by Laurie Gough
As I walk through this ridiculously frigid night, I realize I’ve never been happier or more full of hope, as if the anguish of those days cleaved so deeply into my being that it made more room for joy. Just today I had an idea that I’d like to start a blog called “Fun Ways to Beat Back the OCD Monster” and I’d write about all that stuff Rob tried on Quinn. Maybe it could help other parents.
As for Quinn, I look to the poet and author Ann Michaels for wisdom. She wrote about how it’s not a person’s depth you must discover but their ascent. You look for their path from depth to ascent. I believe it’s possible that this journey of Quinn’s was something akin to a dark night of the soul, where, unlike most of us, he fully experienced death for what it is and when it was over, he came out stronger on the other side, with an understanding that perhaps many of us will never have.
An eleven-year-old auburn-haired boy gazes out at the wide expanse of the Gatineau River. He’s standing on the rocky ledge of an island that he and his parents call Giant Caterpillar. It’s the tail end of the summer holidays and the boy played offence on a soccer team, spent an exhilarating week at mountain-bike day camp, another week at soccer day camp, and a week at film camp where he and his friends wrote a script for a movie, then acted in it and helped film it. He also spent several long lazy weeks playing with his friends outside, riding his bike, swimming, and having sleepovers. He can’t wait for grade six to start in a few days so he can see his school friends again. Looking out at the glass-blue expanse of the river that looks like a lake, he takes a handful of ashes from his mother and tosses them into the air over the water. His mother assumes he’s going to shout something like, “Bye, Grandpa!” Instead, he throws the ashes and shouts, “Fuck off!” before giggling and taking a running leap off the ledge to do a cannonball into the water. The boy’s exuberant face pops out of the water. “Now you try,” he says to his mother. “Just don’t do that cave woman jump.”
Final Word
Not long after Halloween we finally did get that sought-after appointment with the OCD cognitive behaviour specialist in Quebec. “He’s fine now,” I recall saying elatedly, after summing up our story. “He seems to have completely come out of OCD.”
The doctor smiled but looked unimpressed. “That happens,” she said. “OCD waxes and wanes.” I sank down in my chair, feeling like a balloon that had just been pricked. “But sometimes,” she added, “kids really do just get over OCD forever. With cognitive behaviour therapy they’ve learned how to beat it back before it even has a chance to start up again. They have the skills now. We don’t know exactly why it totally disappears with some people and not with others. But it happens. We’ve seen it disappear entirely. Especially with kids. It could happen to Quinn.”
Over a year later, this does seem to be what happened to Quinn. He is still free of OCD. Of course, it’s possible it might return one day. But now he knows what to do. To his annoyance I occasionally ask him what he’d do if it returned. He shrugs and says, “I would just fight it back. I remember how.”
And then he gets back to his lively eleven-year-old boy’s life.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the wonderful friends who read an early version of this book, or parts of it, and offered suggestions or encouragement: Tina Trineer, Kevin Shortt, Ilse Turnsen, Alison Gresik, Stephan Johnson, Brenda Rooney, Dawn Matheson, and Alison Wearing. I gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Arts Council for their generous grants. Thank you to my agent, Martha Webb, and all those at Dundurn Press. Thank you to the people of Wakefield, Quebec, for their wide-open hearts. You have no idea how far small gestures of kindness can go in changing one’s world. Finally, I thank Tina Trineer, Christine Redl and Liam, Anna Lepine, and my mother, Tena Gough, for being there when we needed it most. (Mum, I know you don’t like memoirs but I’m thanking you anyway!)
About the Author
Laurie Gough is the author of Kiss the Sunset Pig: An American Road Trip with Exotic Detours and Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman’s Travel Odyssey, which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and was the silver medal winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Travel Book of the Year. Over twenty of her stories have been anthologized in literary travel books. She has been a regular contributor to the Globe and Mail, and has written for the L.A. Times, USA Today, salon.com,
the Toronto Star, Canadian Geographic, the Daily Express, and Caribbean Travel & Life, among others.
Prior to her writing career, Gough left home at seventeen to live in Boulder, Colorado, received her B.A. in international development and English
literature from the University of Guelph, and later completed a bachelor of education specializing in native education. She spent much of her twenties and early thirties hitchhiking alone around several continents, living in caves and hollowed-out redwood trees, and teaching school in Canada’s sub-Arctic, Fiji, Malaysia, and Guelph, Ontario. She now lives in Wakefield, Quebec, with her family, who still often travel. Gough continues to write and teach memoir and travel writing courses.
www.lauriegough.com; www.travelwritinglife.com
Copyright © Laurie Gough, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Interior and cover design: Laura Boyle
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Excerpt on page 154 from Once a Witch by Carolyn MacCollough. Copyright © 2009 by Carolyn MacCullough. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Gough, Laurie, 1964-, author
Stolen child : a mother’s journey to rescue her son from obsessive compulsive disorder / Laurie Gough.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3591-0 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3592-7 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3593-4 (epub)
1. Obsessive-compulsive disorder in children. 2. Obsessive-compulsive
disorder--Patients--Biography. 3. Obsessive-compulsive disorder--Treatment.
4. Gough, Laurie, 1964- --Family. 5. Mothers and sons. I. Title.
RJ506.O25G68 2016 618.92’852270092 C2016-903443-7
C2016-903444-5
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
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