Margo Talbot - All That Glitters

To my parents, Frank and Sheila,
for giving me the gift of life, and for doing the best they could given the resources they had.

To Karen McNeill,
for seeing the good in me before I saw it in myself, and for helping me realize that my life was worth living.

To Warren Macdonald,
for showing me that I had wings, and could fly.

The Alchemy of Grief

Although I knew the broad contours of Margos story the troubled childhood, the bouts with addiction and depression, the redemption through climbing and community I didnt fully appreciate her book prior to my own experience with indelible grief. Yet the cause of an individuals suffering need not be as dramatic and obvious as the abuse and addiction Margo depicts. Smaller disappointments and slights too can leave us reeling. Perhaps therein lies the value of Margos words, for they reveal certain truths universal to our varied experiences as imperfect human beings facing an uncertain world.

Each of us travels a unique path punctuated by joy and sorrow, triumphs and setbacks both large and small. We gravitate toward joy, as we must. We seek the warmth of a loving partner, the comfort of family and friends. We celebrate our successes at work. We delight in those magical moments in the mountains or wherever we play. But we are conditioned to avoid the sorrows. Pain is seen as failure, an unnecessary step backwards. Suffering is to be avoided, shunted off to some dark corner where we hope it will stay. It seldom does.

Who among us hasnt lost a spouse, a parent, a close friend? Who hasnt been disappointed in love, or devastated by a life-altering illness? If we havent thus far, we likely will, and sooner than wed prefer. Someone within our circle almost certainly tolerates a loveless marriage, agonizes over an ailing parent, regrets a lost opportunity. How are you doing? We ask, though we dont really want to know the answer. We shy away from acknowledging each others struggles, from offering a sympathetic shoulder on which to rest. We hope to inoculate ourselves. There but for the grace of God go I. Yet when we turn away, we not only dismiss that which makes us uncomfortable, we deny our own suffering and allow it an unseen power over our lives.

With a direct and brutal honesty, Margo peers deeply into her dark corners and takes us along on her journey to peace and enlightenment. She reminds us that the path is seldom straight and never easy. She knowingly engages in self-destructive behaviour, yet time and time again resurfaces and recommits herself to healing. She never gives up: she takes two steps forward and three back. She does the work. Eventually she falls into the abyss that had been waiting for me all my life. From this nadir she rekindles hope and climbs back toward the light.

As we all inevitably must. In October 2017, my wife Julie and I found out that our only son, Hayden, and the love of his life, Inge Perkins, had been caught in an avalanche in Montana. Both were buried. Hayden dug himself out and searched for Inge, to no avail. He took his life a few hours later, disconsolate and alone. Since then Ive felt unmoored from the world. It is still incomprehensible to me that Haydens life, so full of love and promise, is over, and I wonder when, if ever, the weight on my soul will lessen.

Margos words give me hope as I navigate this river of grief. She provides a guidebook to the wilderness of desperation. More than anything, All That Glitters helps me understand how essential are these periods of sadness, these disappointments, these times fraught with angst and uncertainty, for it is on the forge of grief that we transmute suffering into joy.

Michael Kennedy, October 2019

When this book was originally released in the spring of 2011, the Arab uprising was in full swing, the hunt for Bin Laden had come to an end and Donald Trump was just a hotel owner/reality TV host.

In the fifteen months it took me to write this book, I told myself I would never publish it, after all, the topics I cover are loaded with stigma and in some cases surrounded by a conspiracy of silence. But when the manuscript was ready, I pressed send and felt a wave of relief that I had taken control of my personal narrative for the first time in my life. The judgment I feared never materialized, but support, encouragement and validation did.

In the intervening years since its publication, Ive watched study after study come out in support of what my lived experience had already confirmed: that mental illness is rooted in the seat of the emotions, that it is inextricably intertwined with stressful events that happen in our lives, and that the treatment is far more complex than a prescription of talk therapy and pharmaceutical drugs.

In fact, the prescription is more closely related to mountain sports (i.e. activities that bring us into the present moment and ground us in our bodies) than I ever could have imagined when I was introduced to ice climbing while I was still addicted to street drugs. Since my book was released, nature bathing and wilderness therapy have sprung up as healing modalities in their own right. Doctors in Scotland now prescribe nature as a cure for many ills, and movement is scientifically proven to be the most natural and safe means of elevating the level of neurotransmitters in the brain. All this to say that far from discovering anything new, I had inadvertently stumbled upon something as age-old as humanity itself.

The genesis of this book occurred in the Mountain and Wilderness Writing Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I had gone there to write a book about the tragic loss of a climbing partner, and instead emerged with the bones of an inner journey so personal I wasnt sure I could ever share it with the world.

I will forever be grateful to Diane Morriss at Sono Nis Press for taking my project on and allowing me to retain control over a very personal story. When her warehouse burned down and she gave me back the rights to my book, the only solution seemed to be to self-publish under my own banner.

Until I met Don Gorman at Rocky Mountain Books and felt the same level of trust that I had with Diane.

The book you are holding in your hands has a history befitting the journey described in these pages: it has literally risen from the ashes and been reborn.

Margo Talbot

November 2019

Canmore, Alberta

I would like to thank all of my psychologists, psychiatrists, and clinical social workers, particularly Elaine Spencer, who seemed to understand me as though she had lived my life. Everyone mentioned in this book, whether they appear as saints or sinners, helped me grow in ways I never would have had I not encountered them in the exact form and at the exact time that I did. Though certain names have been changed and circumstances altered to protect certain people, they are forever imprinted on my soul for their contributions to the person I have become.

Life has been my greatest teacher, aided and abetted by the best minds in trauma healing and spiritual transformation: Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Mat, Eckhart Tolle, and Caroline Myss.

Thanks to Rocky Mountain Books for giving my memoir its second wind. If my book ever gets judged by its cover, Paul Zizka gets the credit for gracing the world with unparalleled mountain photography, and Chyla Cardinal for turning his image into a cover more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.

Special thanks goes out to Ken Wallator, who lost his battle with darkness, but gave me the gift that keeps on giving

The Stage

As I stood on top of Mount Vinson, the highest peak in Antarctica, I was overcome by a sense of inner joy. It was February 2006a lifetime away from what I now realize was the turning point in my life. As I watched Rob, my client and climbing partner, take photos from the summit, my mind drifted back to March 1992.