Heroes in My Head Read online

  While I was in Ottawa with the family, I was calm, but once I returned home, the terrible dreams returned and the alters started emerging again.

  In a session with Marcia, a new alter, Phoebe, came out and said she didn’t like Alvin.

  “He’s a know-it-all,” she told Marcia.

  Phoebe was the most active one now and she had a lot of opinions. She didn’t think therapy was doing me any good, but it had helped her a lot. Given that she was part of me, I didn’t understand how she could decide that therapy was good for her but not for me. Maybe it made her feel important.

  Lila, who had a Southern accent and was the only alter who clearly was not Jewish, said that she thought the problem was the evil inside me.

  Then while I was driving home from therapy one day, a new personality emerged in a fury. When I got home, I raged a bit and felt weird all night, as if my veins and arteries had air in them. I felt very cold.

  It turned out that it was the only adult personality. Marcia said the first time Julie Samuels emerged in therapy, she felt like someone had poured ice water over her head. Unlike the names of the other alters, I recognized the name Julie Samuels. It was a pseudonym I used in the RMG.

  I believe that Julie Samuels emerged after the split in RWL. Before the depression, the stress of the polarized politics, the increasing distance from Ken, and perhaps the split in the organization produced a new personality. The young alters couldn’t handle the complexity of the situation. While I had often dissociated in highly stressful situations, sometimes even losing time, I believe this was the only period after childhood during which a new personality emerged. And this personality was tough, cold, and distant, according to descriptions of friends at the time. No doubt I switched between that personality and what was left of me until I couldn’t take it anymore. Less than a year later, I fell into a clinical depression.

  The emergence of Julie Samuels shook me up. I started to wonder if there were more personalities, and if much of my life had been lived in different personas. There were several days of terrifying dreams. It seems these dreams were a significant part of the integration process. Even though I wrote down the dreams I could remember, I was thankful when I woke up and couldn’t remember them. It was as if the pain had to find ways to escape, through the alters, through my dreams, through physical pain.

  On January 4, I woke up with a start, scared and shivering, at 4 a.m. I felt as if I was losing my definition and dissolving into many pieces. I was no longer sure of who I was, and who I would be at the end of this process.

  “Who will I be when I come back together again?” I wrote in my journal. “Who will I be when the others are gone or integrated? Who will I be? Will my friends still like me? Will I still be able to be Judy Rebick? Who will I be? I am so afraid of losing the good with the bad and winding up just dead inside with no life at all.”

  * * *

  The winter of 1991 was a very intense time in the world as well as in my private life. The greatest moment was the defeat of Mulroney’s attempt to recriminalize abortion. On November 3, 1989, justice minister Kim Campbell had introduced Bill C-43, An Act Respecting Abortion. If Bill C-43 was approved by both the House of Commons and the Senate, it would become a criminal offence to induce an abortion on a woman unless it was done by, or under the direc­tion of, a physician who considered that the woman’s life or health was otherwise likely to be threatened. This time the doctor would be charged, not the patient, but it was a very restrictive law.

  The day of the vote in the House of Commons, a group of young women stacked the gallery just as they had two decades before in the Abortion Caravan. In 1970, women had chained themselves to their seats, but this time security checks prevented them from bringing chains with them. Instead, as the vote was called, they started to scream at the old men for denying their reproductive rights. It had an enormous emotional impact on everyone who was there. Sitting in the gallery next to them, I could feel their pain deep in my belly. Security asked them to leave, but they refused and had to be dragged out. Regardless, it didn’t change the vote.

  We thought we still had a chance to pressure the Senate so NAC worked with the pro-choice movement to organize a National Day of Action for Choice on October 13, 1990. We also made a presentation to the Senate committee. Usually when we presented to a parliamentary committee, the Conservatives attacked us, the NDP supported us, and the Liberals sometimes supported us and sometimes didn’t. This time was different. I felt all the senators were seriously questioning us about the impact of the proposed law.

  On a cold February day, Norma Scarborough and I watched the Senate vote. I was holding my breath. They called out the names of the senators, who would respond yea or nay. According to the rules, a tie would defeat the motion. The pro-choice senators in all the parties had worked hard to sway their colleagues, but there were still quite a few anti-choice senators. Furthermore, Mulroney had made it clear to his caucus that he wanted this bill passed. We listened to each yea and nay, but it was so close we didn’t know the outcome until the Speaker announced in a booming voice, “The resolution fails!”

  We cheered. This was the first time since the 1940s that the unelected Senate had defeated a bill. The final credit went to Senator Pat Carney, who flew in from Vancouver to vote against the bill. As a very senior Conservative cabinet minister, she had shepherded the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas — hardly an ally in the past. Now she was a senator, but she was still in the Cabinet. She knew the price she would pay for her vote, but she was pro-choice. Once again we had evidence of the importance of the pro-choice issue to most women.

  I was also deeply involved in speaking out against the Mulroney government on a number of other issues. The 1991 Gulf War was a major concern. Women’s peace groups were an important part of NAC. The Voice of Women, a pioneer women’s group founded in 1960, had always focused on anti-war activity. They used to drive me crazy, calling me every time I used words like “struggle” or “fight” in my media appearances. Even “strategy,” it seems, was a militarist word. But I agreed with them that NAC should mobilize against the Gulf War, and we pulled off a cross-country anti-war action with a focus on mobilizing women and children.

  It was through these efforts that I got to know Michael Manolson, the executive director of Greenpeace. NAC, Greenpeace, and the Canadian Peace Alliance organized big anti-war demonstrations across the country. Michael called me from the airport the day we learned that the bombing had started in mid-January 1991. Both of us were upset so I invited him over to watch the news together.

  At the end of the evening, he kissed me good night. I asked him to stay. He told me that he was afraid he’d disappoint me, that he needed time to process what had happened. That was probably better for me, too. The Judy who could easily have sex with anyone she felt attracted to was gone. Now there were the others, the alters, to consider. I was up all night. The intimate moment had produced incredibly intense feelings in me. I hadn’t felt like this in years. It all seemed too good to be true. He was gentle, kind, sensitive, and an equal in every way. We seemed to really connect.

  I asked the alters whether there was anyone who was worried.

  NO FINE WITH US, FUN. MICHAEL IS NOT SCARY AT ALL.

  It’s true; Michael wasn’t scary but he was a bit of a womanizer. We had a deep connection, no doubt, but he was unreliable and that triggered a lot of insecurities in me. After a couple of intense connections and withdrawals, Trouble came out and said, “There is no way I am going to let you be with Michael. We’re only safe when we are alone.”

  Michael wanted the emotional connection, but he wasn’t sure he wanted a relationship. I started to shut down, which worried me. I wanted to feel my feelings now, not shut them down in fear. The dance of intimacy and withdrawal continued until we decided it was better to remain friends.

  I was travelling almost constantly in 1991. In March alone, I was
in Ottawa a couple of times; St. John’s, Newfoundland; Halifax; and Vancouver. After a while my anger started to resurface — inappropriate anger, especially at the NAC staff who were complaining that we were doing too much. At one point, Alice de Wolff said she was designing a harness that would hold me back. She argued that if I kept getting the organization involved in issues when there weren’t enough resources, we would wind up with a reputation of being ineffective.

  In mid-March the following entry appeared in my journal:

  Things that Sophie and Trouble like to do:

  Dance

  Laugh

  Run

  Hug (not Trouble but only for Judy)

  Funny movies

  Children

  Hot bath

  Rob

  Kael

  Yell

  I wasn’t doing any of those things except the baths and the yelling, but I don’t think it was the kind of yelling they meant.

  At the beginning of April, I started to feel out of control. The first sign of it was yelling at Michael for being three hours late for what was supposed to be a day trip. The next day I got angry at almost everyone, from the dry cleaner who didn’t have my clothes ready to the NAC staff. On April 10, I wrote, “Freaking out, feeling so abandoned and alone. Need someone to help me. No one cares about me.”

  Exactly one month later, on May 10, I wrote, “One month since the freak-out. Now I feel like I am a flower opening up to the sun filled with joy and excitement then comes the fear in the night. Then comes the putrid fear that closes up my budding joy.”

  * * *

  As the year progressed, alters seemed to come and go. Phoebe, who had been so prominent, receded, and in her place was Sophie, who was more fun-loving and less angry. Later that summer, Sophie asked Marcia if she could meet Rob. Of all my friends, the alters liked Rob best. Rob was a lot younger than I was. I had met him at the Coalition for Employment Equity and we became friends after we both went to Ottawa by train in 1988 to participate in an action against free trade.

  A couple of alters had already talked to him on walks without asking. Because he had worked with abused children, he understood what I was going through better than anyone else, including me. He hadn’t dealt with multiple personality disorder before, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but he knew that as a friend he had to support me to get through this terrible process. If holding hands with a woman twenty years his senior talking excitedly on the way to the ice cream store was required, that was what he would do. But Sophie wasn’t satisfied with the odd conversation. She wanted to have a real talk with him, one that was arranged by me. Marcia said it would be okay.

  Rob and I went out for a drink on Queen Street West, a hip part of Toronto. I explained to him that Sophie wanted to meet him. As soon as I said the words, I started to feel very nervous. I was always relaxed with Rob and nervous was not a very common state for me, so I suspected Sophie was anxious to get going. He agreed. I thought the meeting should take place in my apartment in private. As we were driving along Queen West, I asked Rob, “What are those people doing?” I was already Sophie. It was after work and people were jogging along the street. Sophie hadn’t been out in the world for a long time, so many things were unfamiliar to her.

  Rob parked on the street just behind my apartment. At six feet two inches, he usually had to slow down so I could keep up with him, but this time I was way ahead of him, almost running.

  “I realized it wasn’t you when you bounded up the stairs two at a time,” he told me later. “You would never do that.”

  Rob sat down at one end of the couch and Sophie at the other end, suddenly shy. I only remember one part of the conversation.

  “Why won’t you be Judy’s boyfriend?” Sophie asked him earnestly.

  “I like Judy very much,” he responded with a smile, “but I already have a girlfriend.” She seemed satisfied with that answer.

  I have a memory of coming back into the room and seeing Sophie on the couch with Rob. It was a strange out-of-body experience.

  “What was it like?” I asked him, now back to myself.

  “It was like you introduced me to a friend and then left the room.”

  “How could that be? It’s my body.”

  “I don’t know but that’s how it felt.”

  I didn’t know either.

  My friendship with Rob was part of a habit I had started many years before: intimate friendships with men without sex. After my relationship with Ken, I never had another boyfriend. I had a few lovers, but most of my relationships with men were close friendships without benefits. I don’t know very many other women my age who have such close friendships with men who aren’t ex-lovers or the partners of female friends. The closest relationships in my childhood were with my brothers, which was how I explained the friendships to myself, but looking back on my life I realize that from the time I began to uncover the memories I was unable to combine sex and emotional intimacy. When it came to romance, I started late and finished early.

  Eighteen

  The Best of Times

  In the last few years, NAC had faced multiple crises but the most important one to me was the division with the Fédération des Femmes du Québec (FFQ) over the Meech Lake Accord. The year before my presidency, I, along with Barbara Cameron, a left-wing political science professor from York University in Toronto, had fought for NAC to support the distinct society clause in the accord. Barbara and I both believe that Quebec is a nation within Canada that has the right to self-determination. However, many of the women who had fought for gender rights in the constitution during the 1980s believed that the distinct society clause undermined women’s rights.

  The debate within the organization was brutal. Finally, NAC reached a compromise supporting the distinct society clause but opposing the Meech Lake Accord because it threatened new social programs by decentralizing federal power to all the provinces. In Quebec, the details were unimportant. According to the Quebec media, the women’s movement in Canada helped to bring down the Meech Lake Accord, which all of Quebec, including the Quebec women’s movement, supported. The FFQ quit NAC. They claimed it wasn’t because of Meech Lake, but I believed that it was. So it was a priority for me to solve the problem and find a way to rebuild unity with Quebec women.

  Knowing that Mulroney would be making another attempt to amend the constitution to include Quebec, we set up a committee to develop a new position on the constitution. What was coming was dubbed the “Canada Round.” Meech Lake was focused almost entirely on Quebec; this round would address Indigenous rights, Senate reform, and Quebec’s status as a distinct society within Canada. All the groups who felt left out — Indigenous people, triple-E (equal, elected, effective) Senate advocates from Alberta, women — would feel included.

  The NAC committee was made up of an extraordinary group of women, including Monique Simard, vice-­president of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), the large public sector union in Quebec; Madeleine Parent, a legendary Quebec trade unionist; Sandra Delaronde, the young Métis woman who was a member of the NAC executive and a genius mediator; Shelagh Day, a human rights activist; Saloumé Lucas, representing Women Working with Immigrant Women; and Barbara Cameron. Monique would go on to become president and general director of the Parti Québécois and a leader of the Yes side in the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty. And a great friend of mine.

  “I couldn’t understand how she could think of setting up her own country when they hadn’t dealt with the fact that it wasn’t their land,” Sandra told me later.

  Barbara, who had been fighting for Quebec’s right to self-determination for years, insisted that the rest of Canada would also have to understand itself as a nation, instead of assuming that Canada included Quebec and First Nations. She understood colonialism better than the rest of us Anglos in English Canada.

  The c
ommittee came up with what was quite an advanced position: Canada was composed of three nations, each of which was multi-ethnic and multicultural and each of which had the right to self-determination. We realized that there were multiple nations among Indigenous people, but that wasn’t argued as strongly in the early 1990s as it is today. Our position was that Canada should negotiate nation-to-nation, thus rejecting the country’s existing colonial relationships. We managed to convince NAC’s membership and much of the labour movement to support the position. It had many implications for the next constitutional debate, in which we were to play an important role.

  * * *

  All this intense activism kept the alters mostly at bay. I still went to see Marcia every week, and in addition to being president of NAC, I was still working at CHS. I was always exhausted. More than once I wrote in my journal, “I am just too tired to live.” I found out through later research that dissociation, which had now become a daily occurrence, usually when I was at home alone, takes a lot of physical energy. Constantly reliving episodes of abuse in therapy, even if it was through the alters, was also exhausting. I never planned anything after a therapy session; I always needed time to recover.

  In the years before I became president of NAC, I was part of an unsuccessful fight to pay the president. Because it was in essence a full-time volunteer position, only privileged women could do it. I didn’t have a husband or the ability to go on sabbatical leave so I had to continue working. Luckily Denis Morrice, my boss at CHS, gave me whatever time I needed to do my work at NAC, but it was getting ridiculous. Understandably, he was starting to put pressure on me to do more work for CHS. I told the executive committee that unless we could get the organization to agree to pay me, I couldn’t do the job anymore. As we had started working on independent fundraising for the first time and people did not want me to leave, the executive agreed to pay the president, a decision approved at the 1991 AGM. I was paid half time in 1991 and then full time in 1992. That made all the difference.