How? Why??????

Good Goddess its been a long ass time since I wrote anything here! Oops.

I’ve been enjoying a personal hard reset that I’m not really finished with yet. But since today is the one year anniversary of finding out the family secret, I think I’ll dust off the old fingers and get clacking.

Remember my post about contacting my mother to ask her why in the hell she willingly married a rapist and murderer? I wanted to give her a chance to tell me her story before I told mine. It just felt like the right thing to do. I wanted to be fair and kind. I wanted to have her side of the story and I wanted to move forward with facts once it came time to include her.

As expected, she’s still not speaking to me and well… I must move on, so here we are.

When I left this story the questions on my mind were How and why?

How the hell did a women whose grew up in an upper middle class household, who’s father was the Senior Vice President of Seaspan, who grew up in the British Properties, who was the snobbiest snob of a person ,who talked shit constantly about people “beneath” her grow up to marry a rapist and murderer?

A man who grew up literally dirt poor. A man who was a criminal drifter. A man she considered in her own words “low class”

How the fuck did they meet and why the fuck were they together?

My parents were from two different worlds. They ran in two different circles. It makes NO SENSE. They make no sense.

The official story is this:

They met through friends.

That’s it. That’s all. No further information was offered. There was no cute story with any details. They met through friends. Full stop. Even as a child I found this weird and as I grew older I pressed for more information. What friends? (My parents barely had any) Where did you meet? “Through friends” is not a location! ” Through friends isn’t even a real answer! Still, their united response was always the same. They never strayed from their story. “Through friends” became almost like a mantra. Eventually, I gave up. The more I pushed, the more vicious their response.

Of course now that I KNOW what I KNOW, their story seems all the more suspicious.

I have a theory.

It’s only a theory but if we allow for Occam’s razor (when one has two competing theories, the simpler explanation is the one to be preferred. ) I’m feeling pretty good about this one.

I think they met in the hospital for the mentally ill.

Essondale/Riverview.

I think my mother was also a patient there.

My father wasn’t granted off grounds rights until June 24th, 1971.

My parents were married, February 2, 1971. Five months before he was granted permission to be off grounds, under supervision.

Hmmmm. Very interesting.

Does the idea of my mother being hospitalized for a mental illness surprise me?

Not at all. Prior to this I was surprised she seemingly hadn’t been, just based on my experiences with her alone.

Of course I have other reasons to think this too, but those stories are for her to tell.

If true, the thing that enrages me is that my mother sat on her high horse, talking shit about a group of vulnerable people while being a part of that same group herself. My mother did real harm with her words. To elevate herself. To distance herself from the truth of who she was, while contributing to the stigma of mental illness in our society. She threw everyone else under the bus to save herself.

Yeah, yeah.. I understand why a person would do such a thing but still. That woman is the worst. Just the worst.

Anyway, that’s my theory. If true, it certainly answers the how. I’ll probably never be satisfied with the why but it would seem to explain it. It’s the simplest explanation after all.

Goodbye 2021

Wow.

This year….

Where to even begin?

I feel like I’ve been smacked back into my body, my spirit, my mind and most definitely into the truth of things. A big ol dose of the way things really are.

This isn’t a bad thing. I’m grateful for it all even if parts of it were a titch traumatic. I’d rather live in clarity, that’s for sure.

I’ve been treated with such grace. With so much open hearted kindness and generosity. With great heaps of comfort and love. With understanding and validation. With acceptance and respect.

Thank you. To everyone who’s been a part of my 2021 journey, a million times a trillion THANK YOU!

I want to be you when I grow up ❤

May 2022 be as amazing as you are.

Take care of your precious hearts and may the love you freely give come back to you tenfold.

Listen

Every year I choose a word( or two, sometimes it’s a phrase) that acts as a compass and guide for the new year.

I don’t put much thought into the process, preferring to allow the word to come to me organically as my subconscious sees fit.

Sometimes I don’t like the word. Like TRUST for instance. Ugh! Trust is hard, especially for a person with a trauma injury.

Sometimes I don’t understand the reasons why a particular word has come bubbling up from the deep. Other times I know exactly why. Through it all and through the years -over five now- I’ve learned to just go with it,regardless. It’s always rewarding in some way and I’ve learned so much from a practice so simple.

This year -2021- my word has been- LISTEN.

This has been the best one yet! Even if it did lead me to some brutal discoveries. I am ever grateful. I learned so much! Not just about the family secret but about where I come from. Who I come from. Who and what I am.  That alone was life altering. In only the best of ways.

I learned about others too and I’ve gained a clarity that I just didn’t have before. The biggest lesson from this year’s word has been this:

In order to listen one needs to shut the hell up.

Ha! Seriously. Quiet down. Settle. Be still.

Then you can listen.

Then you’ve got a better chance of actually hearing!

That was the real challenge.  This monkey mind of mine….it just goes,goes,goes. My mouth does too😁  It’s something I work on every day except now I do so with the knowledge that behind my closed lips and quite mind there lies a real gift.

That which is.

Whatever that may be.❤

What do you hear when you listen?

What word has been helpful to you this year?

F*cked Up Book Club For One – A Bloodstained Hammer.

This is a whole thing.

There’s a book!

A Bloodstained Hammer was written by Allison Townsend and her friend, Brian Seifrit.

Allison Townsend is the daughter of Mr. Townsend and his second wife.

His second wife was the nanny he hired to care for his two boys after my father murdered their mum and sister.

The book is a fictionalized retelling of the murder with facts interspersed throughout thanks to court documents, according to one article I read.

Against good advice and all sense, I bought it 45 seconds after learning it existed:

Yep! I did!

I regret…being born. Ha! Only sometimes.

Ok, joking aside, I regret nothing. It wasn’t so bad and I’m glad I was brave. I learned some things.

It’s definitely a strange thing to hold a book like that in one’s hands. I have no other experiences to compare it to and nobody else that I know has been through this. There is no how to guide for this side of murder.

I think it would be highly inappropriate for this murderer’s daughter to actually review the book like I normally would but I’m cool with sharing my feelings and experience as I read it. Perhaps one day this post will help someone else. Because this? This is a bizarre experience!

Onward we go:

Right away I was disappointed the book is fiction. A true crime account would have been a gift. Nobody owes me anything though. I know that. I’m a person who craves accuracy and clarity. Wanting to know all the details is also a trauma response. All “me problems” . I did find it fairly easy to pick out details that felt like truths buuuuut I can’t know for sure and that’s frustrating. I sure do appreciate the elements gleaned from the court documents because even though this is a work of fiction, I feel closer to something that feels like…settled.

I had a huge physical response to the book. It came into my house and my heart went off! I started unconsciously holding my breath and pacing, ha ha. My body was screaming “DANGER!” at me. I’d pick the book up. I’d put the book down. Again and again and again! I couldn’t stand for it to be in my hands and yet I couldn’t stop touching it! Finally, I just opened to a page and started reading, in dribs and drabs until my heart rate regulated and I was taking normal breaths. I was not expecting all that nonsense!

Once I got the lay of the land so to speak and became comfortable with the authors’ voice, reading it was 🔥”fine”🔥. I knew who it was about but the dialogue was so unlike my father that it was easy to feel like I was reading about someone else even though I knew full well I wasn’t.

I read it in one night. Once I started I couldn’t stop! I was horror bound to the words within. I couldn’t have set the book down if I tried. I’m probably going to have to read it again just to absorb it fully because I just zoomed straight through it!

The authors and I agree: My father was NOT “crazy” and he definitely got away with murder x2. 100% . That was one of my first thoughts when I found out back in March. I’ve been invalidated on this subject before and so I’m pretty fiercely defensive of my stance on this fact. I will die on this fucking hill. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raped and murdered Linda and Eyvon and he knew exactly how to manipulate people into feeling sorry for him and thinking he was mentally ill. Ask me how I know.🙄

In the end, I had some creepy and disturbing realizations about my father and my childhood 😬 Before reading this book I would have said that nothing other than the abuse I knew about had happened to me growing up. Now, I think something different.

I have all the symptoms of a person with repressed trauma. Experienced or witnessed. I don’t know. But my body does. And this is why I regret nothing.

A Bloodstained Hammer helped me finally formulate a million tiny pieces into a single point, with one sentence.

Overall, reading a book about one’s rapist/murderer father’s crime wasn’t as horrible as one might expect. I can’t say it was a pleasant thing to do but it didn’t hurt me to read it. Quite the opposite. It helped and I’m grateful it was written.

If you want to read it too it’s available from many sources online including here.

Thanks for reading about my fucked up book club for one. I appreciate the company! 💚

Murder & Rape. My Father’s Crime.

Today’s the day. 😳

While it’s been four months and twelve days since I learned my father was a vicious murderer and rapist, it’s been sixty two years to the day, since he committed his crime.

At the time of The Knowing, my brain came up with a list of very important tasks to complete. This post is the first of those tasks:

Tell the story. Reveal all. Refuse to be a part of the cover up.

Its not my shame- I know this in my heart! – and yet I feel strongly compelled to do something. Anything, to take a nick out of the wrong. I cannot abide injustice. So. Let me tell you about my father’s crime.

In March of 1959, my father, born Richard Alexander Huculak -You can Google him – was hired on at a farm outside of Trail, BC. He was 25 years old at the time and drifting.

It’s easy for me to see why Mr. Andrew Townsend hired him. Young, strong and experienced he would have made a capable farmhand. He was a quiet person too, the kind of guy who settled into the background. I know from my own experiences that he presented as gentle. Trustworthy. A person who didn’t give much of themselves away yet seemed placid and decent. Not a threat. Mr. Townsend observed him much the same, according to one article.

In addition to running his farm, Mr. Townsend worked nights with a large employer in town. He left for work on the evening of July 29, 1959  leaving his family, wife Violet ( known as Evonne) and three children (two boys and a girl, Linda) at home. In addition to their own kids, the Townsends had a guest that evening. Another child, just a toddler at the time. The house must have felt lively with all those kids.

That same evening my dad, (known then as Dick ), headed into town with a friend and his wife for some drinks.

The party eventually returned to the friend’s house, with a case of beer and another case they purchased from a taxi driver. Later that evening the friend drove Dick- an entirely appropriate name all things considered- back to the Townsend farm.

As July 29 rolled over into July 30, my dad raped Linda Townsend, 8 years old. (Its unknown whether he raped Evonne too, the coroner wasn’t able to find any evidence but that doesn’t mean he didn’t. ) Then, my father picked up a two lb. ball peen hammer and murdered Linda and her mum, Evonne with multiple blows to their heads, while the little neighbor child lay in a crib in the same fucking room.

My dad hid the hammer behind the bed frame of the bed where Linda lay in her mother’s outstretched arm, cleaned the blood off himself, changed clothes, broke into the kid’s piggy banks, went through Evonne’s purse, stealing her money and her car keys too.

He stole the family car, (stopping somewhere along the way to purchase two bottles of Aspirin) and drove across the Nelson toll bridge, before taking the Kootenay Lake ferry to Kootenay Bay. Eventually he abandoned the car in a patch of bushes and started hitchhiking towards Calgary, AB.

As this is all going on, the Townsend kids were waking up to start their day. Hungry and wondering where their mother was they headed for their parent’s bedroom. It was clear right away that something was wrong. The oldest boy-who was only around 5 years old- lifted the littlest child out of the crib and the three of them walked a fair ways to a gas station for help. They brought a neighbor back to the farmhouse and of course that person immediately called the police.

The man hunt for my father was on.

It was one of the biggest man hunts in the area’s history. (Not a point a pride, definitely an event you don’t expect to have attached to your father )

Eventually, Dick was spotted by police officers cruising the highways for him and arrested without incident. Unbeknownst to the officers at the time, immediately prior to his arrest, Dick had swallowed both bottles of the Aspirin he’d picked up earlier and promptly lost consciousness in the back of the patrol car. He was taken to the hospital in neighboring Nelson, where his stomach was pumped. Mr. Townsend, who had been notified by then, was called upon to identify my dad and was able to correctly do so. Once my dad was stable he was released and taken to Castlegar jail where he was held under heavy guard to await trial.

Ooof. 😢

The Townsend family, their friends and neighbors were left to live with the loss and trauma my father inflicted on them while he sat alive in jail, cooking up Act 2.

And what an act it was! I’m the first direct byproduct of that. Conceived and born while my dad was still under the care of the institution he was placed in.

I’m alive today because my father got away with murder. I’m alive today because my mother thought that particular man would be an appropriate and suitable spouse and parent.

Spoiler alert! He wasn’t. Nor was she for that matter, but they were absolutely perfect for each other.

Act Two to follow…

What Will I Find?

In every article I’ve read about taking any of the most common DNA tests available to the public, the refrain is always the same ” You may be opening yourself up to some unexpected hurt”. People tell all kinds of stories from discovering their mother had an affair to learning the fertility clinic used doctor sperm instead of dad’s or an anonymous chosen donor. We’ve all heard those tales! Here’s the thing:

My first family was most fucked up anyway! I’m not really worried about something unexpected hurting me because I expect there will be surprises that may hurt me. That’s just how my family rolls! With that being said here are some things that are wiggling around in my brain as possibilities:

1. My dad is not my dad. I’d be pissed off to have been lied to, to have been forced to live a lie and I’d be heartbroken to learn I wasn’t Metis. Absolutely. I don’t have too many romantic thoughts and feelings left about my dad though so this one isn’t too bad, other than the Metis thing. That one worries me.
2. I unearth another sibling! I already have a half sister, through my mother. ( We don’t talk. She thinks the whole lot of us are “fucked up” which made me laugh and laugh because she thought this was an insult but I’m right there in agreeance with her, ha!) ANYway, I would not be surprised to find out my dad fathered other children. Not one iota. But its ok, its not like there’s an inheritance I have to share or anything. This one might be interesting.
3. I unearth new relatives and unwittingly introduce “bad” people into my life. Now this one…this one is totally valid. I feel like it’d be easy for me to get caught up in the belonging. To idealize and romanticize people and cover my eyes to their true natures. Now, their true natures could just be that they’re human. That’s bad enough! It’d be worse if they were legit monsters.  Something to guard against and prepare for. Shields up 😉
4. My queries and results bring my mother’s family out of the woodwork which brings her out of the woodwork with a vengeance. The woman has stalked me before and tried to stir up shit in my life but eventually she always crawls back under her rock when she doesn’t get a response. I’m hoping that still holds true but one never knows. I’ve learned I can never let my guard down when it comes to her. My original plan was to put off the DNA test until she’d died but fuck that! I’m prepared and protected. I am a force of nature after all.
5. (This one is my favourite); My mother turns out to not be my mother! I’d have this fantasy for quite some time. Either, my parents adopted me OR my dad knocked up some chick and my mother agreed to take the baby and raise it. It would explain why my mother hated me so much…and why I don’t look anything like my sister. In the first option I’d lose my connection to my identity but who can say…it might be worth it? In the second scenario, I’d win all around! And it would explain SO much.
6. I find out nothing new or extraordinary and I waste my money on a fruitless endeavor. Gah! This one might actually be the worst! Not so much the money wasted but an anticlimactic ending would mean I’ve been imagining family secrets and creating whole narratives out of thin air. I’d be wrong. The HORROR! Hehehehe.

Time will tell! 🤷‍♀️

The Unknown

I know almost nothing about my dad’s family save for a few unconfirmed odds and ends. None of this information leads to anywhere useful and I find myself unable to just not know. I’ve always been nosy lady!

I can go back to 1790 something on my mother’s side, in Sweden of all places. I can go back to 1700 something on my husband’s side, in England. But I can’t find anything, not one tiny little thing on my Metis family here in Canada? That’s just not right. So I’m going to make it right!

My dad had a rough life and talking about his past and his family was difficult and traumatizing for him. I think he had a lot of shame about who he was and there were some family problems too. The story goes that he left home by throwing a chair at his mother before walking out the door.

Why would he do such a thing? Welllll, according to legend, my dad caught his mother in bed with another man, pulled a gun on the two of them and was sent to the local residential school/orphanage as punishment.

Eeeesh.

He’s dead and gone now but my desire to know is not!  Lucky for me I’ve learned that I can obtain his death certificate, and apply to get his birth certificate which should have his parents information too.  I’m definitely going to do that!

I’ve got a few potential roadblocks to get through though. My dad’s paternal biological contributor wasn’t in his life and my dad was either born under a different name or had it changed when his mother married. That may cause some problems. I do have a name for his bio contributor so maybe not? I guess we’ll see!

There is also reason to believe that he and my mother took one of her family names as their own last name when they married so there’s some monkey wrenches to navigate there too! Ugh!This is why I’ve done a thing…

Eeeek! I’m so nervous! A DNA test!

It’s taken me three months to work up the courage to do this. I’m not so much worried about unearthing the dead as I am the living. I’ve got family members I’d prefer to keep in the graves I’ve dug for them.

Metaphorically speaking of course.

I wonder who’s out there? I wonder what’s going to turn up? 🤷‍♀️ Stay tuned to find out!

Spring Ellle

My name is Ellle. A play on the first letter of my real name -ooooh so mysterious! I’m in my late 40s, use she/they pronouns and am a bit of a dork.

I swear a lot depending on my mood and often act like a little kid. I’m pretty young at heart: coughcough-its-probably–the-trauma-and-arrested-development-coughcough. But considering I hang out with two of my little loves five days a week, it’s no wonder!

The theme of things here will evolve and develop seasonally with me. (Hence the name) I’m probably consistent in some places but honestly I’m rarely in the same mood/mental space twice so I think it’s best if I just flow and glide and write from myself as myself whoever that may be. I’m strongly influenced by the natural world and trying to fight that never ends well! ( Winter Ellle is a trip)

Spring Ellle is bright,hopeful, inspired and full of motivation!

The longer,warmer days and melting snow leaves me feeling like I’ve taken a party drug so expect lots of enthusiasm and what some of you might call weirdness.

A few other things:

BLM,ACAB, LGBTQ2S friendly,firmly on the Left,pro abortion- the same way I’m pro healthcare of any kind, neurodivergent,  intersectional feminist, Anti religion, science minded witchy chick.

Science IS Magic.

I’m also a meme queen 😁 and have a silly,dark sense of humour.

If anything above offends you or fills your heart and mind with a strong and raging heat then you probably won’t be comfortable here. That’s OK!

If you choose to stay and can ” be cool”…

Welcome! I’m so happy you’re here and it’s an absolute delight to meet you! 💚