#62: Christine Bird

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Christine Bird is the Community Engagement Coordinator at the University Of Waterloo School Of Pharmacy. She describes her role helping students think about better serving vulnerable populations and shares  challenges working from home over the lock-downs. She talks about how she became known as “the bully lady” when she was speaking to grade-school kids in her work for John Howard Society and we touch on her work with people who’d been convicted of DUI and strategies around alcohol. She shares the challenge of her experience of being a college professor with a 2 year old at home and how her roles have organically evolved from working to improve kid’s lives directly to more of a systems level. She reminisces about playing music with the late Matt Osborne and talks about losing her husband and how having a young son at home at that time was an incredible gift.

“How do you get through losing your husband? You have a five-year-old who needs you to get out of bed, make breakfast, and sort of keeps you going. I don't know how you do that when you don't have a little one kind of pulling you out of it. He pulls you out of your head and back into the stuff that has to get done right now. It doesn't matter how upset or depressed or sad you are, you still gotta make pancakes. It's kind of the 'fake it till you make it'. It's like he pulls you out and makes you live your life and go through the motions of just the stuff you have to do to carry on. And that act alone helps you to carry on. Kids are good that way: They bring you into the moment, whether you want to or not.”

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