah Young 12:01
Oh it totally does. Like wrinkles, the wrinkle in life, the wrinkles in our face and our chest, you know, as we age, our stomach, our thighs, like, that’s life, right? I’ve had some pretty deep crevices. There was a couple of moments in my life that were life defining. You know, of course, two of them would be when I became a mom with my two kids. I think the biggest wrinkle that happened for me was when my mom died. That was very, very hard for me. Grief. I’ve never experienced anything like that, and I was totally unprepared for the darkness, the veil that came over me for a very long time, and I had a nervous breakdown. I totally had a full nervous breakdown about six months after my mom died. And it was really weird, because it was in May, and it one minute I was there, and the next minute it felt like a steel door just shut down on me, and I was in complete darkness, and I was like that for probably two weeks, like a it’s a good thing my husband was … my husband is such a good man. He’s looked after us all his life. Gave up his career to take care of us. So he was at home when the steel door went shut, and he looked after me like I was in I was almost catatonic for that time. I’m sure our I was almost put into the hospital. Let’s just put it that way, because that’s how far gone I had been. But when I started to come out of that stupor, when the door opened a bit. I realized then that I had to change my life. That’s what brought me into my second career as an educator and working at Carleton, that’s how I got to meet you. In fact, was that I was a PhD student, and I thought this was the life I wanted to do. That was my calling. That was my second calling, I thought. And then I got diagnosed with that brain tumor, and my life changed again, that that was the second wrinkle that happened, big, big wrinkle, and I’m still recovering from that. Everything shifted after when I woke up from getting that surgery, and it’s just been two years. I’ve just went past my two years a few days ago, I’m completely deaf in one ear from the surgery, I still suffer from tiredness and tinnitus and fatigue and brain fog, and I don’t know if I’ll ever fully recover from that, and I’m still working. Working on my PhD, and still trying to, well, I’m on leave now because the doctor, I went back and it was too soon for me, so I’m back on leave. I don’t know. I’m just tired. So those are the things that happen. And like, I’m just thinking, Can I do this? Like I’m, I’m, I’m scared about it. I’m scared that I won’t be able to finish what I’ve started and what I thought I’d love. So it’s all of that sort of physicality and emotional stuff, but it’s also looking at the university and trying to find my grounding and my voice in there and just feeling totally beaten up in the process, as well people listening to the podcast applying. What is this woman talking about that we didn’t mention, the fact that I’m Cree, so I’m a First Nation woman trying to find my way in a very white institution. I really don’t know what that means. I’m struggling with that, and I’m older, so I feel like I have a whole bunch of things stacked up against me. So I think there’s a bit of, probably sexism, ageism, racism happening.
Sally Chivers 16:17
What comes up for me, hearing you say that, is a memory of something you told me when we first met about I guess it was your first career, but maybe it was one of many, working for the government, and it was a moment I’ve gone back to many, many times. You know, you never know the effect you have on people sitting in a courtyard where only a few of us showed up for dinner, and you know, it’s like everyone wants to be there. We were talking about political parties, and you talked about having been treated with respect by the, I don’t know what they were calling themselves at the time, but the Progressive Conservatives, there was this sort of divide that I was maybe assuming in the conversation, or maybe it was someone else, and you said something really important in that moment, which wasn’t a redeeming of the politics of a group of people that you may or may not agree with, but it was a reminder that those are people around the table, and that how they interact with you directly can be different, right? There can be this performance of liberal politics, frankly, that isn’t always liberating. And that came up for me because you were just talking about the academy as this white, oppressive institution, gendered, underfunded, increasingly neoliberal. I’m adding those parts, but you had worked in government, including for conservative government. And so that’s a contrast.
Deborah Young 17:45
It is. It totally it is. And you know what? It’s interesting you raised that. I completely forgot about that conversation until you mentioned it. It sparked the brain cell, that one living brain cell tucked way back there. I had such amazing experiences when I was working as a public servant in the federal government, I got to see both sides of how government works, one on the public service side, and then, of course, when I was asked by the late Jim Prentice to come into his office to work with his team. And I’ve never voted conservative, probably never will. Well, not I know I never will. It’s just not how I am. But I did work with two conservative ministers, Jim Prentice and Chuck Strahl, both who have passed. They treated me with such kindness and respect. And you know, you really get to know people when you travel with them, and I traveled extensively from coast to coast to both of these men, and it was, I don’t know, it was just it was a good experience. I never felt morally compromised or ethically compromised when I was with them. I always challenged them, and they always took it well. They listened and then disagreed with me often, but it was always done respectfully, like I will never say anything bad about either one of those conservative ministers. I mean, I could say a lot of bad things about the Conservative Party, but not about those two men. They treated me well, which is kind of weird because, you know, I’ve had the pleasure and honor to sit at many different leadership tables, one of them at a very large university where I was working at the time, that experience at times, wasn’t nearly collegial at all, and I’ve never been able to quite figure out why that is, but it was a good experience working for a party that you politically don’t support. I mean, not a lot of people could do it, but it really teaches you how to engage and listen in a deeper way. It really challenges you, so that’s how I walked away from that experience.
Sally Chivers 20:01
if I’m getting it and hearing you, there was more room for your stories there than you’re finding there is in parts of the academic world.
Deborah Young 20:13
Yeah, it’s very much so, very much so. And the thing is, like, you know, it’s, I’ve always been a late bloomer. I always, I’ve always done things later than, I guess, whatever, whoever else who I don’t know, who I’m comparing myself to. But even with writing, I never really thought of myself as a writer. But I do like telling stories like that’s one thing I enjoy doing, and that’s what I enjoy doing on Facebook, I often write stories, and that’s what I did when my mom died. I used Facebook as my Open Journal, and I wrote what I was going through. I just felt compelled to write at that point, and then people were really responding to my written words, like I was resonating with, usually women, but a lot of men, too. I found that comforting in a way. Of course, writing with emotionality is not how we’re taught academically, I want to change that. I think we could write with emotion and use stories and view that as real, authentic scholarship and research those voices, orally or artistically or written, deserve to be part of the academy. They deserve to have a rightful place there. I think it’s changing. There’s so many Trailblazers that came before me who have laid that foundation for me at walk on and I’m so grateful for it, but I still see resistance from the Academy, and it’s disheartening sometimes.
Sally Chivers 22:08
I think sometimes that pressure can come from people being protective. I’m not defending them. I’m just saying it can be a protection of your future career. You know, like thinking that you need to be able to jump through certain hoops so that you can take a particular path, and if we undo that path, then that can help to open things up.
Deborah Young 22:31
Well that’s true. for the longest time. I thought it was 58 but I’m pointing back. I’m 57
Sally Chivers 22:35
I do that all the time too. I was talking to my student. I’m like, I’m 53 I’m 53 and then I’m like, actually, I’m 52 started rounding up rather than rounding down in my 20s, when I was in my third and now I’m like, always adding another year, right? Like,
Deborah Young 22:54
[Deep laugh] well, that it I was like, and my friend Jill, she just said, We’re the same age or not 58, I was like, I’m sure I am. But when I took the leap into academics, I was 50, I had a plan, a plan of action. I thought for sure I’d be able to get my PhD done. I thought I would give myself five years. Of course, it’s taking longer than that because of the health issues, but I thought this would be the time to take the leap. I love working. I see my dad is in his 80s, well into his 80s, and he is still being a lawyer and activism, like he’s just out there doing what he loves to do. I see my elder going out and working, and she’s in her 80s as well. I actually met up with one of my mentors just recently. And she is 89 I think, and she just retired, like, from UBC, like, it’s just crazy. And I just thought, I want to be like that. I want to work until I can no longer work. This is what I wanted to do. So I figured if I could at least get maybe 20 years in, I would be happy, right that. But then, of course, I never thought about health wise like that was … In my mind that I was going to be healthy completely for those 20 years, it never occurred to me that I might get sick, and that’s hard. It’s hard when you’re sick, when you’re not functioning at full capacity. And then again, I don’t know if that’s a brain thing, or if it’s an aging thing, I don’t know
Sally Chivers 24:44
The way you described it earlier. It sounded to me like, I mean, obviously it was a brain tumor. It was recovery. It was not recovery. It was all of those things together, but the description of it was similar to those things that we do need to accept, over time, right? That we don’t bend the way we used to, or run for health. We walk instead. I’m using some cliched examples, but yeah, it’s too much pressure to say so you get to learn about aging from that, because that’s actually kind of irritating. Maybe you didn’t want to learn about aging in this terrifying, rupturing moment, right? You just wanted to ease into it, but maybe you learned some skills that in your 20 year career that starts again. You know your next career, you learn to live within those limits.
Sally Chivers 25:45
I am curious if there are stories of aging from your family network that you’ve learned from
Deborah Young 25:53
well, not so much aging. It’s not the aging, it’s how we treat our old people, which is, I guess, aging right. But I was always sort of, I don’t even taught, but was never taught. It just is right? The environment that I was raised in that we always treat our old people with respect. We always make sure that they have a seat. We listen to their stories, at funerals, we gather and we honor our loved ones, laughter, crying, with food, with fire. It’s just showing respect, and it’s just part of our community. It’s who we are, right? It’s just loving and honoring our old people. You know, I’m not old, but I’m not young, right? But I know when I’m with my aunties and my elders and people who are physically old, it’s my job to make sure that they are fed, that you keep on asking them if they need some water or tea. It’s just caring for them. That’s what we do, and that’s what I was taught. So it’s not so much about… In fact, I’m really I try to think about, do we talk about aging? It’s just getting old. That’s what we call it, getting old. And you care, you care for our old people, and I, I love that. I love sitting with our old people. I love the humor that our old people have. I remember, even as a little girl, I don’t speak Cree, and that was one thing that residential schools has taken for me was my language, because my dad speaks Cree. He must have decided at some point not to pass it down to me. Well, in fact, he did. Like I asked him one time. I said, you know, why didn’t you teach me Cree? Because language is so fundamental of who we are as a people. And he just looked at me, and I think I was 10 at the time, and he said, Well, I didn’t teach you because I never thought you would ever need it. Like that’s really sad, like to have your whole identity and language sort of tossed aside because he didn’t think it was worthy enough to be passed down like that’s it’s awful, and it’s not his fault. It’s the system in which he was raised. I can’t remember what I was going I went down a different path. I can’t remember what. [laughes]
Sally Chivers 28:40
Yeah, I can remind you what you were talking about, but I just found it interesting in that part that so it didn’t seem like it was fear that he’d been punished for speaking Cree. It was just that’s not what is going to help my daughter learning Cree?
Deborah Young 28:52
No, it was that, but it was also he was punished because he was in residential school since he was at age five. He was, yes, very physically abused as a child, as was my mom. So it was, you know, the whole I’m the passenger of that train. I have no, I have no control over that part of my life being an intergenerational survivor of Indian residential schools, and it’s been a journey for me to reconcile part of that history of my family and how it’s impacted me, and my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my husband and my kids, because it all threads through. That trauma threads through my life. It’s hard to reconcile some of that stuff. I’m … I’m happy that I’ve done the work to help me braid some of that sort of stuff. But it hasn’t been easy, for sure, it’s been really difficult.
Sally Chivers 30:11
I imagine it changes what getting old means for your parents, for your aunties, and the circles your elders and the circles you were talking about,
Deborah Young 30:23
oh, that’s what I was talking about. The humor! When I go back home, it’s … it fills me with such hope and love and laughter, like even with all the shitty things that have happened to my community and to my family, we could still sit and tell stories and laugh and laugh so hard that tears come down our faces because we’re laughing so hard. That’s one thing I miss living in Ottawa, because I don’t have that here. I mean, I have my husband that I love him very much, and we have good laughs too. When I’m back home with my community, I’m just, I don’t have to I just am. And here I’m a Cree woman. Back home. I’m just, well, they always refer to me Debbie, back home in Manitoba here, I’m Deborah. It’s like I have two different identities happening, right? But going back home is complicated too. So that’s it’s that’s also hard.
Sally Chivers 31:31
Do you want to say more about that?
Deborah Young 31:32
[laughs heartily] It’s just complicated, you know? It after my mom died, it was really hard for me to go back. And then my Aunt Shirley died, who I was very close to, and my aunt Norma, who just passed in a few weeks ago, who was my teacher and my educator. I loved her so much. And watching people I love die, and I know it’s part of our journey, like when you’re born, you’re going to die. It’s just the way it is. That’s how life is. How can I explain this? I guess this is part of getting old. Aging is … the people that you love, they will eventually move on, and you’re sort of left standing. I think, for me, when I’m struggle with what I’ve been really reflecting upon is all of my aunties and uncles, as they age and die, that foundation. They were the ones that kept my cousins and I together. I’m an only child, but I have 60, 80 first cousins. That’s who I grew up with. That was … our parents that kept us together for family gatherings, and they were the foundation. They were the glue, as much as the trauma that they suffered at Indian residential schools, they still saw the importance of family and keeping us together. I like to say they’re now moving to the stars. Who will keep us together? I don’t know.,
Sally Chivers 33:17
Yeah. I mean, can you tell me more about the choice to leave?
Deborah Young 33:23
my so, you know, that’s kind of funny. [big laugh] What brought me to Ottawa was a job in the public service. It was only supposed to be for two years. I packed up my family. My daughter was only, she was maybe, I think, 14 months old, but she was very small when we moved here. Two years turned into four years, and then we moved back and forth, I think, five different times, because I was always called back home. The calling was inside of me. I was like, Oh, I have to go home. And then I would go home, and I’d kind of go, Oh, but I can’t stand it here. I’m going to go back to Ottawa. So I would go back and forth. And I did go back. And I worked at the University of Manitoba for six years, and then I came back again. And then my mom got sick, and then she died, and then we just sort of stayed here. Then I really started sort of focusing on what I need to do for myself. That’s when I went and got accepted in the PhD program, and then got a job at Carleton and School of Social Work, and I’m feeling pretty settled here, and I finally made the decision, well, this is where I’m going to stay. My aunties, who I love, and my mom are gone. My dad is living his life. And you want to talk about another wrinkle, probably the best wrinkle was when my son announced that he and his wife were expecting a baby. And they don’t live far from us. They’re in the same community in Ottawa. The baby’s here now. I’m a Granny, like I’m connected now. The root has now been firmly established here. The only way that I would leave again is if my son and his wife and their son moved back to Winnipeg, then I might be tempted to follow them. But right now, I complain about the university, but I’m enjoying it, like I enjoy being with the students. I do enjoy writing, but it’s the PhD, and trying to get things published is just like, really hard. But that little, that little baby, when you look at him, it’s just like, Oh, my God, like that little, tiny, seven pound bundle, is life. Like that … that is life that has been DNA, passed down like he has ancestors back in my ancestral homelands, like, That’s wild. It’s everything, everything. It’s like having all the star dust come together and then you’re presented with this beautiful thing. My friend asked me, you know, do you feel different now that you’re a granny? And I said, No. She goes, No, no. I thought, Oh, my God, I’m a bad person. But I thought, I don’t feel different because it just is, this is what I am now. I’m full of love and gratitude, and I’m hope that this little one will love me the way I love him, but do I feel different? I just feel like me, but better, maybe.
Sally Chivers 36:58
So I think that’s the answer to your question of, who will hold things together now, like you just gave this beautiful story answer of it needs to be in this new place, because that’s where he is.
Sally Chivers 37:21
That is the magic of Deborah Young. She made me feel so comfortable before we started our interview by asking about myself that I tried something a little different. I didn’t want to point it out at the beginning of the episode, but I included more of what I said in our original conversation than I usually do. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoyed learning from Deborah all the things that thread through a life, both the grit and the joy.
Sally Chivers 37:58
This has been Wrinkle Radio. I’m your host. Dr Sally Chivers, thank you for listening. Please tell your friends, tell your grandchildren, tell your circles, tell your government, and remember, don’t panic. It’s just aging
Music 38:18
I wanna grow older.. I wanna grow wiser. I wanna grow flowers in a house that’s made of you. Sitting in the sunset get some wrinkles on my forehead, I wanna build fires in a house that’s made of you.
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