A Letter to Mrs. Ghomeshi
Dear Mrs. Ghomeshi,
We’ve never met, but I saw your picture the other day of you walking into Old City Hall where your son stands trial and I thought I’d say hello.
How are you?
Exhausted no doubt. I don’t really know your son, beyond some Art Gallery dinner we shared a table at. Of course I knew his voice from Q when he was host, and I think I actually saw him on stage in the Moxy Fruvous days one time in Halifax when I was in undergrad. None of that matters.
What matters is that as a mother, I really wonder how you are.
Mother to Mother
Are you’re taking care of yourself? Is there someone you confide in? Are in your therapy?
I really don’t know what I would do in this situation. If my son were accused and standing trail, would I stand behind him, no matter what? What kind of a mother would I be if I didn’t?
Do you believe that he is innocent? I can understand why you want to, how as his mother and surety you need to believe him innocent. If he’s innocent – you look longingly into the future and see your son rising above the scorn he’s endured.
But what if you believe the twenty-three women who filed an allegation against him? Twenty-three women against your son. Can they all be lying? Scheming? What would they, as individuals, have to gain? Maybe you believe them, but you also have to believe your son is no monster. It’s a cultural DNA of men and women that I just don’t understand. Is that it? Or is it a case of a few bad choices, we’ve all made them, but at the core we’re decent people. Even if he is guilty, he’s still your son, your baby. And you need to keep your arms open, don’t you? You want to love him, regardless.
Do you ever wonder about your role in this? Not that you had a role, but I would certainly wrack my brain with that for a bit. When do we stop feeling responsible for these kids of ours? He’s forty-eight after all. Here you were, things were looking up, aside from your husband passing, of course. But this?
My son is still a toddler and I devote a lot of energy trying to be a conscientious parent. I read, ask questions, listen, play. The point is I try, and I bet you did to, to be the best parent one can be. And I stumble, all the time. But I work at raising a boy who will flourish into an adult I’m proud of. It’s hard work, isn’t it?
The Power of Actions
In a court room that is playing out a he-said she-said story, where your son denies all accusations though he admitted, in his post CBC firing Facebook note that he enjoyed ‘rough sex’, the formidable Marie Henein is trying to sway the judge from believing any assaults happened without consent due to the nature and continued contact the complainants had with the accused.
So many women could tell you a similar story, couldn’t they?
The Language of Women
Maybe empathy is partially to blame. We women, (especially mothers and caregivers of young children trying to teach “let’s get along”) often make good of bad situations. We ask how can we make a situation better, we placate through words. We call the next day to say, hey, I like you (so stop with the bad behaviour). We ask how can we help, when really we might want to scream and throw a brick at your head. Instead we hold up a mirror and strive for compassion. You’re messed up, but I love your hands.
Let me exemplify this:
For a number of summers during university I was a tree planter. One season found in me Northern Quebec, living in a hotel room with my then boyfriend. I came home one night to a locked door, and when he finally let me in, he was wearing my bra and underwear. I asked him to leave. He begged me to stay. I was in my twenties, naïve and not nearly in love with him to endure or want to understand his bi-sexuality if it was that, because at that moment I saw that he was coming out, a frightened gay Christian Francophone, afraid of his future. It’s okay, I told him. We’re both fine, we’re both going to be great. You’re life is going to be great. When he picked up a wooden chair and threw it at me, hitting the wall, I didn’t call the police or even out to my friends in the next room. I told him again, it’s going to be okay. I don’t want to be with you, but we are going to be fine.
For some of us, it’s our nature to be brave, to try and ‘right’ a wrong situation with actions and words of kindness and even love.
The Power of Silence
Isn’t it amazing how a lawyer is ripping apart the meaning of no? Lucy DeCoutere says she “tried to neutralize it and make it a friendship.” You can understand why, right? Silence has a strength too, especially when we see women of sexual abuse who stand trial being re-traumatized by questioning every gesture, every smile, every photograph or email they sent following the assault to attempt neutrality. I’m okay. Right? We have to make it so, so we can go on. I’ve done this myself.
I was sixteen dating a man 4 years my senior. We were at his place and he tried to convince me to have sex. I didn’t want to. I said I wasn’t ready. He told me it would hurt now or it would hurt later so I might as well get it over with. I said no and he persisted. He was much bigger than me and I eventually stopped fighting and was numb. We broke up shortly thereafter, but I saw him afterward. I tried to normalize the event in order to carry on. Does that make it admissible? Did you know Statistics Canada figures show there are more than half a million sexual assaults a year in Canada. Eighty-six percent of the victims are women, 60 percent are under 17 and most of them know their attacker?[1]
Woman to Woman
I wonder if you ever think “Jian, didn’t I tell you to say sorry?” Apologizing is a lesson we first begin to learn as toddlers when pushing and throwing and hitting begin to arise as we flex our independence and learn how to relate to one another. Toddlers are excluded from the greater implications of what hitting can mean – the shock and intimidation that comes when an adult does it, doesn’t yet exist from a three-year-old. I wonder if your son ever said sorry and meant it. If there are more than the twenty-three who’ve filed allegations that are silent because of those two powerful words. I wonder if any of this would have gotten to where it is if he had said those two words to any of the three complainants? Not that those words take away from any consent being given but still. We’re Canadian. Sorry is practically a patriotic emotional state.
What do you talk about everyday with him? Is it possible to detangle yourself from the web of his life?
Do you think he truly loved them? All of them? All twenty-three? I don’t. That’s the classic abuser/abused relationship. And I’ve witnessed that relationship first hand with my mother and my father who at the time was an alcoholic. Love doesn’t exist when you hurt someone or do something again and again that they are not consenting to no matter how many times you say I love you. It might seem confusing, so many years later, when I can say that I love both my mother and father, I’ve worked through the abuse of that time. I’m sure your son loves you Mrs. Ghomeshi, but I don’t think he loved these women. You’re his surety…you can’t turn on him now, I can understand that, but I have to tell you I believe Lucy and the other twenty-two.
Maybe it’s because of my family’s history and my own with men, or maybe it’s because I’m now a mother of a son, I’m not sure, but I wanted to let you know that I’ve turned my back on your son, but I haven’t turned my back on you.
Kim
[1] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/11/beenrapedneverreported-20141136493146693.html
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