by Manjit Handa
Name: Loreen Richer
Age: 65
For some, the health graph never rises up; it stays low, quite low. How would you face it if you were to face health problems like Loreen? In other words, it is the likes of her that should be a source of strength to many coping with various physical and mental tribulations.
Eleventh of the twelve children, Loreen had an amazing mother and a great father. Her father’s father had died when he was only five years old, hence he was not very “demonstrative” with affections towards his children, but her mother was an expert at everything. At the age of forty, Loreen realized that she could never “measure up” to her mother because she raised twelve children at a time when there were not too many conveniences. She did almost everything a woman did those days with expertise—be it cooking, baking, sewing, decorating or cleaning—and here she was, with two kids and all the conveniences and yet so unable to deal with life in general.
Born in Ancaster, in a large farm Loreen’s dad worked at the airport all his life. And they were only three kids at home as the older siblings were so far apart in age. There was a difference of twenty years between the youngest and the oldest child. Her younger sister was seven years younger to her and the older sister was by five years. The older ones were closer together and they were like “aunts and uncles” to her because she did not grow up with them.
She has lost four brothers already, three of cancer and one of heart disease. Three of them died before the age of sixty five and her dad died when she was only twenty five, before she had her own children. Loreen got married at the age of twenty three on a blind date. Her youngest sister and her boyfriend played in a band with her now husband’s brother. They introduced them and they dated for a year and remained engaged for a year and then got married in the year 1964 on Valentine’s Day. Shawn, her daughter was born in 1967 and she had a boy four years later. Before the kids she was working in an Insurance Company where she stopped going when she had the first child. Instead, she took a part time job to work with a publisher after the birth of her kids. The publisher was a woman of immense inspiration to her who used to publish a woman’s magazine. A trail blazer and a feminist, she taught about menopause. Loreen also feels proud about having edited one of the books she wrote. Interested deeply in women and their problems, this publisher taught her a lot. Those were the times she was raising two teenagers and she got sick. Not able to know the reason for getting sick, her employer’s knowledge about menopause was timely because she was also simultaneously undergoing quite a bad menopause at that time. But soon her publisher’s husband retired from his job, and she moved up North.
Now Loreen turned to study Psychology and Sociology and started working on a Liberal Studies certificate at McMaster University and Mohawk College. Ironically, after the course, she realized she was best suited for the field of Pharmacy. While she was sick and busy, she did not have the time to visit the doctor, so she went to the pharmacist for what looked like a sore on her lip. Unfortunately she got sicker and sicker and she suspects that there was another woman at work who had this same thing from whom she probably got this virus. In the Fall of ’90, when she was turning 50, she visited her doctor but nothing came out. That was also the time when the chronic fatigue syndrome was talked about, so she talked about it with her doctor, but he dismissed it and said it was merely a psychological thing and sent her to a specialist. The specialist then diagnosed her with a post-viral fatigue syndrome.
That was the time she was already enrolled for the course of “Portfolio Development”. She ended up doing the course with great difficulty after which she was in bed for almost two years. On medical leave now, she always had flu, sore throat and pain in her body. Unable to comb her hair, she cut it short; no one understood what she had. They thought she was just being lazy. Then she gradually started doing yoga, swimming and dance. She did have the illness but she was still able to function as a result. Unfortunately, soon she was diagnosed with osteoporosis. This illness taught her to “enjoy life and use energy wisely”
About five years later, she was doing fine but still would be fatigued. She cooked dinner but did not have the energy to eat it. In hindsight she feels there were a lot of factors that might have triggered her disease. First her mother died of Parkinson’s, then, her sister in law died of breast cancer, her brother died, then her son ended up in Intensive Care, hovering between life and death. About a year and half later she had this disease.
After regaining health to some measure, she started volunteering especially at the Parkinson’s Association, took the Counseling course at the Women’s Centre, started studying Body Mind Spirit and took various Arts courses at the Dundas Valley School of Art. As luck would have it, in 2003, her nephew died on her birthday, she got some polyps removed and her mother in law died. No later, she had a car accident and had brutal head and neck injury. She was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder following that which took almost a year for her to recover. Then she took more Body Mind Medicine courses for getting back to health. In the summer of 2005, she took a Kundalini (yoga) course. Two weeks into that course and she was experiencing a lot of energy, the kind she had never experienced in many past years. It was a “major breakthrough.” She could now walk, do yoga and meditate. Unfortunately, when she started feeling better, her husband was diagnosed with the heart disease. He has had a surgery recently and she hopes things should move towards the better from here on.
Her Inspiration: In the seventies she was much inspired by Wayne Dyer so much so that she also went to listen to him and read a lot of his works. Later she felt off the track, what with the family and responsibilities but his vision always was a source of inspiration which to this day she uses in combination with the Kundalini. In spite of all the odds she believes that one needs “to stop and be grateful”. Her wonderful children and grandchildren are the light of her life. She tries to live “one day at a time and when it is hard, one hour at a time.”
About Regrets: On her part, she thinks, “everything is for a reason, if you don’t go through, you don’t learn and make you reach where you are”.
Her message to the readers: “Believe in now, what we have is today. Life is precious and don’t throw it away. Don’t take everything seriously because if you are not enjoying it, what is the point.”
We would specifically take that seriously!
