Friday, April 1, 2022

"Sick of the bright side"/ "Nora McInery Purmort on how to answer ‘How’s it going?’ honestly"/ "From Cleaning Out Dumpsters To Studying Law At Harvard"


Sept. 26, 2016 "Sick of the bright side": Today I found this article by Wency Leung in the Globe and Mail:

Wency Leung discovers how being upbeat became the right way for North Americans to be ill – and the downside of glossing over the hurt

Suzanne Urpecz received plenty of support from family and friends after she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in May. But some well-wishers’ messages, aimed at boosting her spirits, left her feeling hurt and offended.

People said, “You got this,” which might have been appropriate at a football game, but didn’t seem right to someone dealing with cancer of the lymphatic system.

The suggestion that her six months of treatment were “going by so fast” was well-intentioned, but not entirely true. Sure, some days passed quickly, but others were utterly awful.

Urpecz, 35, of Toronto, says she realized that those responding to her cancer diagnosis with calls for positivity and perseverance may have done so because they were uncomfortable or unfamiliar with facing illness and mortality. 

But when you’re on the receiving end, she says, “trying all the time to sort of be very positive or very warrior-like … it sort of undermines some of the grief you have to go through.”

In recent years, patients have pushed back against the idea of conquering illness or overcoming health crises with a can-do attitude and a fighting spirit.

Writers, such as Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the 2001 Harper’s Magazine essay Welcome to cancerland, have challenged the assumption that cancer patients should face their disease with cheerfulness.

And even in clinical settings, health professionals recognize the importance of validating patients’ negative feelings. In the past decade, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a widely used form of psychological treatment, has become much more nuanced, as psychiatrists aim to help patients constructively cope with adversity, says Ari Zaretsky, psychiatrist-in-chief at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. 

In the past, he says, it involved a more simplistic way of working with patients, replacing negative thinking with a positive spin.

Yet, despite this resistance and limited evidence of its health benefits, beliefs about the power of positive thinking are now as strong as ever.

Contemporary virtues

Not only are patients expected to remain upbeat and soldier on through serious illness, being positive now also involves trying to be grateful, resilient and mindful, says Judy Segal, an English professor at the University of British Columbia, who focuses on the rhetoric of health and illness.

The ability to laugh through difficult times has also become a contemporary virtue, Segal adds. For example, she notes the emergence of popular memoirs tackling illness and adversity with humour, such as comedian Tig Notaro’s I’m Just a Person, which delves into her experience with breast cancer and the death of her mother. 

Cartoonist Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant: A Memoir deals with her elderly parents’ final years.

That’s not to say that taking a rosy or comedic view is the wrong approach to health crises.

But the ubiquity of positive illness narratives makes it “much harder for people who are going through difficult times and who feel like complaining or crying – which are things people do, it’s just that they don’t do it very much in public or even in some close relationships because they feel those things are disallowed or dispreferred,” Segal says.

She explains that her own experience, having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, did not transform her into a better, stronger person, contrary to the typical trajectory of prevailing cancer stories.

However, Segal says people who are seriously ill often feel the need to look after others and she was no exception. “When I told somebody that I had cancer or I was with someone who knew that I did, I felt like I had to look after them. I didn’t want them to be too sad,” she says. “I felt responsible for how bad they felt because they felt bad for me.”

So how did staying positive become the accepted way to deal with illness?

Attitudes elsewhere

Associate professor Andrew Ryder, director of the culture, health and personality lab at Concordia University, says our bias toward positivity is not universal, but is something that is specific to contemporary North American culture.

By contrast, he says, individuals in China are often protected from knowing they have a serious illness. In trying to maintain a collective harmony, many people there believe that it is better for the patient not to know too much about his or her condition.

In Russia, negative emotions are to be expected, Ryder says. There, having a full range of emotions is considered authentic or realistic, he says, noting that it can sometimes be difficult to detect depression in Russians because it’s accepted as part of life that people experience tough times.

When faced with adversity, “I think they even say, sometimes explicitly, ‘We don’t have to [like] Americans and smile about it,’ ” he says. “So if you have a death sentence or you’re now going to have to live with a permanent disability, then you would be sort of failing to be in touch with the truth of the situation unless you felt really bad about it.”

Positivity in the air

Segal suggests that the North American imperative to be positive is tied to a current focus on happiness. It’s impossible to walk past a bookstore or magazine stand these days without encountering self-help titles promising advice on becoming a happier self. And many workplaces support efforts to improve emotional and physical health, she says, noting an emergence of smartphone apps aimed at mindfulness.

“If you have happy workers, then happiness cashes out in productivity, or so the thinking goes,” she says.

In this cultural environment in which positivity is valued, people who feel uncomfortable or don’t know how to respond to illness tend to fall back on what’s familiar, that is, to emphasize positive feelings, Ryder says. In part, well wishers may offer encouragements to stay strong because they believe that’s the message patients need to hear. But this can be self-serving at the same time.

“Even if you mean well, you’re kind of saying, on the one hand: ‘I care about you and I want you to be happy.’ But there’s a sort of a subtext of ‘I’d rather not have to be around an unhappy person,’ ” Ryder says.

Positivity research

To coax patients to look on the bright side can be extremely unempathetic and can result in a kind of victim blaming, in which a relapse of illness or inability to recover may be seen as a consequence of not trying hard enough to overcome it, says Zaretsky, the psychiatrist at Sunnybrook.

And while some research indicates that one’s outlook may have physical effects on one’s health, Zaretsky says the findings are limited.

Studies have shown, for example, that strategies aimed at mitigating stress may have an indirect impact on the immune system, observed through measures such as reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol or the functioning of T-cells, Zaretsky says.

But to make the leap to suggest positive thinking can help people live longer, “that is not at all what the science shows,” he says.

Madeline Li, a psychiatrist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, adds that more recent, larger and better designed studies have “pretty clearly showed there is neither a health outcome benefit to survival … for being optimistic nor psychological therapies, like support groups, that reduce stress.”

What optimism and psychological therapies can do is improve the quality of one’s life – at least for some people, she says – but there’s no evidence that it prolongs it.

And even if there were evidence to support the idea that people could fight disease by boosting their immune system through reducing stress, trying to be positive, for some, may itself be stressful, Li says.

“If the mechanism is that stress reduction works through your immune system to help you, it’s not going to work if you have to work that hard at being positive,” she says.



Sept. 26, 2016 "Nora McInery Purmort on how to answer ‘How’s it going?’ honestly": Today I found this article by Adriana Barton in the Globe and Mail:

When someone asks, “How’s it going?”, the usual reply is, “Fine, how are you?” Few will admit they’re out of work, depressed or reeling from a medical diagnosis. And not everyone wants to know the truth.

But what if we had the guts to say how we’re really feeling? What if others were willing to hear about our quiet desperation as well as our joy?

Nora McInerny Purmort plunges into these muddy social waters in a new podcast called Terrible, Thanks for Asking, due to launch in November.

The Minneapolis, Minn.-based writer wrote the book on what it’s like to cope with devastating events while buying diapers, showing up for holiday events or going for a run. Published in May, her memoir It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too) covers her loss at the age of 31 of her father to cancer, her husband to a brain tumour and her unborn child to miscarriage, all within weeks.

McInerny Purmort, now 33, spoke with The Globe and Mail about what it’s like to be open about suffering.

How do you handle social niceties such as “How’s your day?”

I think that for a full year, I would tell people, “I’m doing great, thank you.” In a way, it was not a lie. In the fresh shock of loss, especially with that many losses in a row, your brain sort of bubble-wraps itself and protects you from all of your feelings and then gives them to you at a later date. 

Now, I say things like, “I am drowning in a sea of anxiety. How are you?” I realized it really is your responsibility to tell people how you’re doing so that they know how to treat you, how to interact with you. 

In so many conversations, people know the Wikipedia version of your life, but it doesn’t mean they know you, or the effects those experiences had on you.

What happens when you’re honest with people?

Yesterday, I saw a guy at a coffee shop I hadn’t seen in probably two years and he asked, “How are you?” I told him, “This week, I feel like I’m doing a C-plus job at everything in my life.” He said, “Me too.” 

And we talked for a few minutes about all of the things we felt we were doing the worst possible job at. We had our first vulnerable human conversation in the five years I’ve known him socially while we were waiting for coffee – a prime location to just have small talk.

How does it feel to tell it like it is?

When I tell people how I actually feel and get to hear how they feel, I feel like I’m doing a better job of representing who I am and what my experience is. In some ways, I’ve become this unwitting poster child for how to make the most of a bad situation. 

I did not intend to make it look easy. When people say things like, “You’re so amazing, you’re so strong,” I think, well, that’s because you haven’t seen me cry so hard I threw up out of my car door.

Why do so many people say “I’m doing great” when they’re dying inside?

We don’t want someone’s pity, we don’t want to be a sad story and we don’t want others to be uncomfortable around us, so we say what people have been saying for years, which is, “I’m just making lemonade out of these lemons.”

Are we also protecting ourselves? Some people say dumb things when they can’t deal with someone else’s pain.

There are people who said stupid things to me while [my husband] Aaron was dying. People love to say, “Everything happens for a reason.” For me, it’s like, Aaron was great and he was 35 and he died because…? 

I’m waiting for this answer you have, if there is a reason for it. Things like this used to bother me. 

But now I see them as a sign that somebody tried and cared enough to say something.

Saying or doing nothing is so much worse than saying or doing the wrong thing.

What’s the best response when someone says they feel terrible?

You don’t need to offer a solution, which is a very human impulse. You just sort of listen and talk without the expectation that your opinion is needed. You can be a witness to someone’s happiness and also their suffering.

Do you filter the story of how you are doing, depending on who’s asking?

Yeah, I mean, who doesn’t? There are certain occasions when it’s not worth getting into. But if you give everyone the same answer that you give the bagger at the grocery store, that’s not going to make your relationships with your friends and family any deeper. 

If you’re in my life and you ask me that question, you better have meant it.

Should we stop asking how people are doing if we don’t want the truth?

I don’t know. It’s just such a reflex – literally the first thing you ask people. But I get the sense, after doing so many interviews for the podcast, that much of our individual suffering could be ameliorated if people really did ask, and mean, “How’s it going?” 

And if we were brave enough to tell people – at least the people who are important to us – the real answer.

This interview has been condensed and edited.



This week's theme is about mental health and happiness: 



"In search of happiness" (Neil Pasricha)/ "A sunny outlook may be good for health" (8 skills to be happy)




My week:


Mar. 27, 2022 "The kind leading the blind" (Be My Eyes app): I found this article by Zosia Bielski in the Globe and Mail on Jan. 23, 2015.  This is about the Be My Eyes app:

How it works

Every day, sighted volunteers lend their eyes to solve tasks big and small to help blind and low-vision people lead more independent lives.

Blind or low-vision person requests assistance

As a blind or low-vision person, whenever you need visual assistance, our volunteers are happy to help. Through the live video call, you and a volunteer can communicate directly and solve a problem. The volunteer will help guide which direction to point your camera, what to focus on or when to turn on your torch.

Sighted volunteer receives video call

As a sighted volunteer you can help just by installing the Be My Eyes app. A blind or a low-vision user may need help with anything from checking expiry dates, distinguishing colors, reading instructions or navigating new surroundings.

Be My Eyes - See the world together



"He Went From Cleaning Out Dumpsters To Studying Law At Harvard": Today I found this article by Matthew Russell the Literacy Site.


I go to this website and the other charity websites where I click on a button and I'm helping people by donating by clicking.  The ads on the website pay for the charity and help:


   Rehan Staton has faced struggles all his life, but he has never given up.

When he was just 8, Staton’s mother left the country. His father was forced to work multiple jobs, but it was still hard to make ends meet.

“There were times where we just didn’t have electricity,” Staton told Today. “We didn’t have food in the fridge.”

Without a stable home, Staton began to lose focus in school, too. In middle school he found help from a tutor, and in high school got into mixed martial arts, which provided another outlet for Staton’s energy.

“At that time, I was really involved in sports, and I thought sports would be a way out of poverty,” Staton said. “Support from my father and support from my brother, if it wasn’t for those two, it would’ve been impossible.”

He was a standout performer in the sport, winning contests in the U.S. and abroad until a rotator cuff injury brought it all to an end. With no insurance, Staton’s family could not afford the expensive surgery to repair his shoulder.

To make money, Staton worked with his brother Reggie cleaning out garbage dumpsters. They worked to pay for school, but that was another hurdle. Staton did not have the grade point average to win over the schools he had applied too. Denial letters showed up in his mail box as often as bills.

He never gave up.

“Watching my father work anywhere between one and three jobs, giving up his entire social life just to give my brother and I the basic needs — I was hungry, if that makes sense,” he said. “I was really hungry, but also at the same time, I just really wanted to succeed.”

Staton recalls his coworkers with Bates Trucking and Trash urging him to do whatever it took to get into college. One of the company’s owners, Brent Bates, took Staton aside and helped him take the first steps. He enrolled as a student at Bowie State University.

“It was the first time in my life a group of individuals that weren’t my father or my brother that just came around me and supported me,” he said. “It was the first time in my life a group of people really just empowered me, uplifted me, told me I was intelligent. I believed in the hype, and I was ready to go to school.”

That’s when Staton’s older brother made another tough decision. He knew his family could only support one son in school. He also knew that Rehan had a lot of potential. Reggie decided to drop out and help his father.

Staton aced his first year at Bowie State and transferred to the University of Maryland with a 4.0 grade-point average.

“I actually just had a support system the second time around,” Staton said. “In high school, I just didn’t have the support, and when I got to undergrad, I had teachers, other students, leaders. Holistically, I just couldn’t fail at that point. Too much support.”

During his junior year at the University of Maryland, Staton heard his father suffered a stroke. He had to return home, and he had to return to cleaning out dumpsters first thing in the morning to make money.

Staton never gave up, not at home and not at school. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland in 2018, and was chosen to speak at the graduation ceremony in front of his class. Following that, Staton set his goals on a career in law. He found full-time employment with a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., and got high marks on his LSAT exam.

This time, the admissions offices at several schools were interested in enrolling Staton. He held out for one of the best. Staton will be attending Harvard Law School next year.

“It was probably the most surreal moment of my life,” Staton told Today. “After going through everything that we did as a family, I just felt that we got into Harvard, and like, I just can’t even explain it.”

“Watching my father work anywhere between one and three jobs, giving up his entire social life just to give my brother and I the basic needs — I was hungry, if that makes sense,” he said. “I was really hungry, but also at the same time, I just really wanted to succeed.”

Staton recalls his coworkers with Bates Trucking and Trash urging him to do whatever it took to get into college. One of the company’s owners, Brent Bates, took Staton aside and helped him take the first steps. He enrolled as a student at Bowie State University.




Mar. 29, 2022 Early spring/ winter: In Edmonton, it's like early spring one week.  Next week, it's winter.  Then it's early spring.  I don't put away my winter jacket until after April.

Spring cleaning: I have been rereading and recycling my old physical news articles, and only digitizing some of them.  I am writing a big email about it as I'm doing it.


Mar. 30, 2022 "The Wanted’s Tom Parker dies at 33 after brain tumor battle": Today I found this article by Lyndsey Parker on Yahoo news:

British pop singer Tom Parker — whose boy band the Wanted was a global sensation and scored a triple-platinum-selling, top three Billboard Hot 100 hit in 2012 with “Glad You Came” — has died at age 33. Parker was diagnosed with inoperable stage four glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, in October 2020, while his wife Kelsey Hardwick was pregnant with their second child. Hardwick announced the news of Parker's death Wednesday in a heart-rending Instagram post.

“It is with the heaviest of hearts that we confirm Tom passed away peacefully earlier today with all of his family by his side,” Hardwick wrote. “Our hearts are broken, Tom was the centre of our world and we can't imagine life without his infectious smile and energetic presence. We are truly thankful for the outpouring of love and support and ask that we all unite to ensure Tom's light continues to shine for his beautiful children. Thank you to everyone who has supported in his care throughout, he fought until the very end. I'm forever proud of you.”

In September of last year, Parker held a special Stand Up to Cancer/National Brain Appeal charity concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall called “Inside My Head,” which along with appearances by Becky Hill, McFly, and One Direction’s Liam Payne featured the first Wanted performance since their hiatus. In November 2021, the reunited Wanted released the compilation Most Wanted: The Greatest Hits, which included their first new song in seven years, “Rule the World.” The band embarked on a 12-date comeback tour just this month, on which they donated a £1 from every ticket sale went to the Brain Tumour Charity. Parker unfortunately had to officially pull out of the tour to undergo more cancer treatment, but he joined George, Sykes, Kaneswaran, and McGuinness in surprise appearances at some of their concerts. Parker’s final Instagram photo, posted two days before his death, showed him onstage with his bandmates with the caption “Dream Team.”


My opinion: I totally forgot about the song "Glad You Came" until I heard it again.  That's sad news to hear.  You can donate to cancer charities.  



"Five-Dollarama? Cost-conscious retailer plans to start selling some items for up to $5": Today I found this article on CBC news:


For low-income Canadians like Amber Cannon of Calgary, Dollarama is more than just a discount store; it's a grocery store, too.

Cannon, who has celiac disease and receives disability benefits, says she relies on Dollarama for a range of products, including any gluten-free items that are available.

As prices continue to rise in discount stores and elsewhere, Cannon says she's worried for those in similar or worse financial circumstances than her.

"I'm concerned that more and more people will go without meals," she said, adding that she's had to forgo meals to make ends meet.

Meaghon Reid, executive director of anti-poverty group Vibrant Communities Calgary, says her organization estimates that at least one in 10 Calgarians live in poverty.

And for them, even a $1 increase in prices could have a devastating impact.

"To a person living in poverty, it can spell the difference between a meal that night, the difference between making your rent that month, the difference between being able to even transport your child to school," she said.

Five-Dollarama? Cost-conscious retailer plans to start selling some items for up to $5 | CBC News


dollarama typically sells a smaller product for a slightly lower price point. small toilet paper rolls with fewer sheets, or stuff like tomato paste from polluted china. after their latest price hikes there are few if any deals left. they have effectively sent customers to other stores like walmart. i wouldn't invest in them



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