Aunties on the road
Growing up with divorced parents and living with a white father, Victoria Desilets,35, has always felt disconnected to her indigenous community.
When Desilets was 18 years-old, she gave birth to her eldest son Taylor. Being a single mother receiving help only from her older sister Chrystal Desilets, Victoria had to learn to work the system. “I had to figure out welfare, school, work, employment, where to live” she adds, “So on the way you learn that all these sorts of things are very valuable to other people.”
Since around 2007, Desilets has been working with Minwaashin Lodge as a doula with Aunties on the Road.
According to the website, Minwaashin Lodge is an Aboriginal women’s agency that offer support to women through offering a variety of services like Aunties on the Road.
Aunties on the Road is a full spectrum doula agency that is non-profit which offers services to youth women who are dealing with abortion, death, or birth or “Anything really that falls on the spectrum of life and death,” says Desilets.
Being a mother of three sons – Taylor, 17, Blake, 5, and Wesley, 2 - She has had a lot of experiences with the system as well as navigating through motherhood. “I have different sets of skills, and navigating through different systems through my own experience, or other’s experiences like clients.”
Desilets says in her perspective she does her job because she wants to support everyone she sees wherever she goes as best as she can. But it’s not easy to find a balance between doing the things you enjoy and want to do and raising kids.
One of her hobbies include painting. Desilets discovered her passion for painting after she gave birth to her first son. While she was in Youville Centre, a school for pregnant mothers, she was taking a night painting class and she fell in love. “I just fell in love and the project was like painting a version of some artist’s whatever and I just fell in love and I kept painting constantly and it was great,” she says.
Sometimes she struggled with rent and the money was low. Yet what she loved about painting is that it can be done with low-costs and anywhere “It’s very easy to make art an outlet.”
She enjoyed painting abstract arts which included color, texture, feelings and patterns “more for myself getting out the emotions.”
However, art is not something that Desilets is able to enjoy anymore. Art takes a lot of your personal self to do, says Desilets. “I’m an all or nothing kind of person” as she struggles with her own mental health issues, she finds it difficult to be able to pick her artistic self up “It would have to mean that I don’t try so hard with my kids.”
She switched her hobby to gardening just recently which made her feel a bit more connected to her indigenous community. Her love for nature was inspired by her father, Denis Desilets, as they have always went out and enjoyed nature.
Through her art and nature she discovered her spirituality. And while she has always had trouble with god and spirituality, she was finally able to connect. “That’s how I became more connected with my indigenous self I guess and recognize that there is this intense need of this creativity of this arts and nature.”
Desilets blames the school system for not feeling connected and not knowing a lot about herself “Things are finally being pushed in the school boards but I didn’t learn anything about myself, I didn’t know who I was other than what I saw on TV and what I heard from so and so.”
Growing up she had suffered from ADHD, anxiety and depression. She never thought much about it because “it was just life, it’s not like I’ve had it easy.” As a kid she has felt neglected from her father as he was always working. “we were fortunate enough we didn’t have alcoholism, abuse – sever abuse – it was mostly just that psychological abuse things that really stick at you.”
Desilets says anxiety and anger were a big part of how she was raised. And now raising her own children she is trying to figure out how to parent them without getting angry because anxiety is always there.