Childhood made everything feel like it lingered. The time it took for hot chocolate to cool down was eternal. Christmas day took weeks. The two-hour drive to my grandparents’ house took us to a new world. It’s all too fast now.
1790 he takes the newborn girl from his wife carries her to the neighboring room cradles her head with his left hand and gently snaps her neck with his right
1890 a wet towel to wrap her in grains of rice and sand in the nose a mother shares the trick with her daughter-in-law i had to do it she says as did my mother and her mother before her
1990 a newspaper article reads a hundred baby girls were found buried behind a doctor’s house in a neighboring village the wife wonders if that’s where they took her she imagines her daughter becoming the soil fertilizing the roots that feed this country
1998 oceans away in a toronto basement a doctor performs an illegal abortion on an indian woman who already has a daughter one burden is enough she says
2006 it’s easier than you think my aunties tell my mother they know a family who’ve done it three times they know a clinic. they should get mumma the number. the doctor even prescribes pills that guarantee a boy. they worked for the woman down the street they say now she has three sons
2012 twelve hospitals in the toronto area refuse to reveal a baby’s gender to expecting families until the thirtieth week of pregnancy all twelve hospitals are located in areas with high south asian immigrant populations
“Your unhealthy beliefs and negative self-images only became believable because you entertained them in your mind and thought about them with force and passion. You repeated them energetically. You imagined them vividly. Everything in your life that you are confident about has gone through the same process. You repeated constructive thoughts and imagined powerful, positive, and strong images about yourself and acts accordingly. Emotive repetition has been at the core of it all. You have repeated the negative and the positive in the past, not just once or twice but many, many times. You have been like a passionate broken record. Now you need to apply the same passion to your new beliefs, thoughts, and goals. You can keep these concepts and beliefs alive by imagining them, rehearsing them and talking about them to yourself. By committing to the repetition, you will be making a commitment to yourself.”
— Repetition, Using Imagination and Visualization. (p. 155) Cognitive Behaviour Therapy by Avy Joseph
