Amy Saunders 11/15/21 Amy Saunders 11/15/21

The Importance of Love & Irreverence

"I am carrying all my hatred and contempt for power, its laws, its authority, its society, and I have no room for guilt or fear of punishment." – Diego Rios, Chilean Anarchist

I stumbled upon Rios’ quote in my last year of University, tying together a blog piece by Mandy Hiscocks, an activist who spent much of 2012 in jail for her activity in the G20 protests. Since then, it has remained a staple in my thinking, whether it be a disdain for corrupt power, a desire to eradicate and change systems, or the unquenchable need to create anew: I have never had room for guilt, nor fear.

Rules are made to be broken.

It has constantly reminded me why it’s important to be a shit disturber – and to make my irreverent characteristics work for me, and to use them to do good. Shit disturbing has been my best quality as a marketer – when used properly, with love and compassion.

But first, I need to back it up a bit.

How did I get so fucking irreverent? As an undergrad, I engaged with fringe societies, traveling to Montreal for the Carré Rouge protests, bussing to New York for Occupy celebrations and sleeping in parks. I studied critical politics, closely investigating the happenings of the day through a critical gender lens, with a precise focus on the political events of the late 2010’s. I incorporated my learnings from these radical groups and my academic critical investigations of power dynamics into my daily life.

Throughout my education and working life, I have steadily climbed a ladder of radical and critical thought, rather than a corporate ladder.

At the start of the Occupy movement (following the 2008 harsh economic downturn), the prospects of real social and global change ignited a passion for causes I had cared for my whole life. I organized, I wrote, I volunteered, I worked. I investigated the limits of societal comfort to expand the human capacity for fairness and just systems.

I have always known about the power of words and the power of an impassioned few, from a young age.

When I reflect back, I realize that my irreverence and ability to disrupt the shit didn’t start only after I got a fancy education. It started long ago.

From my earliest work experience, I knew normal power structures weren’t going to work for me. In my first job at age 14, I was sweeping popcorn and selling movie tickets, and seeing free movies whenever I wanted. I was told any normal 14-year-old would leap at working at the local movie theatre. Then I happened across Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and it provided a language to identify what I deemed unfair processes that alienated myself and my colleagues - all of us, young teenagers from low-income and immigrant families - from our labour and its profits. I brought this language to my workplace and colleagues. We threatened to strike and begin a union for fair treatment, just wages, and non-exploitative work with unprejudiced chances for advancement.

I was banned from the property for five years.

Later I became a student of Critical Sexuality Studies at York University and worked to disrupt the structures of “space” within the university. I organized campus Feminist Porn Film Festivals and panel discussions on HIV and AIDS stigmatization. I founded a bursary for sex workers in academia and published the University’s first queer zine, ‘Grey Zone’. I became accustomed to conceiving bold, new ideas and bringing them to life, while getting other students engaged and active.

I have always been compelled to call others to action and to create change. It has always been important to me to question, to dismantle, and to eventually recreate.

Hearing of my work with the York University Wendy Babcock Bursary Award, Maggie’s Sex Workers Action Project called me for an Indiegogo fundraising campaign in 2014 to increase their street-workers safety, while raising general awareness, and fighting Bill C-36, a Bill detrimental to their workers’ safety. Avoiding the pitfalls of any regular A-B campaign, I took risks and aimed high: I gained the support of one of the adult entertainment industry’s most notoriously outspoken performers. The campaign went viral across Canada, the US and Europe, and raised more than 130% of its fundraising goal.

People in the media caught wind of our work, and important spokespeople from Maggie’s argued the Bill on television.

At that time, Bill C-36 failed to passed.

In 2015, a film studio offered me an internship in their Canadian office. It was difficult for me to understand the complexities of corporate life – there were so many things left unsaid, untouched, undiscussed within corporate culture. Corporate life felt like swimming in a fishbowl while no one would acknowledge that we were indeed just fish. I engaged with my work as best as I could. Invariably, I came up against superiors with my big ideas and plans. One or two big ideas, from the part-time intern, is good. But when will they give up and just pack boxes? Eventually, I burned out.

I left and began working with documentary films – I felt as if my creative contributions would be able to drive positive change in the world. Bringing awareness to important issues was always important to me. I felt like I had placed myself in a sea of other shit disturbers, their method was film, mine was marketing and publicity. With this newfound position at a documentary festival organization, I worked with my team to bring awareness to all of the films we were working with. With my guidance, we launched a new video campaign across North America. It was a record-breaking year for the marketing team.

But, my spirit felt quiet. Dampened. Constricted. There had to be more.

After multiple working experiences that taught me the value of my own skills as an innovative strategist and systems designer, I decided to launch my own business. As time had gone on in my career, I started to feel as though I wasn’t contributing to a changing world. The positive changes that I wanted to see in the world weren’t happening. I had given up my disruptive and rebellious nature to try to fit into a corporate culture that didn’t fit.

I shook the poorly fitting corporate clothes from me and launched into the next phase of my career, one that would also be my longest job yet: CEO and founder of AlphaPR.

I started a publicity agency in Toronto based solely on both my shit disturbing nature, and my capacity for compassion and empathy – a deadly but gentle mix, in my opinion.

At the forefront of my work with Alpha was always the desire to bring historically marginalized stories to the masses. I used my clout and connections from my time at big studios and with popular festivals, to help women, survivors, queer folks, and creators of colour tell their stories – through film, through art, through books and music.

It was an exceptionally fulfilling time. I never faltered on my convictions, and my morals.

Over time, I softened. I have learned that, with irreverence, must come compassion and gentleness. I have had to do so without fear.

In a world where it is imperative to act with conviction, even if and especially when I am disrupting the status quo, I have to be unflinching as well with my gentleness.

I have to be unforgiving with my kindness.

I can rebel, I can question, I can challenge. I can do so without guilt.

But I must love. And I must love without fear.

Amy Saunders 6/15/21 Amy Saunders 6/15/21

Telling Stories, Undoing Shame

Shame and surviving trauma go hand in hand. Sharing our stories about who we are undoes the work of shame. Shame survives in secret.

I remember the first time I told someone my story. I was in a recovery program for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. I had just “remembered” my repressed trauma about eight months before finding the Gatehouse, a government-funding centre with programs for survivors of childhood sexual assault (CSA). I was sitting in a room with eight other women, most around my age.

Our first exercise required us to write out a big secret, one we wouldn’t want anyone to know. I scribbled my secret down on a ripped piece of paper and folded it as small as it could go. I squeezed it in the palm of my hand, praying that it would disintegrate through my skin and remain stuck inside my body for another thirty years.

That didn’t happen. Instead, we all passed our ‘secrets’ to the person to our right. We each took turns reading each other secrets out loud.

When my secret was read aloud to the room, I broke into tears - the tears of thirty years came pouring out of me.

The facilitator asked me how do you feel now?

And I told her I felt ashamed. Then everyone in the room, told me about their experience with the very thing I wrote down: it wasn’t my fault; I didn’t cause it; it happened to them too; the didn’t judge me, and it was okay.

For many years – almost thirty to be exact – my body and my brain kept my childhood traumas a secret from me. For the most part, I always told people I had a pretty good childhood. That my parents, for all their flaws, tried their best.

Then, approaching my thirtieth birthday, I woke up with night terrors, repeatedly. I kept reliving what I call my original ‘big T Trauma” for nights on end. Eventually, I reached out to people in my 12-step community for guidance in what became yet another life-altering journey.

Indignantly for the first while, I weaved my survival of CSA into almost every conversation, every Instagram post, every chance meeting with a friend; I desperately needed to be witnessed and validated. I needed someone to say “yes this happened to you. This happened to me too. This is how we find freedom”. I asked myself, every day following my remembrance did that really happen? How do I know? Am I imaging it? How come I didn’t remember earlier? If it was true, wouldn’t I know?

I was at an AA meeting one evening, sharing my story from the front of the room to a group of about 100 other drunks. I shared that I am a survivor of CSA and incest. At the end of the meeting, a kind, older friend told me she understood. She recommended I look into the Gatehouse, and come over for tea sometime.

Thrown onto a waitlist (as is the case with all Ontario mental health services), I held on tight until the first program opened for me in January – three months later.

On the first evening of our program, there I sat, together, with eight other survivors.

In AA, people always say they find a “tribe”. Family groups belong to each other and know each other intimately. Groups of friends stay connected in high school, university, and beyond. Me? I never felt like I belonged anywhere, with anyone. Until I was in this room, until other women opened their mouths and shared their stories. Then I shared mine.

Once I heard their stories, and once they heard mine, all of the pain in my body began to melt away. The shame I felt over simply existing, began to unfurl itself from my bones. The disgust I had for my own body that, in my early teens manifested as an eating disorder, began to become clear to me, and began to lift.

Sharing our stories about who we are undoes the work of shame. Shame survives in secret.

Shame is isolating. It cuts me off from my body, myself, and my ability to connect with others.

After 16 weeks with these women at Gatehouse, I finally understood what it meant to be in a ‘tribe’, how it felt to finally belong.

From that time, being a CSA survivor no longer was the centre of the world. Instead, writing and telling my story, speaking my truth become the central refuge of my life and my recovery.

This is why I write. Writing and speaking the truth can be costly. It has cost me friendships, family relationships, and even relationships with different parts of myself.

Undoing shame is an ongoing process. I encounter it in the wildest of moments: when I’m sitting on the bus and listening to music on my headphones, when I make a mistake or feel like I’ve done something wrong, when I hear someone’s response to something, or when I’m relaxing on the couch in the evening time and just watching TV.

Shame, after CSA, becomes who we are. It takes on life as a big black hole inside your stomach and eventually, encompasses your whole mind and body. Undoing the tangled web of shame is a long and arduous process. But it is lifesaving.