Lionesses

My new book has five sisters in it, and their mother calls them the lionesses, so I have been watching Africa documentaries because I’m a Leo and I’m interested in how mammals raise their young. The lionesses on the savannah work as a team, to hunt, to care for their cubs and to deal with the male lions, who are lazy at best and raping infant killers at their worst. And yet it’s the lion king that we associate with dignity and its shadow twin, pride. They only look noble. My lionesses are just down by the river, excelling at being sisters, while the oldest, Emerald, draws them.

I chose not to use my mental health degree partly because I struggle to stick to a script as much as I try to cleave to the language of recovery on a personal level. I am buoyed by the idea of having strengths, but also, I’m a cracked vase when it comes to holding the putiputi of other people’s stories. I had a terrible conceit that I was dangerous but really I just wanted to write. To be short, I am unemployed and poor and writing is my excuse.

Lately, for private consolation, I’ve been returning to some of the heroes from my study and their homilies, especially Pat Deegan, and her rare honesty about how people treat you when you feel insane, the flaws in the medical model and how stressful boredom can be. Like Janet Frame, Pat was almost written off as a young person with a psychosis diagnosis, but now she’s a clinical psychologist who is also willing to talk about the spirit, which is why I am drawn to her. Psychology as a discipline favours a theory of the mind over wairua to explain unwellness, even though its own diagnostic tools are closer to scrying than science. The chemical restraints of the medical model might soothe and correct people enough for society to tolerate them but not touch the deep psychic injury.

This injury is what Pat Deegan uses to evoke the lion and its roar, it’s the sound we make when our dignity has been trespassed and hearing her say this made me feel better about my rage, all those instances I’ve roared could be traced back to my inner lioness.

Pat Deegan has made me feel less embarrassed. Which could be fatal.

Emerald is drawing her sisters down by the river. I want to be able to yawn again.