Changing My Mind

by Margaret Trudeau

  Ally turned twelve as I came out of hospital, and Kyle would be seventeen in the autumn of 2001. That they had remained so steady was a credit to Fried’s care and their own resilient natures. But I had a lot of building—of trust more than anything else—to do.

  Kyle had left Fried’s home across the street and returned to live with me. His unconditional love for me kept me alive. He has always shown compassion and empathy for others, and my gratitude to him will last forever. I was so alone, separated from all the Kemper family, whom I dearly loved and missed, distanced by geography from Justin and Sacha.

  I wasn’t the best mother to Kyle then, but I tried my best. After all, I was the only mother he had. I drove him to and from school each day so that I had time with him, as I did with Ally all her school days. The love of my children always trumped my longing to end my miserable life.

  My darling daughter continually encouraged me to get better and applauded every baby step I took in my recovery. Every little thing that came my way we’d analyze together: Was Mommy ready to take this on, or not? Ally’s loyalty and maturity, well beyond her years, helped heal my broken heart.

  I was very pleased one day when she asked me to come to her school to listen to a presentation she was to give. She had chosen, she told me, to speak on the subject of mental illness. As I listened to her talk, I felt both pride and regret: pride in how well she had mastered and presented the subject, terrible regret that she had had to learn so much in such a personal and painful way.

  I was particularly happy to hear her talk so passionately about how mentally ill people suffer from stigma. She told her classmates that mental illness was not a character flaw but a disease like any other. To my surprise and, initially, my amusement, she ended her talk with the words, “Today, we have a guest speaker. It’s my mother, and she has been in a mental hospital.”

  I realized how important this moment of recognition was—for her as well as for me. I was my daughter’s show-and-tell. My message to the class was the one that I believe most passionately: people who have a mental illness need to get help. I found that my audience of young teenagers were very open when talking about their emotions, and several mentioned relations who suffered from depression.

  They asked me whether it was worrying and a sign of depression that they liked to sleep for so long and found getting up so hard. I assured them that this was entirely normal behaviour for teenagers. The classroom experience made me wonder whether the fact that so many of this generation’s lyrics and songs are about emotions hasn’t made young people more compassionate, and made me hope that this may indeed be one way of breaking the stigma about mental illness.

  I owe my recovery, my mental health, to Alicia. She is so much a mixture of her northern Germanic father and me. She has my body, my quicksilver nature; she’s always busy, flutters about. And yet she has that German side—sensible, organized, tentative, careful and smart.

  I felt sad when I could not be her mother; Fried was her mother for a time. But Ally understood and she encouraged me to take small steps. When she was in first year at Concordia University, studying political science, we were both lonely. We had left behind friends and roots in Ottawa to come to Montreal, so we’d watch movies and have dinner together, and shop ‘til we dropped. As I write this, Alicia is in her third year, she’s twenty-one and she has a very nice young man in her life—a pre-med student at McGill—so I see less of her. But we still talk a lot on the phone. She is my sunshine on a rainy day.

  Kyle, too, played a critical role in my recovery. Everybody who knows Kyle loves him; he’s special. Bright, bright, bright. Like his brother Michel, he went to Dalhousie University in Halifax. After Michel died and I was breaking down, he came and lived with me at my house in Ottawa and would buy groceries for me, and he became my gentle protector. He would cook for me and do all the ordinary chores that I then found extraordinarily challenging. In depression, it’s hard to think even one step beyond right where you are.

  Kyle is the most wonderful boy—what I call a “metro hippie.” He’s a hippie in his soul, a loving and easy and gentle person with beautiful values, and he loves music. There’s a softness and gentleness in him. Oh, I love my Kylie; there’s a lot of me in him. But with his degree in economics, he’s also modern and relevant; he’s a huge hockey fan and an avid fisherman, and he works in the high-tech software industry developing and marketing a software application for the BlackBerry.

  At the time of Pierre’s death, my niece answered the door. A reporter was looking to speak with Justin. Not here. What about Sacha? Not here either. What about “the other brother,” the reporter asked, referring to Kyle. All the siblings had a good laugh when they heard that phrase, and for a while that’s what they all called him. Justin and Sacha are jealous that Kyle has had the most wonderful anonymity.

  Whenever I speak about my children, all five of them, I feel a great pride. I find myself smiling and talking a little faster; I can’t help it. I brag about them.

  Friends, too, help keep me afloat. When I was living in Ottawa with Pierre, the Gang of Five (Nancy Pitfield, Jane Faulkner, Gro Southam, Rosemary Shepherd and me) was a source of both fun and strength. We would have lunches and play groups and paint each other’s nurseries and support one another. Later, when I had Kyle, I joined the local parent preschool resource centre and we would go to each other’s homes; we had a book club and a mothers’ group. Now I’m in a later stage, and I have girlfriends all over the country, all over the world. Often they have very nice families and, in essence, I “borrow” these families—for sharing Sunday dinner and helping kids with homework. Friendship comes and goes in waves and tides.

  I was reading in Maclean’s magazine a few years ago about the epidemic of Canadian women leaving their husbands after twenty-five and thirty years of marriage and after the children have gone. They’re saying, “Red, I’m not washing your socks one more day. We’re selling this big family home, I’m going to get half the money. I’m going to buy a little townhouse and I’m going to go on cruises with my girlfriends. Goodbye.” And why not?

  I look back on my life with men, and sometimes my judgment is harsh. I think of the moment that Pierre had his former girlfriend counsel me during one of my periods of mental anguish. What was he thinking? Many men just don’t get it. They’re ruled by testosterone, and women are ruled by estrogen. I do take heart when I see young husbands who are emotionally intelligent, doing dishes, in touch with their wives, and it makes me think that mothers are doing a better job of raising their sons. Pierre did change diapers and get up in the night for our babies; I’ll give him that—but he was not a husband in touch with his wife.

  I am always aware that just as blaming others for my sadness is inappropriate, so is depending on others. For all the help that family and friends can offer—and I would not have the life I have without the support of my family—it’s also true that ultimately those of us with mental illness must battle alone.

  One afternoon, in 2007, many years after I left the hospital, I was living in Montreal and felt like going to the movies. Sean Penn, one of my favourite directors, had a film showing called Into the Wild. Soon, sitting in the darkened and largely empty cinema, I found myself drawn with growing unease into the story—the story was that of a young man, the son of an abusive, controlling father.

  The film opens on the day of his graduation, with a celebratory lunch. The young man has done extremely well in his studies and his father presents him with a cheque for his tuition at Harvard Medical School. Leaving the restaurant, the young man hands the signed cheque to the first person he sees with a hand out, burns his identity papers and heads out into the world to discover himself. The resemblance between the young actor (played by then twenty-two-year-old Emile Hirsch) and Michel, between the film’s story and Michel’s quest for the wild, his determination to challenge nature—are uncanny. For the rest of the movie, I could see only Michel’s face before me.

  The young man in th
e film is delighted by the people and places he sees on his travels and he ends up in Alaska. But here, not anticipating the dangers of winter and isolation, he dies of starvation, just as Michel, heedless of the danger, had been drawn to his own death.

  I found myself sucked back into a web of mourning: Michel, too, had not anticipated the dangers, and he, too, had died. I began to cry and could not stop. I came out of the cinema weeping, terrified that once I got home I would collapse on the floor and never get up again. That was always my great fear: falling to the floor and being unable to get up. For those who have never suffered from severe depression, there is an image to ponder: you are on the floor and you lack the energy to lift even a finger. You are dead weight.

  But I did not fall to the floor. I went straight home and began to cook. I cooked pies and cakes and sauces, and when they were done I froze them. I made a huge dish of osso bucco. I cooked the veal slowly in its sauce, and then froze that too. And when, two weeks later, my daughter-in-law Sophie gave birth to little Xavier James Trudeau and asked me if I had anything in the freezer I could bring to the hospital for her and Justin to eat, the osso bucco was there, ready for them.

  I was reminded all over again of the pleasure of giving something to others. And even as I was cooking, I thought to myself: I have to be able to change my thoughts, to distract myself, not by drugs or drink but by positive actions. I had been given the tools to do so. I have a choice—to switch from negative thoughts to positive ones, to make the light reappear and the darkness recede.

  Each victory over myself, however small, marked another minute step towards health. I was continuing with my therapy, going to see Dr. Cameron once a week. In cognitive therapy sessions, I was learning not to suppress or ignore negative feelings but to “own them” and thus acquire new purchase over my life. Slowly, very slowly, I was learning not to dramatically exit a room and slam the door when angry or frustrated, but to stop, consider, actually listen to what was being said, then deal with it. Mishearing things and overreacting, hearing the bad things and never the good, had been so much a part of me for so long that I found this new approach hard. Dr. Cameron taught me not to panic and hide myself away, not to shut people out and punish those I thought were hurting me, but to air these great waves of emotions without fear.

  One of Dr. Cameron’s great strengths is his willingness to try anything and everything that might help. Unlike my first experiences, with the psychiatrist who had tried to turn me into Pierre’s perfect wife and a fine first lady of Canada, he was interested only in steering me towards a lasting sanity in which I could be myself. Just coming into fashion was the term “emotional intelligence,” which summed up for me everything I felt about my own long lack of it.

  Anyone can become angry, Aristotle once wrote; there was nothing strange or inappropriate about that, “but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way—that is not easy.” As the Greek philosopher defined it, in his Nicomachean Ethics, our passions—if properly understood and controlled—have wisdom, and can guide our thinking and our survival. But those passions can easily go awry and often do so. The problem, as Aristotle saw it, was not the emotions but their appropriateness and how to bring intelligence to bear on them. For most of my life, my emotions had led wild lives of their own, far beyond the control of my intellect.

  Under Dr. Cameron’s guidance, I also branched out, talked to other people about mental illness, researched the terms and the cures, and started doing yoga.

  “You must realize the power of the mind,” he told me. “Never underestimate the tricks that the brain can play on you and how quickly it can malfunction. Fear, guilt, loathing are very seductive. You have to hang on to the fact that you have the right to happiness, that you are not condemned to the dark world of recrimination and regrets. You are not alone in this, and you will need help to manage, but in the end it is up to you to find out how your mind works and to learn the skills to cope with whatever comes your way. No one is perfect. We are all filled with flaws—but that is the joy of life.”

  He explained that healthy brains, equipped with the right kind of “emotional intelligence,” can absorb new information, withstand stresses and challenges, and work with them. I was finally understanding what the Buddhists say: the only constant in life is change.

  For the most part, I heeded Dr. Cameron’s words and worked on getting better. I revived old friendships and I grew close to the children again. When I felt restless and unable to concentrate, I put on earphones and listened to classical music for hour after hour, soothed and grounded by the sounds. What I really liked was CBC Radio 2’s continuous classical music program, and I found the randomness of the pieces exciting—Bach one minute, Mozart the next. It was really nice to have the time to lie still and just listen. I learned something that I could never have imagined: that joy sometimes lives in the pauses. When I had trouble breathing, I did my yoga exercises.

  Dr. Cameron was such a great gift for me. He just guided me through this long, long process: three years of cognitive therapy, hypnosis, deep meditation and changing the way I think. If you repeat the same behaviour and thinking over and over again, you get more than stuck; you become paralyzed. Changing my guilt and my fear, finding the things I had been searching for so much in my twenties—day-to-day happiness, peace of mind, waking up in anticipation of a good day. Changing my whole approach: this was my task. Instead of waking up every morning with dread—how am I going to get through this day?

  Dr. Cameron was a man with a plan—one that was not about controlling me but about setting me free. Once the medication was right (and it took a long time to adjust the delicate chemistry of my brain), I acquired other tools. I learned to reflect with intelligence, not emotion. And I learned tricks: imaging to regain control, leaving the room (I’m a great one for leaving the room when something or someone has angered or upset me), taking a deep breath.

  Something unfortunate happened then that could have set me back, something that in the old days would have proved devastating but that now merely served to strengthen me.

  One summer night near the end of May in 2004, I was driving home late from a barbecue dinner when I was pulled over by a policeman on the Vanier Parkway in Ottawa. He said he was checking the ownership of vehicles on his computer, and he asked me whether I had had anything to drink. I told him that I had.

  Since he had no Breathalyzer with him, he told me to sit in the police car while one was brought. It arrived and my breath sample showed that I was slightly over the limit, so he told me that they would have to take me to the police station—in handcuffs. There, he took away my running shoes and told me that I could phone a lawyer. My one thought at that point was for my new puppy, which needed to be let out and exercised. I rang Kyle, who said that he would take him out. My enduring memory is of seeing the officer who had arrested me punch the air in front of his colleagues in what looked like a victory signal.

  I was put into a booth, handed a list of criminal lawyers, and at my request a policeman dialled the first lawyer on the list. When there was no answer, we moved on to the next. By now I had calmed down a bit. The next lawyer on the list was also not answering, but then I saw the name of a lawyer I knew. The policeman phoned for me and I spoke to that lawyer, but no one at the police station told me that under the law I was free to talk to my lawyer for up to two hours—before giving a breath sample.

  Clear to me was the officers’ desire to hurry the whole process along while I was still over the limit. A policewoman then informed me that I would be held until I “sobered up,” and I was put into a cell—an open cell with only bars between prisoners and police officers. Next to me was a woman, dishevelled and drunk, screaming like a banshee. When I used the toilet, a policeman walked past and stared at me. I was finally released at 5:30 the next morning.

  In a funny way, the whole humiliating event marked a true turning point in my life. I emerged into a mis
ty dawn with an icy cold determination that I would not go down in history as a drunk driver and a mental patient. I would find a role, a job, an activity, something that really mattered.

  In the event, over the course of four years, there were one trial and two appeals—to determine whether my rights had been violated. The trial judge ruled they had. Then the Crown appealed and the judge in that case overturned the first verdict. Then I won before the Ontario Court of Appeal.

  After a small fortune in lawyers’ fees, the case was finally thrown out. There had been no reason to stop me, the police officer at trial agreed I had been polite and co-operative, and the case against me was deemed full of errors. I can only believe that when he saw the name Kemper, the officer thought he had nabbed a very big fish. This outcome was just as well, for a guilty verdict would have left me with a criminal record and I would not have been able to travel to the United States. The police were found to have violated my rights—the very rights that Pierre, as prime minister, had fought so hard to introduce.

  I was acquitted. The press, however, had a field day and once more I began to hate them, their power, their intrusiveness. The Ottawa Citizen ran the story on the front page—even though there was no accident and no one hurt. For the first time, I felt that I really understood the power of the press in ruining people’s lives. But the rage I felt was good. My anger served to strengthen my determination that I would take responsibility for every corner of my life. I am a mother who is against drunk driving. I warn everyone I know not to drink and drive.

  What I did was irresponsible. I was over the limit but didn’t know that. What happened to me was humiliating and horrible, and a very expensive life lesson. Back in 2004, one thing was clear: I needed to work. A very good friend, Christine Shaikin, who owns one of the best stores for designer clothes in Ottawa (Justine’s, on Sussex Drive) suggested that I go to work there on Saturdays. Given my focus at the time—that what really mattered was on the inside, not the outside—the choice of work was peculiar. But Christine was kind and patient and didn’t seem to mind my turning up wearing unfashionable clothes or even discouraging the customers from buying very expensive clothes when I didn’t think such choices suited them.