12 Jul Real series: Victoria Tenasco

What mental health support do indigenous women need in Canada?

So I feel like I can’t address that without addressing my mental health Journey first. I am 35 and my partner and I decided that we wanted to expand our family. Growing up my mother always told me to finish school before I have kids because often times in our communities we see really young parents which is why I waited so long to have a family. After we decided to expand our family, we became successful after a year. In February of last year we found out that our little life had stopped growing. That was really hard and it was hard because from the moment you know there is a life you begin to bond with that life. It is not just a ball of cells and what not. Western medicine has you believe that it’s not really living so it’s better to discover sooner but for indigenous folks it is not like that because from the moment you’re aware that life is inside of you then you begin to plan a life with that being. 

I developed a pretty severe anxiety disorder and suffered from panic attacks. I am still on the journey of healing from that. But I found that shortly after I miscarried I had this perception that I should just get over it because no one talks about miscarriage and how common it is but then I have a lot of women reaching out to me saying “me too”. I tried to move on but there was a lot of pressure that was not even obvious or blatant; it was society. But because I did not acknowledge my emotions properly I developed an anxiety disorder. 

I struggled a lot last year and that was the worst place I had ever been in my life in terms of my headspace. I cried a lot and I didn’t cry because of my miscarriage I cried because I was ill. I was too much in my own head and asking “why?” and “what could I have done better?”. My panic attacks would last over 2 hours and I would have to go to the hospital. I never thought in my life that my experiences would amount to a mental illness. It’s not that I look down on anyone with a mental illness or mental health struggles but I questioned if my experience could become a mental illness. I believed that no matter what I should be strong and tough. I did a lot of research on miscarriages, mental health, and coping mechanisms like meditation, journaling, music, dance and therapy. I used those things to record my experience and give myself an outlet. 

I decided to be very open and if you glance at my social media you can tell that I don’t shy away from anything. For women who have had similar experiences they say “oh wow you have encouraged me to seek help and to seek healing”. I feel like for indigenous people we need more outlets where we can share our stories because when we talk about indigenous history and our oral traditions we talk about healing through sharing our stories out loud.  When you share a story out loud it’s considered healing because you’re being acknowledged and you’re saying things out loud and people are listening so that can be a form of healing for them as well. So the story aspect is really important and that for me was missing.

In my culture, you are supposed to grieve loss for one year, but I am still grieving so I created a network of loss moms and we talked about loss and how that makes us feel but even then that becomes stigmatized. There’s a stigma around miscarriages as well as mental health and how you choose to treat those mental illnesses.  For example, there is a huge stigma around medication but I am very open about it because that medication saved my life. Last year I debated and asked myself “why am I living?” because everything hurt and it hurt in a way that I couldn’t explain. This is so common and yet women are expected to suffer in silence.

I know that there are mental health programs and circles available. But how easy is it to access the spaces when there needs to be trust in advance for someone to feel comfortable opening up. It’s hard for me because I tried everything I could before choosing medication.  I tried everything natural and everything traditional but even then that traditional piece wasn’t even there because I didn’t know what I was looking for. I feel like it needs to be acknowledged that there are other ways to address mental health that aren’t just western medical interventions and that those need to be treated at the same level of validity. For indigenous people and I think for everybody there are four aspects of health; emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental, and when one of these is out of balance it puts the rest out of balance. So when we are talking about mental health we have to start talking about holistic treatments. 

When all of this was happening I told my community doctor back home and he sent me to the psychologist. The psychologist comes to the community center every one or two weeks and they are sent by Health Canada as they are in charge of indigenous health. But he was a white male so think about how it would feel talking about loss and how getting my period every month is a trigger because of all the blood from the miscarriage and how that made us both uncomfortable. I thought that this can’t be it and this can’t be all that Health Canada is providing but the way that funding works and the way that it works in Quebec this became the only person that I could see. I found my own psychologist; a woman in Ottawa that was equipped to talk about the things I was experiencing, and I paid for it out of pocket. For indigenous women in places like Vanier, that’s not an option. So my question is: why aren’t we creating accessible spaces in which indigenous women can create trust with the people they’re engaging with?