The Poisoning
In April 2024 I had surgery to amputate a couple of toes. The surgery was clean. The meds were not. Canada got rid of lead pharmaceutical oversight, so a database played doctor and crashed my medications together. Cymbalta, which I had only been on for six weeks, and hydromorphone. The mix poisoned my brain. I am lucky I lived.
Because of the brain confusion, all I could do was breathwork. I had to crawl to the bathroom because I kept face planting. One time I got stuck on a busy street in downtown Toronto and had to breathe for a few minutes before I could stand up again. I looked ridiculous, but I knew what to do and it worked.
The Fall and the Fight
As the fog lifted a couple of months later, I got back on my yoga mat. I kept falling. Tremors ran up my face and into my right eye. They still come sometimes but not nearly as bad. I cried through every pose, scared I was broken forever.
As a contract worker with no benefits and nearly 60 years old, it felt like a death sentence. Every day I made a deal with myself to just breathe. And it worked. I want to live now, but I did not back then. I hated what my life had become. I hated who I was. I hated everything. I was full of hate and breath.
Breathwork and Survival Instincts
Kundalini Breathwork works. I started to believe in myself. Kind of. Little flickers. Glimpses of a future that did not include me living in my car, fighting to keep my winter coat. Yes, I was catastrophizing. Not because of brain injury, but because my highly evolved instinct to leap to the worst case and prepare for battle is the reason I made it past 25. Starting at age three, my days were built on navigating child sexual violence. My ability to not trust, to look for danger, to get creative, to think on my feet and move like a cheetah came from courage and raw survival.
The Seizures and the Madness
More breathwork. Oh yes, prior to working in higher education, I had been a project manager for 14 years. I literally forgot. It flipped me right out when I realised how the brain works and that I was figuring this out alone in my apartment, other than the yoga studio and my nature walk. That walk at first took 45 minutes to reach a lilac bush down the street. Normally a four-minute stroll. One time I had to crawl back. The tremors or seizures or whatever the medical establishment wants to call them knocked me flat with no warning. Later I worked out that they came fast and fierce if an ambulance or fire truck tore past with flashing lights. Even an advanced green traffic light made my right eye shiver.
I did not have a therapist or anyone to help me sort this madness out. And yes, it was madness. I thought I had gone mad and that I would end up sleeping on a park bench eating pigeons, and that at my funeral people who once knew me would gather and say I had lost my marbles and was finally at peace. Fuck that. I am not going down without a fight. Marbled out or not, I can still do something.
The Hospital Wake Up
The day I ended up in Michael Garron Hospital Emergency began with a face plant getting out of the tub. A black veil dropped over my eyes and sent me into a full panic attack. I could not remember my own address. I handed two pill bottles to the attending doctor, a man who had gone to medical school decades before AI started telling medical teams what to do, and he ran to fetch the psychiatrist.
Her first words were, “We never combine Cymbalta and hydromorphone. They are a dangerous combination. You are lucky to be here.”
She gave me a second antidepressant and insisted I wean off slowly or risk even more danger. I listened. I also noticed she was not looking anything up. She was actually using her own mind.
In that moment I knew I had to handle this myself. I had to lean into my old habit of trusting no one. Do the research. Sit it out. So I did.
And to the second psychiatrist at CAMH, the one who “assessed” me for less than 20-minutes and then had me arrested when I showed up asking how to safely taper off the Cymbalta poison after Michael Garron bumped my follow-up a full month and told me to go to an ER for more of the second medication, let me be clear:
Fuck you, stupid student doctor.
You made me unwrap my bandages to prove my toes were actually gone and then you sat there watching me fumble with two pathetic pieces of tape your nurse tossed at me. I couldn’t tell if Health Canada was on a clearance sale or if you truly believed I might MacGyver the tape into a weapon. I kept asking for help and you just sat there, eyes glued to me like I was the evening’s entertainment. It was cruel. It was also the beginning of our cute little “getting to know each other” moment.
You wrote in my report that I had delusions of grandeur because I said I was a social justice advocate and because you did not like my colourful attire.
Who taught you that garbage?
Who taught you to roll your eyes at someone when they say they have a master’s degree?
Does the University of Toronto, where you attend school, not teach you how to hold your face and your eyeballs like you actually feel compassion for your patients?
If not, enroll in acting classes. Or at the very least, get a good night’s sleep so you can pretend to not be bored.
I have a master’s degree in Social Justice. More importantly, I have been fighting for justice on the pavement long before you were even born.
And colourful clothes? Please. What is that even supposed to mean? Did it ever occur to you that people who are struggling to feel good about themselves wear bright colours to cheer themselves up? How do you feel when you’re looking at colourful flowers on a sunny day — do you classify them as nuts too?
So let me get this straight — I was supposed to wear beige. Because beige is the only acceptable colour, right? The perfect shade of “I have just enough money to be let into the club, but absolutely no personality.” Beige, the uniform of the herd. The people who never take risks, never speak up, never show up. The ones with no opinions and, let’s be honest, no taste.
Was I supposed to drape myself head-to-toe in beige to calm you down? Would that have magically made me “sane” in your eyes?
Beige — the colour of safety, silence, and settling. Sorry, but I’ll pass.
My advice to that narrow-minded fool: stop treating the Psychiatric Mental Status Exam as a rulebook for how people ought to dress. If you can’t combine your education with basic awareness and compassion, then quit school and go live a real life. You’re training yourself into stupidity. Run for your life. Your future patients need you to be helpful, not harmful.
But if you choose to stay in psychiatry school and practice in the Western world that moves through its day soaked in White Supremacy ideologies, here is a tip you will find invaluable: the only difference between being called eccentric and being called weird is money.
And here is tip number two, because I do actually care about how the younger generation will survive and thrive, you included. Read the book titled Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters. It will help you begin to understand the money trap, the underbelly of the mental health industry you are working in.
Rebuilding Memory
I have attended countless lectures and delivered many myself. One thing I could still do was try to exercise my memory. It rattled me that I could not remember my own address. I had even insisted I still lived in the house I sold 20 years ago. Maybe it was because it was the longest I had ever lived anywhere, 11 years. The funny part is that those were the happiest years of my life. My daughter still calls it her childhood home.
I decided to list every address I had ever lived at. For context, by age 30 I had lived in 52 places, attended 18 schools and held 46 jobs. Now at 59 I needed a very long piece of paper. More breathwork. I bought a whiteboard. Too small. I needed the whole stream in front of me. My walls were not an option. I love my little apartment and how I have decorated it. Oh, you will find even more colour on those walls. Maybe I am insane after all. It is my sanctuary. More breathwork. I can do this. I am creative. Even with a broken brain.
The Reinvention
LinkedIn. I had literally forgotten that I had taught more than 1000 people how to turn that platform into a personal billboard.
I could not do this with my 7000 contacts though. I was too ashamed of my circumstances. I did not understand them well enough to explain them. I was questioning my sanity. I did not want to broadcast my chaos to my professional world. I relied on LinkedIn for work. I had lectured internationally because of my investment in it. What now. More breathwork. Oh. I can delete my profile. Wipe the slate clean and start again. Extreme, yes. I did it.
The Body Memories
At this stage of my life, I was also experiencing body memories for the first time. Not only physical but audio. I could feel my father raping me. I could hear him whisper in my ear, Am I hurting you Sally, while he raped me. Not a fantasy. Not a metaphor. It happened on Christmas Eve when I was 12, and since the clock had passed midnight it was technically Christmas. Yes, I hate Christmas now. Not because I hate Jesus. I think he is cool actually. I hate the memory of that night.
The New Name
What now. I remembered that my adult daughter dropped my last name years ago. It hurt but I understood. Her father’s name gave her pride. My last name carried child sexual violence. Of course I wanted her to drop my family name. I wanted to as well, but I did not have the courage yet.
Now I had it. Courage, determination and a sense of urgency. Mix in some motivation and I get things done.
I started researching names. I did more breathwork. I looked at family photos. Mostly I cried. I was estranged from almost everyone. The ones who loved me were dead. I picked up my grandmother’s photo. She always called me Sunshine. I said Sunshine out loud. My heart heated up. I felt her warmth wrap me. Sunshine. But Sunshine alone felt too flaky. I am a hippy punk rocker girl who loves power suits. Red ones. I like to feel in control. Try messing with a woman in a red power suit. Go ahead.
More breathwork. More research. Who am I. I am 40% Scottish. What do the Celts call sunshine. Ghrian, pronounced gree un. I listened on YouTube. Beautiful songs. All singing to Ghrian. The pagans believed the sun and the moon were sisters. I loved it. What do they call shine. Shleamhnaich. I could not get my mouth around it. Even without brain damage I would struggle, and I doubt many in Scotland could say it either. Well I am 35% English. I can say Shine. So can everyone else. I decided. My name is Ghrian Shine. I love it. It is legal now. The Canadian government loves it too. Ghrian Shine can now have a LinkedIn account.
The Long Work Back
I did not want any contacts. I wanted a place to track my residences, schools and work. I started working at 10. The list was long. I put everything in. I relearned screenshots. I built the whole map.
My OCD helped. I worked 12-hour days for 14 days straight. Other than breathwork, food and a bit of sleep. Some days it took 15-minutes to remember to turn the stove on when the eggs were not frying. What a journey.
One of my degrees is in Career Education. I would never tell anyone seeking work to list every job since 1975 or every failed attempt at high school. I got my diploma in my 30s, and even though I have multiple degrees now, that high school diploma is still my proudest moment in formal education. Hands down.
But this was not about employment. This was about finding myself. I was in there somewhere. I needed to list it all to see it. I am crying now as I write this. Proud tears. The tears you shed when you have prevailed. When you have clawed your way back.
Eventually I removed the places lived. I kept the jobs and the education. Why. Because since this brain injury business I have realised how precious life is. How precious I am. How do I honour that. Here is one way. I will not work for anyone who does not appreciate me. All of me. I will not work for anyone who cannot see the value in my lived experience. The good. The bad. The ugly. Every part made me who I am. And I will work again. Maybe cleaning houses. Maybe writing. Maybe advocating to end child sexual violence. But I will work again. And my LinkedIn profile will carry the truth of my journey.
The Rise and the 500
On October 4, 2025 I published my book. Another reason I needed the list. Writing became a healing modality I never expected. To write my memoir, I had to remember when and where. The why I never forgot.
On Oct. 4th I started sending out invitations to connect. Today I am proud to say I have reached 500 plus connections. Not random people. Strategic ones. People who want to collaborate, support and fight to end child sexual violence through education, justice and love.
There are many of us. People who are not parasites feeding off survivors, but who truly in mind, body and soul want to end this crime against humanity. To borrow the words of Andrea Skinner, daughter of Nobel Laureate Alice Munro and survivor advocate whose courage sparked a global conversation when she endorsed my book, “Child sexual violence is the original war—the war against children.”
We are warriors. Together we heal. Together we fight to end child sexual violence with education, justice and love.
Thank you 500. We are going to change the world. With courage and determination, we are going to shine. We are already shining. Darkness cannot prevail when light shows up. That light has its own universal language. It is love.
Thank you for reading my shares. You witness me and I am no longer alone. Shine on my friend ❤️🔆.