Dear Friend,
Over the weekend, I was on the Sunshine Coast, BC, staying with a friend. On Saturday I went to a lunchtime recovery meeting, but it was cancelled. So I sat in my borrowed car in the rain and called my dad.
It felt cold and bleak. I imagined everyone else in the world tucked up in a warm family kitchen, like a Christmas film where everyone’s indoors and happy. I know that’s a projection, but it felt very convincing.
Dad asked how I was. I said I’m feeling a bit rootless. I still don’t have a van, I don’t know where I’m living when I get back to the mainland, and I have no idea how long this trip is going to last.
My dad always says something totally offbeat. In a silly voice, like life is a fairy tale (which it sort of is, and it definitely isn’t), he said:
“Don’t worry, darling. There’s a little bit of heaven on earth with your name on it, and you’ll find it. You’ll see.”
And I laughed, sitting in the rain.
My dad has been making me laugh at my worst moments for years.
When I was doing my genogram as part of my therapeutic training, he made me laugh so hard. A genogram traces the undealt-with trauma and loss back through the family line. It’s kind of brutal. You find out all the really bad things that have been passed down.
I was so sad, talking to him on the phone from Canada, and I said, with such pain in my heart, “Dad, there’s just so much mental illness in our family.”
And in the most cheerful, matter-of-fact voice he said, “Welcome to the human race, darling.”
It was perfectly timed, and exactly the relief I needed from the weight I was trudging through.
In my late twenties I was travelling alone in Morocco, trying to outrun myself and succeeding terribly. I was upstairs in a riad, stoned and paranoid, in a situation I had no business being in.
The woman who owned it was being threatened by her ex-husband, who had some rather frightening connections. She’d asked me to stay and film anyone who came round to intimidate her, so she would have evidence.
It felt dangerous. What if they saw me sneaking around at the top of the stairs with my camera?
I rang my mum first. She was scared and begged me to come home.
Then I rang my dad.
“Why did you tell your mum?” he said. “You know she’ll worry.”
I laughed, because my dad never seems to worry about me.
They didn't even come round.
Ten years before Morocco, when I was nineteen and in a psychiatric ward, my dad asked me if I wanted to go into treatment.
I said, “Yeah, I need a break from weed.” (I’d been smoking in the hospital too, which made me very unwell.)
He said, “It’s not a break, it’s forever.”
I said, “Oh no, I can’t do that.”
I couldn’t imagine my life without it.
He just shrugged.
I’d love to say that was patience. He may also have thought I wasn’t that bad, because he does tend to compare everyone to how bad he was. But I’ll just pretend he was being patient. Lol.
It took me another ten years, and that phone call from Morocco, to finally understand I needed complete abstinence.
I’m so grateful I did.
These days he lives vicariously through my adventures. He loves the USA, and every time we speak he asks, “Have you found the van yet?”
I tell him about the ones I’ve seen and the ones I wanted but couldn’t get. I said it would all happen in God’s timing, and he let that one go. He and God have a tricky relationship.
So here I am. A bit tired, a bit rootless, cold and grey and wet outside. But there’s a little bit of heaven on earth with my name on it. Apparently.
A little note from the road...
I'm still looking for the She’s Proof van!
She’s Proof is a global movement making women’s recovery impossible to ignore, and we’ve just launched our YouTube channel.
I'll be sharing the behind-the-scenes of this adventure, and once we're rolling, the interviews and stories from the road. The highs, the lows, and everything in between.
I'll be updating it every week, so please subscribe and come along for the ride. The more the merrier.
Subscribe to the She’s Proof YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ShesProof
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
Lizzie xxx
