2025: A life update, chapter 1

I work!

I noticed with some guilt that my last post on this newsletter dated back to March 2024. My writing process is usually structured around a larger idea that I develop using my own life experience. That process has been challenged by the nature of my life experience since 2020: the raw material has been too bad and over-the-top to share in detail. The challenges I face as a parent concern the personal lives of my children, who are growing and facing issues that are private to them. I am also partnered with a public figure, which has exposed me to hate-readers, online trolls, and bad faith employers. The openness and vulnerability that was my writing currency became a liability in the toxic wasteland of public life. It has been a real loss for me, and maybe for some of you too.

Chapter 1: I work!

When I wrote my last post, I was working for PSAC (the Public Service Alliance of Canada, a large public sector union) as an administrative assistant. I was a short-term employee, on the second of what would turn out to be three 3-month terms. I was enjoying my job but remained precariously employed. When my position was made permanent, I applied and interviewed for it. After seeing more candidates interviewed — when you interview for your own admin job you have eyes on the hiring manager’s schedule — and failing to see an offer come together after three weeks, then 6, then 10, and seeing my term renewed 3 weeks at a time while they interviewed more people, it became obvious that I was not the person they had in mind for the position.

Thankfully, while PSAC had no intention to keep me as a permanent employee, they kept me until I found something else and paid me well in the meantime. They were instrumental in putting me on a collision course with the career I am now pursuing in labour representation. PSAC gave me access to the people and resources I needed to get a representation crash course while preparing for interviews.

I have mixed feelings about the way things ended at PSAC. In hindsight, seeing how capable I am in a very demanding job, I wasn’t the right person for the admin position. I was way under-employed. The way they jerked me from one 3-week term to the next pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to apply for positions I thought were out of my reach. I knew I wanted to work in representation but I didn’t think I had enough experience to work as a labour relations officer. My hope was to find work as a case manager or as a representation admin and claw my way up to representation and eventually adjudication. I bombed a few interviews until I understood the assignment and succeeded. I don’t think I would have been so persistent had the spectre of unemployment not been breathing down my neck. But I only know this in hindsight, in the rearview mirror of success. I could also be back working as a part time supply teacher for $22/h. Read Under-employment Math to remember how fun that was.

I am now employed as a National Union Representative with CEIU, the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, one of the component unions of PSAC. It’s a labour relations job on the labour side. I represent union members in disciplinary hearings and investigations, I present grievances and answer inquiries from union reps in the workplace. It’s part law and policy, part writing and research, and part therapy. I love it, it’s right up my alley and skill set, the learning curve is like a wall and the workload is like rolling a snowball uphill.

I work mostly from home, my boss is in British-Columbia, and I get along well with my colleagues. This is finally a grown-up job after two years of terrifying career upheaval from which I didn’t think I would recover.

I don’t want to rehash past hurts but I think it bears going over the broad strokes how big a deal that is.

When I separated and working became a matter of survival, I set some career objectives for myself. I wanted to chart a reasonable path to financial independence since I was embarking on an accelerated career course at age 45 with an outdated law degree and no professional network. When I separated, I made $72,000/year as a city hall staffer. My net pay was $3,200 a month, with 6 children 18 and under. My rent was $2,300/month. Nothing was sustainable. Read My Housing Story on Zoned Out to remember how fun that was.

By my calculation, I needed to make $115,000/year to support my family without having to rely on child support from my ex-husband. To be clear: my ex-husband pays child support but has a creative approach to its calculation so I’d rather not count on it. It was an ambitious goal but it was possible (…with a little Rust-Eze – and an insane amount of luck…). I wanted to make $100,000/year by age 50 building a career in the city’s administration. That was the vision board.

[Ref: With a little Rust-eze:]

Two months before turning 49, I became unemployed overnight and unexpectedly. The same week, I learned from the Canada Revenue Agency that my ex-husband had applied for (and obtained) years of arrears of child tax benefit for one of our children who was living with him, and half of the full amount I had received for the others. This created a sudden overpayment debt of nearly $10,000 owed by me to the Government (how else were they going to pay my ex?) and repayable with my own child tax benefit going forward. The same week, my van broke down and needed $5000 of repairs to get back on the road. Someone offered to buy it from me for the cost of the repairs. That person walked away from the deal when the expected repair bill went up and over the $5,500 value of the van. The garage had already made $5000 of repairs, not enough to make the van road-worthy but enough to completely empty my savings account. I paid the bill and abandoned the half-repaired van at the garage. On the same week I lost my job, I had no more car and no more savings.

At age 48, I was on a course to be financially independent by age 50. At 49 I had no job, no car, no child benefit, $8.83 in savings, and a $10,000 debt to the Canada Revenue Agency. There is a small cadre of people who had a hand in knowingly bringing my children and I to the brink of homelessness and destitution in August 2022. I can name them all. The mere thought of them still has me shaking with anger, and I will choke in my own bile before I forgive any of them. It was just too close.

(If you are worried about my mental health, know that I have found a healthy channel for my anger working in labour representation. Outrage is my super-power.)

Today, at 51, I am back on the course I had charted in 2020. To say that this is an amazing achievement of stubbornness, hard work and dedication is an understatement. I did the hard work through sickness, a lot of tears, family strife, and personal tragedy but amazing friends, acquaintances, family members, compassionate complete strangers, and most of all my parents and my beloved Glen held me upright, paid my bills and kept me from lying down and giving up. So cheers to them, and cheers to me, and cheers to all of us!

Ève & Lucas (13) spent the day with me at work on November 6 for “Bring your kids to work” day and wrote a social media post for CEIU.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2….