Au Parloir - Épisode #92 - Isa-belle St-Sauveur

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Dans cet épisode, je reçois Isa-belle St-Sauveur, dès l'âge de 16 ans se retrouve dans la rue et devient «junkie», débute la consommation, est victime de violence et se retrouve dans un système de pr0stitu1on, pendant plus de 6 ans! Réinsertion & re-chute s'en suivent pour finalement, se terminer avec une histoire d'espoir! À ÉCOUTER! Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Why choose the quick delivery Instacart for your grocery store? Because without mustard in the old days, your famous mustard potato salad in the old days may be less famous. Because you forgot the steaks, the barbecue is on, and your parents decide that finally, they stay to eat. No matter your reasons, Instacart is there. Download the mobile app,

receive your order in as little as 60 minutes and enjoy the delivery at $0 on your first three orders. Exclusion service fees and conditions apply. Instacart, your grocery on the line. Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of the podcast. If you want to support the podcast, the best way façon, c'est le triple w.patrion.com slash auparloir. C'est un site payant, mais où tu as accès aux épisodes six semaines à l'avance et pendant les six premières

semaines, si tu l'écoutes en vidéo, ben il y a aucune pub YouTube. Et justement, le YouTube, si t'es pas abonné à la chaîne, ben abonne-toi. Si t'as aimé l'épisode, laisse un petit like, un petit commentaire, partage-le sur tes réseaux, ça va te prendre deux secondes, pour me it makes a big difference. Otherwise, there is cedrichibergeron.com, which is my website where you will have access to all my social media, to the merch at the parlor, we have t-shirts, hoodies, and to everything that is related to my career as a humorist, so the showsacles à venir, les billets, être chez t'es heureux. Aujourd'hui, Isabelle Saint-Sauveur, Isabelle Autriste de deux romans qui relate sa vie. Donc on a L'Enfer d'une fille de rue qui est son premier roman qui est pas fantastique,

ça raconte son histoire. Et t'as le début du calvaire d'une jeune femme qui explique justement le premièrement pourquoi comment elle s'est rendue là. C'est super intéressant, écoute, à l'âge de 16 ans, en fait ça commence même à 14, 14, elle fuit, elle rencontre quelqu'un, elle se retrouve en centre d'accueil, à 16 ans someone, she finds herself in a shelter center at 16, she leaves the shelter center. It takes six months to go to a girl who leaves a shelter center, who is going to live with her father, to become an itinerant junkie. Six months at the age of 16. First shot, first fix, first client. It was instantaneous. The first fix was free. She asked how much it cost. We told her 20 dollars. Then we explained to her that quickly, if she went to the corner of the street, the 20 dollars would be easy to do.

It took six years to do. There was a reinsertion, there was a lot of re-insertion, a lot of reshuffling. And it ends with a beautiful story that could have ended badly. An important and especially very interesting podcast. Once again, I repeat, I don't necessarily endorse gestures, ideologies, or the terms used by my guests, but I am a person who takes the freedom of expression. I like frank people who speak with their hearts. Welcome to the parlor.

Today's episode is, among other things, a presentation of the new energy drinks Spark. Do you want to stay focused, see the sound, hear the colors, but stay alert? Well, Spark is the solution. In fact, it's a revolution in the field of brews with the Zoom XR technology, which is a slow-release caffeine. What does that do? It means that when you finish your can,

you won't have the heart to debate, and you'll be focused all day, because the caffeine will go into your system all day long. They didn't add sugar, they didn't add coloring. What did they add? Well, love, minerals and vitamins. It's a Quebec product made at home, for the world of home, for the world of home.

Available in all health shops throughout Quebec. At shopcentre.ca or at sparkenergydrink.com Isabel, finally. Yes. It's not the first time we're trying. You're really not from the region. We're in the big region of Montreal. You're from the Gaspésie. So the last time we were in the city, you were coming back from a trip.

I'm pretty tired. Pretty tired, so that's it. We reported. Now you're in town for the week, so we jumped on the opportunity. First, thank you for being there. I think you have a big journey ahead of you. You have a lot to say. The proof is that I mentioned it in my intro. There are two books.

A third one, one day? Yes. It won't be me. It will be other women with inspiring paths. Perfect. We like that. We like that. We'll talk about it later. Maybe not for our first, but not our last meeting. Who knows? So I'm going to do it with you, like I do with all my guests. We start from the beginning. We start from the base. Isabelle, where were you born? What kind of family? And we're going through this until today. Hi, my name is Isabelle Saint-Sauveur and I was born in Saint-Sauveur. So that makes people laugh. I grew up in the South of Montreal.

I grew up in a very modest environment, I would say, financial aid poverty of last resort. My mother was one of the first divorced people in the early 80s. We had a lot of money in the neighborhood where we lived in Chateauguay. It was difficult, this end of my life, it started difficult, let's say, with financial poverty, but also the difficulty of socializing because we were in a beautiful neighborhood, but we lived in a social environment, so we didn't avoid hanging out with friends. Ok, so you were kind of the exclusion of the neighborhood. Yes, I quickly realized that I wasn't like the others. It was...

It was difficult because I didn't know what I wasn't like the others. You know, when I was 5, 8, 10 years old, I didn't know. My mother lived in the social sector. I understood that later as an adult. But when I was a child, all I wanted was to play with the others in school. And I didn't understand why I had never chosen to play with the others in school. I didn't understand why I never chose to play football. I was super good, but it made me want to perform and do more. I was much more... To be noticed...

Well, to be seen, to be interesting somewhere. And finally I became good at school, which didn't help at all to make friends with me because I was the teacher's pet. That's ironic, huh? You're good in sports, you're popular, but if you're bad at school, you're good at school, you're not popular.

I'm like, eh, you know. Most people who are good at school, in sports, huh? It's like, oh, later. Rarely those who become good people. I generalize, but it's just that I find it crazy how nature is made of young people. And then, listen, I was there too. I was not a child better than the others, far from it. Well, I think that when you're a child, everything that's different, you don't understand it. So we regroup with what we understand and that it's the same as us.

And I wasn't the same, and I'm still not the same today. It's correct, it's false. Sheep and all that. When I see, sometimes, just, you know, streets, you go into a street, a new building, and you have to look at your address to find your house, because the houses look alike.

I like that when it clashes. I never want to be a different human being from the others. I think it's a quality in itself. You say a lot, my mother lived to be a social worker, so my mother, do you have that? It's my first divorce. Did you have a relationship with your father at that time? Well, yes, very little. About two weeks a week when he can.

He worked a lot to pay his food expenses. So he was there. Okay. We had been like... There was just with my father that we did activities that we went to the ronde or the aquarium. You know, he took a lot of time to make us discover life. Because he was financially more comfortable than your mother.

And you tried to take it back a little bit, because you were a kid, a week or two. You wanted to do that especially. I saw that too. The activities I did were more often... I know it's the opposite, but it was with my mother, because my father was in the police. It was with my mother.

I went to the movies. But with my mother, I was all alone. With my father, we were three. So, you know, I was sure that I had all the attention, at least one weekend out of two, I was the prince. So, the primary school, does it still go well? Well, yes, no. That is to say that when I entered high school, I told myself that there would be no one to push me into the classroom anymore. So I became tougher. I wanted to be tougher than tough people. I entered the cadets and I did the introduction with the H and the P. There were more Hs in the back. But it was like, OK, they were hanging out in the woods.

It was more of my vibe, basically, to build cabins, to be in the woods. It was more Tom Boy than the little girl in the pink ribbon. I was a gang guy. So I didn't ask myself two questions. There was a joint that went through and I smoked with them. I really... I tripped the first day I smoked. It was like... I felt more lightness.

While at home, it was heavy. I didn't have many friends. So, I went to high school. I felt that, OK, it can be fun. I can have fun. We can have fun. We played Dungeon & Dragons on Hunnill. It was all fantastic.

It was very, very, very imaginative. So I finally felt like a gang guy, but I had friends, and it worked. And then one year later, my mother told me that we were moving from Chateaugui to Valléeville, which is like an hour away from there. And that was like the crash with my mother, to say, but it's not possible that you're breaking up with my friends. It's the first time in my life that I had friends. I'm 14 years old and you're breaking up with me. It was like... You're starting to train yourself, to train your circle.

Because often, that's what I explain to my daughters, who are old, who are in Manille. I'm like, your friends from elementary school, it's not important. Oh, but we weren't friends anymore today. When you go to high school, it's secondary, but we weren't friends anymore today. When are you going to be friends? It's secondary, you're going to make real friends. I know, but that's it. You're training yourself.

You're forging your character. You're forging who you are. I found my place in the world, and then she told me, no, we're leaving. So, when I got to Vallifil, I got myself together. It looks like we were getting along quickly. I found myself with more Tanah than when I was in Chateauguay. It started to get a little hot.

What do you mean? I didn't want to be good at school anymore because my friends thought I was a good teacher. I started to send my teachers to my school, to ridicing my English teacher because I spoke better English than him. So everyone in class laughed. I understood that I could have an impact, I could make the world laugh, that I could be more than just the little girl in the back of the class that no one wants to talk to.

So I kind of drove on that feeling that people love me and that people love me. You find it cool. Yeah, that's it. I made you cool. I could send people to walk around. And I realize that having a reputation of cool needs to feed itself. So you have to go a little further than the old time. So we start to make the toilets overflow cool, bien, il faut que ça se nourrisse, tu sais, fait qu'il faut tout le temps que tu vas un petit peu plus loin que la fois d'avant, tu sais,

fait qu'on commence à faire déborder toilettes, toilettes de filles, commence à mettre le feu dans les poubelles. Toute sorte de nièzerie de petite fille de sa grandeur à deux, là, qui veut juste se faire remarquer, puis je me fais expulser de l'école à la semaine de relâche, parce que même le directeur sait plus quoi faire avec moi, de toutes mes réactions, puis mes attitudes, puis dans le fond, tout ce que j'ai de besoin, I'm not a watchmaker because even the director doesn't know what to do with me. All my reactions and attitudes, basically everything I need is this love of people and this recognition where I really feel like I have my place in the world, unlike all my primaries. And there are joints that continue to fume at the work of that? Yes, and it's stayed pretty much until I was 16. But it really, the gap was made not long after I got expelled from school.

I was 14, I met a 19-year-old guy, and he was punk, he was handsome, he told me he loved me. So I was ready to live with love and fresh water. Literally, we lived in a one and a half, no sheets on the bed, so it's ready in October. Your mother let you go? No, no, no. I left without saying anything. I didn't even know it was a fugue.

For me, it was just like, I don't want to be at home anymore, I want to be with him. I emancipate. Emancipate. Yeah, that's it. I'm like emancipated it's said emancipate, it's said too. It must be mixed. Otherwise, we just created something.

And for you, you become an adult. In your head, my life as a woman begins at 14. Yes, I'm in love and I want to take care of him and he takes care of me. And finally, we start stealing a car from a contractor, and stealing gasoline from Valais-Fils to Saint-Pascal-de-Camour-Azucar. That's in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, near the River Douloux. And then we get arrested at a certain gas station. And there's a policeman, you know make me realize the gravity of the situation.

I just love Pierre, and I am Pierre. And he brings me to see him. So, since he's an adult, he's held behind bars, you know, and really the door is rolling down in bars. And I'm in a office, so I'm a minor. And he brings me to see him and he said, Look, if you keep going in that direction, you'll end up behind bars one day. And it just fed my teenage romanticism.

I was like Romeo and Juliet, a love that can't be helped. There was a movie in my head that had no sense. It was my first night at the reception center. It was the continuation of that episode. They sent some transporters to get me at the police station. I ended up in an old prison in Quebec that I don't remember the name of. D'Youville, cause D'Youville. Puis j'ai passé ma première nuit en centre d'accueil après ça parce que là j'étais devenue une délinquante incontrôlable qui clairement avait pas l'intention d'arrêter. Première nuit que tu as du rigoler combien de temps?

Deux ans. Ta mère, t'as-tu des nouvelles, elle vient-tu te voir, elle sait-tu de venir te chercher? Est-ce qu'il... Elle pouvait pas. Did your mother have any news? Did she come to see you? Did she try to come and get you? She couldn't. Or your father? Or someone else? My father was present during the placement. My mother, I think, was in a serious depression. She lost control of the situation of her children. She didn't have the means to do means anymore because youth centers work by land. So I was placed in Saint-Thiasain, which is a happy valley of wires.

No vehicles, no money to go. So we signed voluntary measures for 30 days and then it didn't end. You go to class and it's always reset. Unfortunately, the first one who talks to me about voluntary measures for 30 days or a year, I had one who said to me, I signed for a year and then I wanted to return and she had the good surprise that it made me say no. It fucks you up. Yes know, today as an adult, with hindsight, I understand that I needed to be stopped. But at that moment, what I feel is abandonment.

It's like, you know, my parents don't like me so much that they're going to leave me there in a shelter where I'm forced to live with 11 other girls, you know. Twelve teenagers, harmonized, it's not great. How does it happen from 14 to 16 in a shelter? It's being exposed to girls who have psychiatric problems and who open their wrists when they take a shower. There was one who would regularly go into isolation, les poignets à l'heure des douches. Il y en avait une qui se ramassait en isolement régulièrement,

fait que de voir des gardes de sécurité venir faire des contention à une petite fille de 13-14 ans. Il y a tout un univers que tu t'imagines pas que ça existe, tu sais, quand j'avais 14 ans puis que j'allais à l'école avant d'être placé, là, j'avais pas d'autres soucis que ça dans ma vie, là. and I went to school before being placed there, I had no other worries than that in my life. A caravan and a Valefield, you know, you're still, you're still in a little cocoon, you know, pretty comfortable, let's say. That's right. I've never really been exposed to violence.

And now I'm in a shelter center, and now I'm exposed to violence, I'm exposed to behaviors of other people that I don't understand, and that I don't know what I'm doing there behaviors of other people that I don't understand, and I don't know what I'm doing there. And the educators who tried to tell me that I had behavior problems because I was in reaction, because I hadn't learned to express myself, neither needs nor limits, well, I don't know what it is to be in reaction.

So there's like all the vocabulary of the adults who talk to me and say, hey, don't you take us for fools? You're brilliant, stop messing with us. I may be brilliant at school, but I don't know what you expect from me. You don't have the emotional intelligence to understand what's going on. Zero and a bar, because we our country, there was no emotion. It didn't express itself in our country. During those two years, did he have a runaway and a conso? A lot. Pierre came out of prison and came to the shelter.

I saved myself. I ran away two or three times. They put me in the safe because at at first I was in the open, so the door wasn't locked. They put me in the safe, so I couldn't get out. When we went outside, there were barbed wire over the door. It's like a school, there are barbed wire over the door. It's like a... a cut with the outside world.

And I really felt like impression that everything that existed was from those years, from the center of welcome, and that I would never get out of there, because I understood that I had to do what they asked me to do to get out, but what they asked me, I didn't understand. And that was to learn to express myself instead of being in reaction and then explode everything that didn't do my job or that I felt threatened. I'd like to ask you a question about Pierre. I don't know if that's his real name. I don't know if you're up to it. We'll keep Pierre in mind.

You said last year, I love him, I take care of him, he takes care of me. 19, 14, are her intentions real? Are they good? No, today I know. And the first time I was exposed to conjugal violence was with Pierre. I had blonde hair, he didn't like it, but it was a slap in the face.

For the little girl who had grown up without feeling loved, when he told me, I love you, I believed him and I wasn't able to do the part of things between his actions and his words. So he told me that he loved me. So I loved him, he loved me. But today, you know, because I have children today, you know, and I wouldn't want a 19-year-old guy to go around my daughter when she was 14, it's like, you're going to find one of your age that you won't have control over. I was like, hyper naive. My daughters are 14, if there's a 19-year-old guy who's getting close,

I feel like I'm going to invite him to my own podcast. But... You stay with him from 14 to 16, while you're there, is he still present in your life? No, when I found myself in the security room, he couldn't have contact anymore. And when I fled the last time, I couldn't find him, so it ended there. And basically, I ended up leaving this shelter and I went to live with my father in Montreal. But I don't know, the people who watch the podcast, those who grew up in the South, or in a small patel, and you end up at 16 after two years in a shelter.

I ended up in Montreal, Bar Open, at schoolgue, tous les gars, j'avais pas assez de... j'avais aucune limite, je voulais tout voir, tout faire, tout expérimenter, puis c'est là que ça a commencé à dégrader. Je suis allée vivre chez mon père en juin, à la fin des classes, puis en janvier j'étais itinérante à Montréal. So it took like six months, and I was like... completely... At 16. Okay, okay, I... In my head, six months later, you were 17, but...

We'll see if you're not... I was 16 on June 1st, and on June 25th, I was going to live with my father, and in January of the following year... Okay. Now I want you to explain to me what's going on in these six months. Because if you're talking about going out of the shelter, my father welcomes me at his place, and six months later I'm homeless in the street at 16. It's very bad, but it's getting worse quickly. It's a little time. Yeah. You know, the desire that I had to live everything and to be tougher than tough, You're a real I can break all the limits. It's over. There's no one to tell me what time to brush my teeth, take a shower.

So I go out. I'm at my dad's. I go to school. I saw a guy getting punched in the school yard. There's dope and all that. So I completely get out. I go to the bar at the end of the week. And one night I get fired.

I'm only 16. So I get fired. And the girl only 16, so I turned around. And the girl behind me also turned around and said, I know a place we can go to and we'll have fun that night. I said, perfect, I'll follow you. And she brought me to a war vase in the corner of Saint-Laurent, Saint-Catherine, we were in 1991. And she's punk.

You've made a great show today, if I'm not mistaken. If Mont-Mont-Réal is still good, but... And there was a punk gang there, and it was a rarvaze, because hamburgers cost 90 cents at the time. So I got there, and the first night, it was mescaline, and two or three. It was the punk dope, the early 2000s. I imagine we're in those areas. Maybe, but it was in the 90s? The early 90s. In 1991. She came from Quebec. It was good. It was... It was like just... I immediately identified with punk because it was like, fuck everything. Fuck the world, fuck adults. Like, I just want to do what I want to do, and I do it. There are no rules anymore. It was so much like the inner feeling I had after being locked up for two years.

My father just didn't give me a chance because he took me to their house. He turned his life around to take me to their house and all that. But I wasn't there anymore. It was too late. Tell me if I'm wrong, but you know, the... what I know about the punk community, if I can say it like that, you know, which is very rare, but you know, it's... Yes, it's very Foxy, Foxy is very libertine,

there's a lot of consumption. I don't think it's very criminalized, for example. From what I know, I don't think... I don't have in my memory the high mind to maybe fly to consume things like that, but you don't fall for a gang like that? Well, yes, I fall for that gang, which in fact, even the punks at the time, they didn't shoot, you know. So when the opportunity came to introduce me to coke by injection, I said yes, I didn't ask myself two questions. And then, by the power of things, I left the world of punk to become a street girl, Ontario Dove Runman.

It was because the punks don't shoot. It wasn't enough for you, it took more. I wanted to go to the end of everything. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to die. My parents, the adults, were like, you know, Isabelle, you're going to die if you keep going. But that wasn't my feeling. It was just to always go beyond the limits, to go further, to live everything. Because your father, who you live with, he can't keep you, he can't hang you, he can't... You don't care, you can go to the same place, and he can't...

I'm a fugitive police officer. My photo was published in the newspaper. But you know, the 90s were also the war of the engines. So there wasn't a lot of time for the police in Montreal to take care of fugitive young girls at the time. here in Montreal to take care of young girls who fled at the time. What happens when you start to discover cocaine by injection? At 16 and a half? Ah, it's... I describe it in my book. My first experience with coke was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

And even today, I would tell you, it's an experience. The first one is... The first one is The Child of a Street Fairy. That's the first one you wrote. Which is really more your story. That's where it starts. I'm in a street and I'm consuming. I'm 16 years old. I'm telling what the middle of the street is in Montreal in the 90s. And my journey to get out of it.

And the second one... We'll come back to it, Mr. Ska, and the second, the beginning of the calvary of a young woman. Now I'm just telling you what brought me to the street. I'm telling you really quickly about the more precise events that made me build up in this revolt that I'm telling you about. I don't want to know anything about the society that the adults have prepared for me. I just want to fuck everything, fuck the world, and I want to do everything. It's not just that you have that in you.

There are events that have made sure that if we want to learn them, We're going to read the book. We're going to read the book. All the descriptions to buy the books will be in the description. So, 16 and a half, you discover that. And it's an extraordinary experience that I live. I have the impression that I'm going to cut off a lot, but I'm sorry. But you know, you say it like that, I say, compared to what you did at that time, and Zero, where it clearly led you, it wasn't good. You're not glorifying, you're saying, do that! It was sick, but the first feeling was gone.

But in the long run, it would end up with the cause of death. But the second one, it becomes an endless race to try to get back the first experience I've ever lived again after. And yeah, thanks for the introduction, I don't want to encourage anyone. It sounded like, Christ, try this long it's been since I've been able to do this. It's almost like, Christ, will you do this? It's not fair! No. But at my age, at 16, and with the feeling of having a life of shit in 16, which makes no sense, when I consumed this powder for the first time, it gave me the feeling that there was no limit. It wasn't just like me who was looking for limits.

There was no limit. I disconnected for I don't know how long. At 16 and a half, you say, I'm offered this. Yes. A free shot, is someone offering it to you? Is he making you pay for it? I ran after love. I ran after love. I ran after love.

And that's what my second book tells. It's not that I want to leave people on their thirst. What I want to share with my books is that you have to be careful with our little girls. The little boys too, but I can't talk about the experiences of the little boys. But the little girls who have the feeling of missing love, and that's important, it doesn't mean I didn't have love, but I had the feeling of missing it.

I grew up with no friends. I looked for that contact, that validation in the eyes of others. So I ran after love all the time. And the guy, he was beautiful too. He said, do you want one? Well, yes, I want one, thank you. I raised my hand, he gave it to me. And that was it.

Twenty minutes later, when I said twenty minutes, I have no idea how long it lasted. I asked how much it cost. And he said it was 20 dollars. I said, it's going to be long to pay that, 20 dollars. Well, he said, you can go to the corner of the street, you'll see, there's a car that's going to stop. And it's not long to make 20 dollars.

And I went to my first client straight tomorrow. Oh shit! One injection, one client, bang! It became my life for the next seven years. Tabarnak! One injection, one first client. Yes. Instantly. I couldn't live anything else than that, that first experience with coke. But at 16 years old...

16 years old. I'm asking in parenthesis, but of your own choice... Yes, but that's it. You're going to have a client. Yes. Because I doubt myself, I mean, it's your life too, I'm not going to go into the debates about sexual life of an adolescent either. But if I tell myself that at 14 you're dating a guy at 19, you were already active. Yes, I was already active at that time.

And three or four months before, when I was with Les Punk on Saint-Laurent, there were girls in the area of Saint-Laurent, Saint-Catherine. I couldn't even imagine that a woman could sell her body. I was told that in Saint-Laurent there would be girls in the corner of Saint-Laurent and Saint-Catherine. I couldn't even imagine that a woman could sell her body to consume coke again. A few weeks later? Yes. I was like, let's go. I'm going. Without going into the details, how do you feel after having done it? You're your first customer of your choice. It happened as you said.

He told you to go to the corner, it won't be long, there's a car that will stop. That's what happened. You got on, you did a charge pass, if we can... Yes, we parked in a small dark corner and... Did what was necessary. Twenty dollars, back to the pusher and... It was mechanical. Were you able to put your brain off

or was the desire for it so strong and instantaneous that you made Mangalius? Well, the brain wasn't off. I was disgusted with what I was doing and I kept going because I had the 20$ in my pocket. So it didn't go quickly, it was okay. I don't know how the brain works. It became a mechanic.

Yes. Like someone who works in a factory and can do his job without looking at it, because he doesn't cheat, but he does, and that's what he pays me for. It's a bit like that, except that it's rougher than any factory job. My comparison is a bit mediocre, but... We're almost there, you know. But I think that the dependence of wanting to consume at any price, was the desire, sincere, to flee, everything I felt, that I lived,

that I didn't want to die. You would have asked me, que j'avais pas le goût de mourir. Tu m'avais demandé, veux-tu mourir? Je t'avais dit non. Je suis bien chereuse. Pas du tout. T'étais pas bien, t'étais pas heureuse pareil, mais t'avais pas envie de mourir pour autant. Non, j'avais pas le mal de vivre, mais je me détruisais à n'importe quel prix. À 16 ans, avais-tu l'air d'une fille de 16 ans? Ah oui.

Ah oui. Fait que... Were you 16 years old? Did you look like a 16-year-old girl? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So... Oh, yes. And there are still some. We are now more aware. I would say that in the 90s, it was a little rarer. We didn't have all the therapy houses for adolescents. It was starting at the time. But the young girls, even today,

you'll walk around Ontario, in the corner of Dufferin, there are little girls of 14, 15, 16 years old. The girls who are placed in youth centers, who run away, and who end up in Toronto to dance, they're 14, 15 years old. There's a clientele for that, and there's people to take care of them. That's a little gang of rats. I'm not capable. I'm not capable. The sexual exploitation of women, that's why I mean, can we pay attention to our little girls?

Can we surround them, love them, teach them to protect themselves, to say no, to call themselves? Can we be, you know, the Africans say it takes a village to raise children. Where are our villages? We're all, I wouldn't get involved if I was the neighbor. Individualism où, nos villages? On est tous chacun. Je m'en mêlerai pas si je suis le voisin. L'individualisme est à son paroxysme en ce moment. Vraiment. Vraiment. Mais ces petites filles-là, c'est les filles de quelqu'un, c'est les soeurs de quelqu'un. Loin de moi l'idée de vouloir être négatif, mais je te remets dans le contexte. S'il y avait un village qui avait voulu t'aider quand t'avais 16 ans, t'aurais-tu laissé le village t'aider? I put you back in the context. If there was a village that wanted to help you when you were 16, would you have let the village help you? Well, it would have had to help me, and it would have helped my mother when I was 4.

I was out of control. Because once you got there, there was nothing left. Everyone wanted to help me. My father, the youth court judge, I sent them all away. I didn't want to help them. I was angry when I was finally arrested and they returned me to the shelter. I was taking all the opportunities I could have to return to the streets and consume. I was really angry to be arrested, to be held in a cell, to be sent back to the shelter,

to be locked up for 30 days. It was bigger than a desire for freedom. I don't know why. There's no reason for it. And the other thing is that this is my story. All the girls who went down the street didn't necessarily have the same life as me. There are some who are aggressive. I don't want everyone on their path, but you know,

as you say, you say take care of our little girls because that's what you are. That's what you were. Protecting our children. Protecting our children, but that's it. But that comes from the family circle, it comes from everything, no matter. It's not normal for a 16-year-old child to end up in the street, and a 16-year-old child rarely ends up in the street. Yes, sometimes by choice, like you, but basically,

it's become a choice for you, but it was created because you lived it, because all the passage you had when you were younger. All the context, yes. So from 16 to 18, you're in the street, but you often get picked up and brought back to the youth center. Yes. And then you run away. I guess it's two years of that.

They send me to therapy, they send me to do meetings. So every time they send me to therapy, I rest a little, I eat, and as soon as I'm a little fit, I go back. There were two or three arrests like that. You've rebuilt a therapy health, but just to be fit again. At that point, these therapies, there's no light that lights up. It doesn't light up little switches, change for change, not yet at that time. No, no. And I'm tired of adults deciding in my place that that's what I need.

I'm like, I think I was unconscious of the danger in which I was, as if I didn't feel in danger. I had very bad frequentations and I felt protected by these guys. And... Were there any who... No, it was the clients who raped me, who attacked me. I almost died in the parking lot... The antique on Notre-Dame. Yes, the Antique. And there was one who almost hit me at the bottom of the Montreal Quay. And there was one who almost punched me under the bridge, like in the neighborhood. They were guys who paid for prostitution services,

and at the end of the line, my life was threatened because they decided that finally, they would strangle me, they would beat me up. And each time, there was really just one guy who almost beat me up. I was so scared, I couldn't get out of the vehicle. I was so scared, I couldn't even scream for help. There was no more air in my lungs. I was 17 or 18 years old.

I managed to distract her, she just broke the door, I rolled outside the car and I ran, I ran, until I reached the Donut office in the Papineau St. Catherine corner. I called the police to report her. They didn't believe me because I was writing in white. I had kept the plate number. I was running, repeating the plate number. When the police arrived, they didn't believe me because the owner of the vehicle was black,

an African-American. So I was describing a white man. Finally, later, they spent an hour with me, learning my statement and all that. Later, they learned that the vehicle had been stolen, finally. But there is also the relationship with the police, the police, you know, it's like because you're a prostitute, because you're a drug addict. It's like my life in Valériens. I already have the lens, I left parking lot, and I ran across Notre Dame. Then a supervisor came by, and he took me to the police station to make my statement. Then, when I got back in the station, they insulted the police officers.

And then the supervisor had to get angry and bring his team back to the station, saying, listen, it's the victim today. It's not in a state of arrest. There's this whole experience where, even today, sometimes I tell myself, we forget that these people are humans. We say to ourselves, they wanted to run after, but it's deeper. It's not like...

I didn't get up one morning at 16 and say, fuck life, I don't want to know anything. I had something in me that made me At 16, I was thinking, fuck life, I don't want to know anything. I had something inside of me that made me not understand the gravity of my actions and how far it would take me to almost die of armed aggression. But I remained a human being. In my experience on the street, at the street, I wondered if I still existed. Because people don't look at you anymore.

You ask them, and they don't look at you. They don't answer. I didn't even know if I was alive or if I had become a ghost. It's a bit... It's a bit the reason for this project. Reminding people that we're all humans. You don't know the person who's lying on the sidewalk,

who asks for your help, who just wants to be considered a human. You don't know what she's been through. Go work, it's easy, find yourself a job. Would you hire me? Hey, hey. That's it. Oh, but it's your choices, it's your decisions.

But you know, we don't know where people are going. We don't know what they've experienced. We don't know what they've gone through, you know? And that's it, me, it's to remove those judgments, and it's to lift the veil on, you know, because that's it. At the time, nobody was looking at you, nobody told you what time it was. And today, you go into a store and they say,

Hello, madam, but you're the same person. You're the same person. From your birth to today, you're the same person. There have been parts of your life, but you're no less a human being for how long? In the end of A Girl on the girl, that's what I'm telling. The way out of the street, it's not... It's the same thing as starting to consume. When I was a kid, I was fed up with consuming.

I couldn't take it anymore. As soon as I fell asleep, ate a little, the first thing I did was turn around and freeze. And even with all the will of the world, all my being, I thought that was enough, and I had to get out of it. And then I wanted to go into therapy. I was 22, 23 years old.

It was even stronger than me. There was something that brought me back. There was something that... It's hard to stop consuming. Because in my case, I was 16 when I started shooting. So at 16, after two years of being in the shelter, I don't know what else to do emotionally. I'm not a responsible person. I've never been. I've always made bad choices. Until then, that was my life experience. And now I stop freezing.

Okay, and then what do I do? Well, I learn to go to bed in the evening, then get up in the morning, then brush my teeth, then take a shower every day. All things I haven't done in the last seven years. Except when I was in the shelter center, and they told me,

okay, it's time to brush your teeth, okay, it's time to go take a shower. And that my day was at the mercy of God. OK, c'est l'heure d'aller prendre ta douche, puis que ma journée était au quart de tôt, tu sais. Fait que c'est même pas se réinsérer socialement. C'est d'apprendre à vivre tout court. Travailler. Moi, je fais pas mon affaire, fuck you, je m'en vais. Je savais pas que tu fais pas ça, tu sais, que t'es supposé de fermer ta gueule pour faire ce que ton boss t'a demandé de faire, tu sais. You were supposed to close your business and do what your boss asked you to do. But I wanted to, so I made a lot of mistakes in my beginnings.

That's why I tell it in the book. Even if you tell the person, find yourself a job, and make better choices, okay. But the road is long. It took me years to succeed in a small victory over personal hygiene, then a small victory over financial responsibility, then a small victory over going back to school. It was a package of small goals, micro-objectives, even if I can say just to learn to live, pay my rent.

From the age of 18, there's no more housing centers, so if something happens, you're no longer illegal, because you're not on the run, you're nothing, so you're considered a major in the eyes of the law, and you're in the street. There's prostitution, there's consumption. Do you always manage to pay your consumption with prostitution?

Yes, that's what I tell my kids. Do you live? Where? How? I'm in a state of itch. I sleep in a grocery store in a wardrobe. You let me sleep until I wake up and I lock myself in a wardrobe and I sleep there. I've been to guest houses, I went to therapy, it took me 23 years to get out of there. So it's been five years where sometimes I went into therapy, I managed to stay in a nursing home for a couple of months, and then after that, oops, I went back to eating, so I went back to the streets. It wasn't a 7-year, let's say 16 to 23, it wasn't 7 years without a break.

There were always arrests and the reception center until I was 18. And then it was in and out in therapy to try to save my life. Therapy that you, it was your choice to go, It was your decision to try to get into therapy. You went to houses like Desberges, you know, like I need help, CLST, or I imagine places. When you raise the flag, when you're in the street, you're in a building, you raise the flag, there are organizations that are there and who have directed you. There are street workers who are extraordinary workers. Really, who really without judgment.

It's really different than public services. I tell it in my first book. One day, I fell asleep on René-Lévesque. There are big concrete flower pots, they put flowers in there in the summer. But now it's winter, it's January and it's cold this winter. It's like minus 40 degrees for a week. I didn't have a place to sleep. There's no peckery that lets me sleep in a wardrobe.

So it's been a good three or four days that I'm under it. And then I walk on René-le-Vert. And I say, I'm going to sit down a little bit. And it's the afternoon. And the sun is high in the sky. And then I sit down. And when I open my eyes, it's night. I slept sitting on a flower pot, but because I didn't move, my feet were frozen.

I was like in a I couldn't walk. I went on four legs. I crossed René-le-Vaigle like that, I crossed Saint-Denis like that. When I entered the emergency room, the security guard yelled at me to get out. I needed help. I needed help. And he yelled at me to get out. And I lost consciousness. I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. But all the dehumanization, I don't remember what the question was.

You asked me, but it brought me here. When you raised the flag, who helped you? You could be a rice cooker. I was absorbed by you, I was like, what was my question? Public services had the same view as citizens. It's like a junkie, you go to the voting room, you're going to disturb people in the waiting room. But beyond that, if I go into a junkie, we go to the city like, go, you're going to bother people in the waiting room, you know, but beyond that, if I go into a waiting room, because I may need care, I may need to be seen by a doctor, you know. And it happened to me another time, by the way, to make angelures on the feet, and the street workers, even if the organist was closed, they were having a team meeting this afternoon, and he told me, you can lie down under a table, and you'll be able to warm up,

not die from hypothermia in a snowy area. There was something you said earlier, and I want to go back to it. When you said, when I was 16 and all that, but I was in self-destruction, at the same time, if you asked me if I wanted to die, I would have said no. Did it end up shifting? Yes. Now if you had been asked if you wanted to die... I tried.

You tried? I tried three times. With a plan that should work. I swear it should have worked. I won't give you any details, but it was really very precise. I'm trying to avoid inspiring people. I want to inspire people on the contrary, not give them stuff. I hope so. Thank you. And I was in a panic. Because I was saying, even God doesn't want me.

I was like, I can't live anymore. I can't live anymore. It's alienation. I wanted to die because I couldn't stop. I went into therapy and as soon as I had eaten, slept a little, I went back to my ice cream. I couldn't stay in Piscitinan and go to the next step to went back to therapy. And as soon as I had eaten and slept a little, I would go back to my freezer. I couldn't stay in the basement and go to the next step to learn how to live.

And I really had no idea how I was going to succeed in stopping all that. You didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel? There was nothing left. There was nothing left. Even most of the people who had been in crime didn't know how to get in because I had become a loco full of thugs. So I was attracted to the look of the police when I passed by. The famous image of... Oh yes, the girls you see, they are real, they are all crazy. And they were... a junkie.

The term was very good for you. That's what it was. And a good day that I didn't want to try on my own, I had an overdose and I fell right in front of a bakery. And I heard everyone around me panicking, saying, You have to put her in the aisle, or else... They wanted to leave me in the aisle so I could finish there.

There was someone there who said, You won't let her die, take your things and go. I'm going to go get the police. That's what they did. I heard the ambulance officers say I was on a cardiac arrest, and after that, nothing happened. When I opened my eyes, the white spots, the lights, I was blinded by the light, and then one day they asked me if I knew where I was,

and I said, I hope I'm not dead. And that, that was a surprise for me. And when he offered me help, I said I was doing the same thing. I said yes. So I went into the St. Luke's detox program. It gave me 14 days to finish it as quickly as possible. And then go into therapy afterwards. And really, it's enough.

I know I don't want to die. I might not have two chances like this. Because methadone, in the end, it's going to, instead of going cold turkey, methadone will calm the physical need, because it's a drug that ends... You have the mental need, but there is a physical need that comes with this drug quickly. So that's it, methadone will come to calm the physical desires. I imagine the... Well, it's the symptoms of this disease.

The lack of physical. What you say, the lack of physical, is that it's atrophic muscular pain. And like having the Taurista, it's very painful. It's not an experience that no one wants to live. So yeah, methadone. But I wanted to do it in 14 days because there are long-term programs, but I was afraid that in the long term I would go back and freeze. You know, I wanted to do 14 days at the hospital, go to therapy.

Realizing that you didn't want to die was for you the reality check that maybe it's not too late. Yes. And did the family end up being... ? We tried to help you and then you pulled the plug and made your choice. It was your decision, we did everything, but we're not going to make that mistake because you decided to do that. Well, yes, my father had to do that. My mother, I had already lost contact with her.

But at one point, my father, you know, I could call him and he would give me money or he would bring me food or... And then at one point he said, Isabelle, I can't look at you anymore. You're dead. Like, stop calling me. When you get better, you'll call me and I'll be there. But I want you to feel better before you call me. Well, for a father to look at his daughter and destroy herself, it's... I can't even imagine. It's... I couldn't even imagine the nights... What followed that, he shouldn't have slept.

You just take pictures, patterns, you know? Yes. And... your sister? My sister, I had no contact with her since the placement. She didn't follow your path? No. No. No.

That's what's crazy about it. You come from the same neighborhood, you're in the same place, and it's crazy how different the experiences can be between two people who come from the same place. Yes, and that also explains why we say... Dependency is not just explained by the family context of the child. 100%. We can't blame parents for the context of dependency.

In any case, not me. I don't blame my parents. Yes, that's right. He was talking about contexts where, sadly, yes, but... Yes, that's right. I don't want to go... It's not an exclusive... Well, it's not an exclusive... It doesn't work, but it's not... It's not a criterion of friendliness. Thank you, Lucky. I couldn't have said it better. It's not a criterion, that's right.

It can be an element, but you can be raised, you know, it's that in a good family or in a bad family, the result of two children can be completely different. Sometimes we have, we are with something inside of us too, you know. Yes. I am convinced that I was born with a hole in my heart. I tell everyone, I think that I had a greater need for love than what was possible for people to give me. It wasn't necessarily a very bad family environment or at school, but it was like what I needed.

It was a hole. You can't fill it. But also when you're young, there are things that we will see from our own eyes that are not necessarily the reality, but we see it in another way. Sometimes we can see someone trying to help us, like someone trying to control us. We get the image that we want to be, people around us, and what we live. I mean, we can be four young people and we will live an event.

This event will not mark us the four of us in the same way. on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on on I think that's the importance of protecting our young people, but also to talk to them. I love that. I love how our society, in fact, there are many things in our society, the older I get, the more I see the evolution of society. There are things that discourage me to the highest point, but there are other things that I am so, wow, on mental health.

I'm sending ads on television right now. It's just young people, you know, like, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And you see the image that it's not okay. It's not because your young man says it's okay that it's okay. You know, I can't even imagine what my daughters have to say to their friends. Oh, my dad is a jerk! But sometimes I see my sister, how are you? Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine.

How are you? How are school, friends, are you going to have a lot of people? You know, I have to be a jerk, but if I want... I've seen so many people go bankrupt, fall, and... I don't want to... I've seen so many people fall down and I don't want to... They won't be able to blame me for not being able to try to talk to them. I might do the opposite too.

They'll be upset and I'll be a little more tired. I don't know. But there's no recipe, there's no miracle. Sometimes there are people who write to me and say, I said, I'm living this with my young, are you doing stuff? No, I'm not. I'm not doing stuff. I'm not... You know, I'm like, yeah, but you're talking to the world.

I'm talking to the world, reinserted, rehabilitated. I'm not... And I'm happy that it's doing good. Sometimes there's people, it inspires, it inspires to change. But sometimes you ask me questions. I mean, you, I look at the camera, you ask me questions sometimes, but I'm not the best person to answer you. I would like that.

At the same time, I would be so afraid to make a mistake. I'm always like, well, listen, there are people who tell me that you have a problem with consumption, you know, you've lived it, you know, what can I do? I'm like, be there when it will ask you for help. It's like, you know, the proof is that if we had offered you all the help you could have taken. No.

But when you asked for help, it took someone who was there. Yes. That's what's important, you know. It's not forcing people if there's nothing to to do if it doesn't come from the person. You can encourage them, you can hope, you can suggest, but as long as the person doesn't come to you, say, I'm ready, and it can fail 20 times. Yes. I think it's important to tell them that we're going to be there

and that we love them, no matter what, but also to set the limits, like my father did, and say, I can't look at you, I can't do that. Call me when it gets better. Call me when you've been looking for help, not when you want help, but when you'll be going to get help. When I was there, I had to get into action. At one point, I had to realize that I had no other way out. I had to succeed in getting out of the street.

I had to succeed in stopping consuming. I had to succeed in becoming responsible for my own life and to respond to my needs instead of always calling my father. When people ask me what I give lectures, and when people after that, I like to exchange with them, and there are a lot of people who come to maybe better understand what their close, dependent life is, you know, and they will ask me what to do, well, go get help for you.

But sometimes people are insulted by that, but there is a dynamic that is established between the person who consumes and the neighbor who comes to meet the needs of the other. And I think that burns the loved ones, always in the hope of seeing the other without leaving. But this dynamic needs to be addressed. We need, as a person, to take care of ourselves because of what you just said. As long as the person is not ready, we can put all the solutions on the table, but she will not take the tools. You may not have the answer, you may not want to answer, but I want you to pause. Hello everyone, this is Hugo Girard.

This week, AACAS recommends my Baradeau without limits. What is without limits? It's simple. I meet ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. Without a limit of time, without a limit of subject. So don't waste time. Go subscribe to your favorite podcast platform and listen to this. I'm telling you, you don't want to miss this. What do you think about the fact that you lived through it? If we have a child or a relative like that who comes to us and asks us for money,

and we know why that money is there, do you think, are you in the sense, give it to her because at least she won't do it if she doesn't do it, she won't do it to get it, or are you like, don't say it because it's too easy, you make life even easier, you know? If you're a close friend, I think you make life easier for the person who consumes, and you take her away from her goal of stopping if she eventually wants to stop. If it's a person who consumes on the street and who is in need of money,

it's not up to us to decide what they're going to do with the money. If we're comfortable giving money, we give money. If we want to offer a meal, we can offer a meal to the person, and the person has the right to refuse. It's possible that they don't want food and they want money. It's not going to be insulting. No, that's it. It's good hearted. You want to offer help, but there are people who don't look for the help

that you are ready to offer. It doesn't mean they don't want help, but not the... You know, I go to your place and I ask you, you give me all your coins and you say, no, I'll give you my coin purse instead. I don't need a coin purse. It's a coin purse. I love that, like... But that's it. Just, if...

I'm in life, if you say... I give it to them. Unfortunately, we have less and less liquid on us, you know, and I know that's not easy for the people of the street. And, you know, lucky for the one who will inquire me, and I just have some wines. They'll have nothing to drink. I'll give them, but never... If he says, I'm hungry, I'm like, hey man, I'm hungry. If you're going to get yourself a coffee, the better. If you're going to eat, the better.

You live in the street, man. I never feel better when you ask me for a drink and I give it to you, that you go and rip the bag off of a little lady who lives in the street. It's for sure that I don't help you in terms of... I'll help you get out, but as you said, it's not me who will help you get out. Even if I give you a thousand, on the contrary, I'll maybe kill you. Or if I give you a direct hug, I I'll kill you, I won't help you. That's what I'm trying to do.

As long as it doesn't come from the person. Unfortunately, there are people for whom it never comes. I end up dying on the street. Which could have happened. At least three times by yourself, but several times as you say, either by customers or by... You know, so much to destroy that you could have been thrown into a bus through a street, because you're not even

aware that there's a bus coming, and you're crossing a green line, that it's all destroyed. I don't even know. Well, that's why I decided to put my public story, you know, because I managed to get out of it, and today I have an enjoyable life. My parents-in-law have been with Haute-Parlour for a long time. I keep them because I love human beings.

I say this at every beginning of the podcast. An insurance life is something super important so as not to leave people you love in need when you're not there anymore. But unfortunately, if you have medical record, if you're a little too old, if you have a criminal record, is life insurance easy to have? Not always.

Compared to my premium, they're not going to refuse. They're going to take your file, they're going to read it, they're going to talk to you like you're a human being. They're going to take you into consideration, they're going to listen to you, they're going to find find the company that will accept to give you a life insurance. They've been with me for a long time and I keep them because I have a lot of people who have been through it and they gave me positive feedback.

Because it's humans who treat people not like customers, but like humans. Contact, compare my price. For a long time, I lived with the fear that people would discover, that my colleagues at work, for example, would discover where I come from and where I went. It became a paradox because it's like two completely different lives. And in a healing process, I write a lot, I write all the time, and it's in the frame of my studies that someone proposed to me to write my story and share it with the world.

And I said to myself, what does a junkie have to say to the world? I saw myself again 20 years later, 20 years after leaving the street, like a junkie who had nothing to say to the world, but she said everything. Your experience, what made you sit in a class at the university today, after going through the street, you know, you clearly have something to share with the world. So she wrote it as if it would never come out. Write what you need to say, and I wrote it, but what I needed to do for myself was to take this most absurd and most ugly life experience and turn it into something positive for people who have consumption problems and who say they'll never get out of it because they're junkies or whatever the nature of the problem of dependence.

We tend to think junkies don't get away with it, which is wrong. I needed to transform this experience into something positive, but I also needed to raise awareness, Mr. and Mrs. Everyone, the general population, that everything they see is the person lying on the ground in the subway, and they forget that there is a human being behind them, that they have an experience, that there's a life, that there's a lot of things to offer to society too,

and just in the human sense, to say hello. Sometimes there are people who tell me, yes, but I don't know what to do, just say hello, make a smile, you can make your day by saying hello. Humanize it. Yes, that's it. It exists, it's there. You say hello to someone.

In Montreal, people say hello in Sarri or in Gaspé. Here, we say hello to everyone. Just to say hello. The person has the feeling of not being a waste. She has the feeling of deserving a hello. At 23 years old, you do you've been doing methadone for 14 days, you're going into therapy. What's different about this one from the others you've done?

I... Out of pride, there's an intervener who tells me, you won't be able to finish this one. It was the 11th therapy that I started. In seven years. Yes, and they asked for three or four tests, and they said, it won't work, keep going. When you have nothing to lose, they said, yes, keep going.

And it was the eleventh therapy I started, and I was still a little bit... You know, it's like... I wouldn't be offended to do that, because your therapy says you had to do it. I still had a ego. I came from the street, I had an opinion on how to be treated. So this intervener bothered me deeply.

Then one day he told me, well, that's it, you keep thinking that you know better and that you have the answers that until now you kept them in the street, and you won't finish your therapy. I'll prove to you that I'll come just to piss you off. And he says... It's a good motivation to piss someone off. It's a motivation sometimes in life.

And he said to me, If you finish your therapy, at the end of your therapy, they do a graduation ceremony and he says, I'm going to kneel down and offer you a flower. And at the end of my therapy, he kneeled down and offered me a flower. He pissed me off all along my therapy, and here, listen, he's going to recognize himself and know who he is. But that motivation kept me going just because I judged him,

that person, ready to help the dependent. But that's also the personality I had. He must have known so much what he was doing with you. He was so obsessed with you. He found the right person. I'm going to make you shit. I'm going to make you so shit, Isabelle. You're going to get so mad that you're going to end up doing nothing to make me cry in front of you. It wasn't a coincidence. You're going to end up doing nothing but rot in the face.

It wasn't a coincidence. They're pros. They know how to read the world. You weren't the first of 23 to arrive there with your ego. So, bravo to that speaker. Bravo to all the speakers who work in there. I meet so many of them and I only have gratitude and respect for people, for street workers and all that, and all those people. Is this the last therapy you've done?

Yes, it's the last therapy I've done. I didn't stay abstinent all this time. We talk about that I left in 1995. Today, I abstain from any drugs and alcohol. I tell this in the book, but I tried all kinds of ways to get out of it, to stay healthy. When I did my studies at the university, they introduced me to the reduction of bad effects. I thought, I was a teenager, I lived through difficult times. I never really drank, I never really had a problem with alcohol. Maybe I can drink alcohol.

It didn't even take a month for me to close the club. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you know, I spent all my money in there. There's really something in me that makes it, as soon as I consume something that makes me a little fatigued or gives me a... A feeling. I take off, I lose my mind. And I'm lost. I consume something that makes me feel a little bloated or that gives me a... A feeling. I take off, I lose my mind. And to the floor.

At any cost. So I decided on December 31, 2015, that I would no longer touch a drop of alcohol or any other substance that would change my behavior. That's 20 years. I don't drink alcohol or any other substance that changes my behavior. That's 20 years. 1995, 2015, that's 20 years. So you finish your therapy, hard drugs, all that. But what happens when you leave therapy at 23?

I went to a house of the housewives who were part of the Homes of the Heart, who do extraordinary work with young people. 100% Homesge du Coeur. Mm-hmm. Puis ils m'ont aidé à me stabiliser, à me trouver un logement, à me trouver un travail, apprendre à faire un budget, apprendre à socialiser. C'est ça que tu disais tantôt, là, tout, rapprendre ton hygiène personnelle, tu sais, juste d'apprendre à vivre en société,

c'est déjà quelque chose, là, tu sais. C'est un défi en soi, là, tu sais. Parce que quand je sors de la rue, là, moi, je me trouve extraordinaire, là, Learning to live in society is already something. It's a challenge in itself. Because when I walk down the street, I find myself extraordinary. I walk down the street, and I'm abstinent. How come the planet doesn't applaud me? Not because... But for me... But for you, it's so exceptional.

Yes, and it requires me to make an effort every day not to stop by the corner looking for a little bag. So I would have liked people to take that into consideration, but society doesn't have the time to take that into consideration. It has to roll. You go if you want, you do your job. You're a little more familiar with it, it's not special. In the middle of that, you're just equal to everyone. And I think that's something that's a clash when you leave the street, because you have a personality, you have associations,

you have a place somewhere in your lifestyle, and when you leave, that place no longer exists. So there's like a gap between, I'm not someone on the street anymore, but I'm not a citizen. And I didn't want to become a citizen, but I became a citizen. I'm very happy today, finally. But this transition where you're not too sure what you're doing, just to deprive yourself of loneliness,

to sit at the kitchen table in your apartment, and it's Sunday afternoon, and it's just tomorrow you work. What do I do? I don't have money to pay for the cable, so I don't have a TV. In the past, we didn't have cell phones to play on our cell phones. So, you know, like, to deprive myself of loneliness, to deprive myself of just sitting around doing nothing with myself, while I've been walking the streets of Montreal for ten years, long and wide.

Because you always have something to do, find money to spend. Yes, that's right. You always have a motivation to move and do something. So, to be just sitting. It's dangerous. Yes. The relationship to life, the relationship to yourself,

to time, loneliness, finding semblance. Where do I find the semblance? Where can I create new associations that will be positive, that will be healthy? I don't know if you agree with me, and I don't know if you've done it, but I think that's where the important thing is to have a meeting. Yes, I'm in the rooms, and I was there again yesterday, and I don't go to the rooms anymore because I want to eat. At the beginning, I went to the, and I don't go to the rooms anymore because I want to consume. At first, I went to the rooms because I needed these associations.

I needed people to understand what I was talking about. You find yourself with people like you. People like me, and they also find it extraordinary that they don't consume today. And I still go there because this link is really developing in more specific links. We create friendships, we create really intimate, solid links with certain people in these meetings. And then I can share things that I don't share with people who are not in the book, that I won't tell you in the podcast. There are people who have access to a part of my darkest life,

and who welcome me and love me, and their eyes don't change in my case. And it's reciprocal. These people can also tell me very, very, very dark things that they will never tell anyone. And I think these friendships, these bonds are really important because I think all human beings need to have this person who knows everything about us, who we can tell everything to when nothing else is going on. Does it help to have the... Especially you, you're proud, you know? So, to be in a meeting, it's like,

hey, I have my one year. And then you say, hey, if I dive in again, I have to go back to the meeting and say, I'm two days old. The last time I said I was... You know, is it something, a proud person like you who helps to stay... It didn't stop me.

It didn't stop you. I fell back. It's true, you're telling me you fell back. In 2005, then I came back in 2015. Okay, that's good. So you were 10 years old? No, not clean. Not clean at all.

The longest I had done before was three years. I think three or four years. Okay. You know, 2000... No, my daughter is 99. So from 99 to 2005, I didn't consume. But from 95 to 99, when you finished this therapy, even if you didn't do therapy... I didn't go back to the drugs. It was on alcohol, you were talking. I was in my exploration. Can I drink? Can I smoke? Can I...

As if I didn't just accept the fact that, well, why would I poison myself? Do you get to work? Do you have a job? It's very hard. It's very hard. Yes, I work. I don't feel up to it. I don't know how to live with colleagues at work. I don't know what the private sector is, the social sector. I... I repeated patterns of being an oddball. You know, so I was so proud of the path I was taking

that I told my colleagues at work, you know, but they were horrified to know that I was on the street. I didn't understand these social cases. It wasn't my field. You know, I didn't grow these social cases. It wasn't my field. I didn't grow up in that field. So I didn't understand what was expected of me. So I made a lot of mistakes in society with other citizens to find a more distant way.

It was as if I had the impression that I couldn't be myself. I was saying that earlier, the question of the right to be, the right to be who I am, I felt like I couldn't be myself anywhere. But when I left the street and wanted to work, it plunged me into that dynamic of feeling like, I can't be less, I have to dress differently. I called that dressing to go to work. And changing my way of speaking when I'm at work,

it's like I couldn't, it didn't fit. I wanted to be an intervenor, I became an intervenor. I still had my street language. It was a long journey. When did you return to school? Before or after your daughter? After my daughter. It was my motivation. long parcours. Quand est-ce que t'es retourné aux études? En 2003. Avant ta fille ou après ta fille? Après ma fille. Ça a été ma motivation.

Je ne vois pas là tout de suite d'abord parce que je vais aller sur ta fille avant, qui t'a dit 99. Je vais te poser un exemple parce que là, je ne suis pas biologiste, mais ça prend un gars pour faire un enfant quand t'es une fille. Mais est-ce que avec tout ce que tu as vécu, est-ce que l'homme te dégoûte? when you're a girl, but is it with everything you've experienced, does the man disgust you? Is the man, you know, you have an image of the man in your mind, and when I talk about the man, I'm not talking about the human, I'm talking about the man, the penis, you know, the human kind, you know. Does the man tear you up?

Does the man, you don't want that in your life? Is it, you know, with everything you've lived, with what they've made you live. Yes. It's a bit unconscious, I would say, because I'm a lot in seduction. All the time in seduction, actually. Because it talks about clients, you had to be seduced to have them. Yes. So, I don't want to be alone in the evening, so I'll seduce. And I need money for my account. You know, the prostitution, we continued it a little after therapy. It was an option. I did a jump, the first time I saw a check of payment. I worked all week for that.

I did more than that in one day. You know, there's that connection there, too, with money. So you continued anyway. A little bit. But not in the street. No. And I couldn't live. The disgust came back, because I didn't feel like it anymore.

So it was like, OK, I don't want to lose my rent, but you know. So it didn't last. Yeah, it's easier to do. Listen, it's disgusting. It's what I'm going to say today. I don't even know. But it's easier to do when it's for dope than when it's to pay your rent? Well, yes. Because with dope, you're going to take off. I'm not sure if you can see it, but the need for the dope was more intense than the disgust of the client.

Oh yes, the disgust started at some point. As they say, it's a mechanic. It's an obligatory passage. The end justifies the means. But you weren't able to do the joint for a long time? No. If it didn't happen? No.

Well, no. Skip. Fortunately. It's a good thing, right? It's getting better. Yes. Fortunately. But to learn to live, that's the difficult part too.

We say, OK, stop eating hungry. But then afterwards you have memories, you have guilt, you have shame, you have disgust. In any case, I was ashamed, I had guilt, disgust of myself. And I have to keep moving forward without going crazy, without qu'est-ce que ça me demande de me gérer avec mon dégoût? Tu sais, on parlait de est-ce qu'on est employeur, mais est-ce que tu m'engagerais? Même un coup, sortie de la rue, il y a encore des enjeux qui se jouent dans des... paquettis pour Monsieur, Madame, tout le monde.

Tu ne viens pas en citoyen en claquant des doigts, hein? Non. Surtout quand tu n'as pas envie d'être un citoyen. Bien, c'est ça. Fait que là, il y a tout le temps, c'est comme une lutte intérieure de dire, OK, bien là, je réalise que je ne peux pas rester punk Well, that's it. So, there's always this inner struggle to say, OK, well, I realized that I can't stay punk while working in an office. I'll have to change my life.

The word that's less seen, you know. Welcome to the cabinet, MacDuff MacDuff, he writes with his word, bad, you know. It's a clash. It should be, that's the piece, that's what it should be. What does it change? Let's say I work in a small office, I see there's no one, I have to wear a small sweater. It's what it should be. That's the piece. What changed? I worked in a small office, I didn't see anyone. I had to wear a small sweater. What's that logo on the phone?

When I work from home, I'm jogging a little dirty, and nobody knows. So why when I'm at the office, do I have to wear a small sweater? Absolutely. I was already told, don't you think your chain is a little big? No. Let's see what's in there. I was told, you know, you don't think your chain is a little big? No. That's how it is.

You see, I have my polo and that's it. But anyway, it should be. I would arrive in an avocado office and it's a punk with bad stunts on his head. My dad would think I was in the right place. It's you I want him to represent. But, like, come what I'm telling saying. So, you're your mom. Accident? Yes. An accident.

A nice accident. A nice accident, and she knows it. It won't be a surprise, but she's listening to the podcast. And the thing I haven't mentioned yet is that I didn't pay attention to my breasts. So I'm positive. Okay. I didn't pay attention to my kidneys, so I'm seropositive. And in 1999, when I was pregnant, I had about five years of life expectancy. Not when I was pregnant, but when I went into therapy, I had five years of life expectancy. And there was just about the ZT that existed at that time.

And then my doctor, a medicine against HIV, at the very beginning of science and medicine. And today it's crazy, it's undetectable. That's it. I have a person very close to me who has gone beyond the stage of seropositives. Yeah. And it's not detectable, especially since drugs have become advanced and evolved.

Exactly. And then we do a lot of awareness and information to say that when it's undetectable, it's intransmissible, we must stop. We must not stop protecting ourselves. We must stop being afraid of people with seropositive cells. It doesn't catch on air and it's a door handle. Unfortunately, there are still people today who think so. But when my doctor announced me I was pregnant, because I was going to have my baby,

I was horrified. I thought I was going to get an abortion. I didn't want to. It's a pity I had done therapy, never having children and just living the time I was given. That's when you learned it, when you were in therapy? No, I had finished my therapy. Okay, you didn't know when you were in therapy? No, that I was HIV positive.

When did you know? In 1994, I was 19. So when we got there in 1999, my 5th year was done. Me, in therapy, in 1994, I knew I was HIV positive. In 1995, I went into therapy. And I learned to deprive myself of the idea

that I just didn't want to die in a street. And I wanted to live other things before I died. It was my only motivation to stop consuming. It was not to die in a street and try to live something street before I died. Is it a more layered style that we didn't have? But you know, it's a big layer. It's a big layer. It's a big layer. It's a layer of plus.

And... year after year, it continued. At the beginning, I was detectable because we didn't have the drugs we have today. But when she told me I was pregnant, my fear was to get an abortion. I mean, my dear and my blood.

I couldn't imagine. And she said, why are you crying? Because I was crying. She announced that on the phone. I said, well, because you just told me that I was pregnant. You couldn't keep it. Oh, she said, Isabelle, she didn't say. It's not like it was. She said, we'll see.

There's new medication. If you answer well, your baby... There's as much chance of being positive than being with a... a infantile leucemia. People don't stop making children because there is 20% risk that a child is born with leucemia in Quebec. So I started the adventure. The last month of pregnancy, I was terrified. I was very egocentric to have decided to end my pregnancy and say, but what am I going to do if it's seropositive? Imagine the guilt of having put a child in the world

already sick, who will have to take medication. Until the end of his life. Until the end of his life, which could not be very long. And then, no, negative. My son too, there is none of the two who is seropositive. So the birth of my daughter's birth was my motivation. She could just have little jobs, but to go to school, to have a career. It was like my life was possible.

There were no more than five years of life limit. Everything is possible. And then the same drive, I'm going to prove it to them. I'm going to go all the way, I'm going to do more. And it's not for... I don't need to look at others anymore. I'm very good today with my story and who I am. And I don't need people to tell me, hey, bravo. But...

I still need to get to the end of things today, and to have projects that many people imagine are not feasible. But why not try? Why not just put one foot in front of the other? You can get far with one foot in front of the other. I received people who literally took my life, the murderers. And that's what they tell me. What I did was inapprehensible. There's nothing they can buy, but today I'm in society.

I think it's a bit of a mentality, as long as I'm in society, I'll do the best I can. I'll help, I'll be there, I'll contribute to society. That's what you're doing today. To learn everything that was horrible and absurd in my life, and to do something positive about it. I think a lot of people write to me on social media to come and thank me, share. Some of their life experiences don't even touch dependence.

It has nothing to do with that, but they also went through trials and I think that your podcast and putting in front of people who have survived situations out of the ordinary, it allows other people to know that what they are living is to be engage with the different guests you have, let's say, or the books we read, and to say to ourselves, well, if that person has succeeded with everything she has experienced to do good, it's possible, it's possible for everyone.

You're talking about the message, that's for sure. I get that a lot. Tell yourself that your episode will inspire people like the one I shot a few days ago, like the one I'm going to shoot next, like the one I'm going to shoot in two months. And there are people who tell me, sometimes, I listen to your podcast, and I'm going to say, his story compared to my story, yes, but your story is maybe much less rough than his story, but there may be someone who is much closer to your story. Who needs to hear it.

Who needs to hear it, you, on your side. You know, it's not because you haven't been in prison for 20 years, you know. Even if you haven't done it, you know, I mean, a lot of people say it's a podcast on the prison world, but for me, you know, I mean, it's more relaxed than that. And you know, you can even see it there, on the prison environment, it's not there anymore because, you know, I mean, that was the case at the beginning when I left,

but it took so much, a different scale, and I want to give it a... There's an impact, and I want to give more, I want to give more. And people like you, for me, I think it's super important. You have your daughter, you say it's my motivation, you go back to school. Yes. Does the little ball come back quickly? Yes. The first class reappears quickly.

What are you going to study? At first, it was in educational intervention. Basically, it's a certificate because I didn't have a high school degree. And basically, I wanted to be an intern in housing buildings like the Houses of the Heart to give back what I had received. And then after that, I enrolled in a communication school. It's super funny because I studied at UQAM, so I find myself in the same neighborhood. In your neighborhood, yes, that's it.

So to learn to live in the neighborhood in a different way. But I was so motivated, you know, and there were still these issues of struggle, of struggle for power. I still felt easily threatened by citizens or those who tend to lower people who are not of the same class as them. Sometimes it's just in my perception, I remember a teacher who said that a person in Quebec who has just a high school degree was illiterate, but I had a high school degree. Until now, I only had A's at university.

So it's for sure that I did a duty to raise my hand and say, I don't believe because I'm not illiterate, we don't believe, since I'm not a second-year 3, we're not a second-year 3 because we have a second-year 3. I confirm. I can't tell you when I stopped, but I can confirm that you're not a second-year 3. And what does that mean, free comments like that?

I don't like that. I need to replace people and open up a little more to say, well, it's more open than that. There are contexts that make people drop out of school. So I'm at the university and I'm confronted with this kind of character or students who need to tell you how much they understand you. There's a kind of competition. But I'm just proud that I didn't burn all my cells and that I'm able to study and go look for a diploma and offer a life to my daughter that has more financial ease than the ones I've known. And I'm going to work in youth centers, and for me it was a mistake.

I really wanted to help girls who had careers like mine, but I didn't have enough feedback from my experience because I was confronted with their stories, similar to mine. And I wanted to save them. I was like, it was really unprofessional. It didn't work. I was too... You were seeing yourself in others.

So much. So much. And to become aware, it was part of my healing. I'm sure it was necessary that I went through that. But it allowed me to see how it didn't make sense at 16 to be in the street, and to have lived what I lived and to think that it was normal because that's what they told me, little girl, you're a little less than that, they love me, and yeah, we're going to Toronto, and leave me alone, poor girl, you don't know what's waiting for you. And that's it. Like me, they told me, don't do that, and you're going to die. And I was like, leave me alone.

So it allowed me to go and take care of that part a little bit, but professionally, I couldn't continue there. So I made my little path. I worked more with young people who had been arrested by the alternative justice organizations in Quebec, who, before the detention, let's say the first or second offense, I don't remember what it's called, the law at that time, young people who were returning, before the justice system, in short, and to accompany them in workshops or in their community work hours to do for the committed actions. And then I had the impression of having more impact, you know, and to be able to create

a link with the young person and to discuss, you know, to have an open discussion, don't do that anymore, don't do that again, and it's like, you know, just being in contact with these young people and seeing how they feel about all this. What was the context of their arrest? How did he get caught and not his two other men because they destroyed a chalet? All the dynamics that is behind it. There is something underneath the reactions of adolescents who are in reaction like that. To really be able to make a difference in the conversation,

and to be an adult who will not speak to them as an authority who applies a regulation just because there is a regulation and there is no sense underneath. And who has not lived the street, precisely, and all that. Because living the street, there are many, let's say today it's going to be the street. It seems that there is a difference between living the rue et vivre le street, qui est le même mot mais qui n'a pas la même sonorité.

Mais je pense que quelqu'un qui a vécu la rue peut comprendre le street, qui est plus le mode criminel. Quand on parle du street aujourd'hui, les jeunes, quand on parle de vivre la rue, là on parle plus d'un parcours comme le tien, mais je pense qu'avec un parcours comme ça, When we talk about the street, today, young people, you know, when we talk about living on the street, we're talking more about a path like yours. But I think you're able, with a path like that, you're able to go and look for more of your youth, you know, to relate a little to what they're living,

and probably feel it too, you know. Sometimes I tell myself that it's a bit like that too in this podcast. I think that's why people have a certain ease to trust me, because they feel that I'm a bit of a magnet, and that I've also been through some challenges. So I have the impression that between us, the us is extremely wide, but we recognize each other and we give each other our hand more easily.

Is the father of your daughter present in your life at all? No, he's a guy from... It's really another bad decision on my part. From... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... from... In 2006, I think I was in 2005, I told you. Yes, that's right. So I spent the summer in bars and I met a person who, in my opinion, was going to be perfect because he worked in the north of Quebec. So we just went to see Fly In, Fly Out, you know, and my little quiet life with my daughter, but I hadn't planned your pregnancy. And then, you know, his situation made me think, he's fun, you know, we have a lot of fun when we see each other, so why not?

But still, you know, who decides to keep a child because why not? I was just in my way. And then I dreamed of this life of a family, you know, to have a house, and a a dog, a enclosure, and a car. He had all of that. We decided to live this life. It was still a bad decision because, well, I was pregnant,

I stopped consuming, but not him. So we weren't at all his same age. We had fun because we were consuming. You were just in the alcohol, you never fell back into drugs. Because sometimes alcohol can quickly you to a little key. Later, 2011. Okay, it's back. That's why I don't want to drink alcohol anymore.

It's a gear that... It took five years. I just drank for five years. It's already hot that you get to drink, that you have a rush hour. But even if you're in a conso, in the pub, and you say, I'm closing the bar, do you still become a good mother? I don't think so. No? Not less.

But you have the guard, you don't do it. I have the guard, I don't get it removed, I close the bar, there's a little guard at home, I get there, it's 3 o'clock, it's 4 o'clock. I mean, Parti, you're a good mother, for me, it's already that, you have a housekeeper. I mean, it's a lot more than a lot of people who leave them alone in bed and who are going to have a party and who don't have a little housekeeper, you know? So for me, already, that's a success compared to a lot of stories I've heard. I understand that we don't do it like, sadly, it's not ideal, yeah, but compared to many other stories I've read. I understand that we're doing it like, Chris doesn't lie, it's not ideal, but compared to what you've been,

I already just have the responsibility of having a guardian who takes care of your kid while you're partying, it's already something, you know, I find that it brings maturity, a certain emotional intelligence, and a maturity to make Chris, it takes place, but it doesn't take up all of it. Well, that's what I imagined in the sense that, we'll remember, I went to the reception center at 14. So I didn't know the bars until I was 17 or 18. I was in the reception center, then I was in the river, then I was swimming with a dancer. You went out and celebrated with people, danced, that's it.

So I went crazy. It's the summer of my 30s. I was like, it's so much fun. I don't want it to stop. I went to Burmaid at the end of the evening. We closed the bar and went to the pool. And I lived a life of... You were 18 when you started doing it in 30s.

That's it. And... With your behavior... Well, there's never enough. I don't want more. I want to go further. Explosive, that's it. So after that, with my son, and my son's father, we went to live in Gaspésie

because he was originally from there. And then I... All my dream of having a house and all that. I realized that it was also very dramatic, like with Pierre at 14, it was an imaginary world that I had created in my head. And reality is not that at all. And then the life we had was not possible.

It was not... And you know, I don't want to go into details either, on But you said, because you just talked about Pierre, you said, Pierre, that moment, it was the first time I experienced conjugate violence. Yes. You said that. It was the first time. So when I'm told it was the first time, it means that it happened. Were you in those relationships where it happened?

It happened more on the street with the bad associations. In my relationship, I wouldn't say it was a healthy relationship, the relationship with my son's father. There are several definitions of conjugal violence. There are several ways to express violence. 100%. It was clearly not healthy, but it wasn't just him with me. It was in both directions that it was toxic.

And I left because I thought I was going to get over it. And it created the opposite. It was more difficult afterwards. Can you say that you were a little bit in the same pattern as your mother? The two kids separated, not too much budget. You found yourself exactly where your mother was, and that's what you won at the base. Yes. Yes.

Really. With an emotional fatigue that I wasn't able to take care of two children. I was fine when I only had my daughter before the father of my son arrived in the set. That was fine. I managed. I was managing it. And when I added a child and a partner, it became too much. I didn't have that capacity. I didn't have that maturity.

To manage everything. To take care of everything. The girl I wanted to be in a frame, the girl I wanted to be in a society, the girl I wanted to be an anarchist and punk, I understand. What do you want? I want to do fuck you, society.

And what do you do? Oh, well, I have a house, two children. It's like, what a risk, it's a clash. Yes, really. But you know, this identity research, you know, when I told you, let's say, at the end of the street, I wasn't a citizen yet, but I wasn't a young person either. Well, it's the same thing with becoming a mother. You know, you get out of the street, you become a mother.

Am I really a mother? Do I have everything it takes to be a mother? Today, I'm able to say, well, no, it wasn't a good idea to have children after a therapy outing and from the street. But that's how life came about. Those are the choices I made. I tried to do the best with what I had, but I didn't have what it took. And that's a lot of what I try to think about

with the second book. I mean, I absolutely don't want people to think that I'm trying to ruin my parents for what happened. They did everything they could with the resources they had and where they were going in their life. The proof is your sister. Exactly. And I, despite all the studies and the reconstruction and the meetings you mentioned, I thought I could raise two children, but no.

Clearly, I was missing some really important things. I gave everything I had to give. I'm very proud of my children. I didn't always have my son's grade. It was his father who raised him mostly. When he went into high school, we had a shared grade. I took care of my daughter all the time. But I'm very proud of both of them and I'm very proud of everything I would have passed on to them. But unfortunately, I would have also passed on some gaps. and we are also being transmitted from the lacunes.

And I want us to be aware of that as a society. When I say, can we take care of our little girls or our little boys too? When we take care of our children, can't we come and help our brother, our cousin, the neighbor, to offer an hour of our time, anything, to draw, paint with the child, bring it to the park, choose what our time to draw, paint, and bring it to the park. We can choose what we want to do, but we can as adults be a significant adult for the children of our surroundings because everyone who has human complexities

will transmit a part of their human complexities to their children. So when we are several significant adults in the life of a child, you can cover a lot wider in the construction of the personality of that child. How are your kids doing today? They're doing well. My daughter is 25 years old, lives in Quebec, she was raised, she doesn't want to know about the Gaspisie. She's a city girl, she has fun, she's great, she has an incredible social network, and she's good in her skin. She has a really bubbly personality, as we say. And my son, he's a young man who went to work with his father. He's been working at the factory for 12 hours.

I can't be more proud that they both finished their secondary school, they both found a job in which they are well, that they are developing, that they are happy with what they are. My son is really a gaspésien who built a camp in the woods with his guys, and they are happy each in very different lives. Are you proud of them? Really. Are you proud of them? Really. Are you proud of yourself?

Yes. Yes. It was special to publish a book, you know, to explain to my son, who was still quite young, in 2020, he was 13, 14 years old, and to explain to him the importance of sharing that, you know. And when people were writing to me, the people in the audience who had read me, who were writing, I was reading the messages I was receiving to him, I were writing, I would read the messages I received to them. I would say, I'm keeping my son. That's why I'm doing this. I remember my son. I would say, that's why I'm doing this. Do you see the people that it helps, that it touches?

It's not an easy story to share. My daughter knew about it long before him, but well, she had to die before the book was published. But he's proud that all this story, completely absurd, is doing good for other people. 2011. 2011, yeah. I go back to the city, I come back to Longueuil, I leave the Gaspésie, I come back to Longueuil to get closer to my family who stayed here. I was exiled to Gaspésie.

I found a guy I fell in love with in therapy and I'm still running after love. That's why I say I'm still running after love today. No, no, no. I'm very happy to be married today. Perfect. I'm glad you said that. I still have it today. No, no, no. I'm very happy to be married today. Perfect. I'm glad to hear that. But, so we meet in a circumstance competition, and especially thanks to Facebook. It's fantastic. On Facebook, we find people we didn't want to meet. And he's still part of the gametech and all that,

but I'm just happy to find them. It clicked like it did before. He consumes lexodone. I thought, well, it's less bad than heroin. So just to follow him with lexodone. Of course, he ended up in prison. I thought, well, I'm going to stop. I didn't have the money for the pills.

And with all the experience I have in dependence, because they were medication, I thought it would be less bad than heroin. But listen, I was hospitalized. I had pancreatitis. I had vomited black. We were talking about symptoms of suffrage. It's very violent, the symptoms.

I was vomiting and it was black. I was hospitalized. They kept me for a week because I couldn't take an ice cream without vomiting. The doctor yelled at me. He was like, you could have died of dehydration. It's like... And you're a mom, you know?

And I'm a mom. That's it. That's really it. It made me go, well, let's see, Isabelle. You know, I couldn't believe it. You worked so hard. Yes. Yes.

You were so proud of yourself. It's really... I really identify myself as a dependent. I can't say no. Today, it's sugar, it's the same thing. If you put a chocolate bar on me, I'm sure I'll eat it. I can't say no and not do it. And yet, I'm a woman with a lot of will that accomplishes a lot of challenges in my life.

You can't have a better person to understand you. I'm the same. I have a will, I can stop here, I can do this, I can do that, but there are... I always have to hang on to something. I was talking to Étienne Boullé, who had already done the podcast, who had independent governments, and he said, this is the cigar. We would say that we have to go with something,

we have to hang on to something. There are better things than others. Gym is part of it. But even then, it pushed me to the extreme, the gym. I pushed it too far, you know. I pushed it to the steroids, to wanting to go. You know what I mean? So we always end up hanging on to something that's a little too unhealthy, but that... You know, I have trouble going to a store without spending too much.

I mean, we're all there. A little something. You were talking about a Sunday that's flat, but I'm going to spend the day in America. I mean, we all have our dependence. So when we have that in us... I've never had a problem with games, but I don't go to the casino.

You understand? I go there too often. Because one night I went, and I went, oh! I mean, I went there several times, but there was one night where I went, oh, I went several times, but one night I went and I realized, oh, this place is dangerous for me. But there are things that we say, ah, it's chocolate, it's not dangerous, everyone eats it. But Chris, it's... But you understand, it's always going to have a bad side, no matter what, even if it's not something necessarily, we'll say, the chocolate is less thick than the heroine, but you know, he will always have a bad side

that will come back to that. But following that rush, in 2011... I moved to Gaspésie, I said I was going to die here. And I went back to live in Gaspésie, to meet my son, and his father took care of him. I made the decision to live in Gaspésie until my son grew up, finished his studies, and was present, even though I didn't have a guard at that time. It wasn't easy. It's not easy. You know, we're talking about geographical lines sometimes in the middle. It helped me because I couldn't have stayed there

and continued trying to be abstinent again. But that's not enough. And not only that, but when you leave the city with a city life style, and you end up in the far end of Pointe-à-la-Croix, above a mountain in the Alverne, there's no So what I wanted was a basic life with tranquility, contact with nature, to sit down with myself. That's what's good for me now. It's not agitation anymore. I'm in town. It's a week's sleep when I go to bed. It's starting to miss you. I'm going to be fine in my little forest when I come back on Sunday.

When was the last time you consumed? December 31, 2015. December 31, 2015, again with a nice gentleman. Because I'm running after love. It's my inner life that's never filled with anything. I have enough. I had let go of the thorns, it was a few words, but I was still drinking, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, everything. I had to reset the counter to zero. That's what I did. I went to a meeting. Then I took my welcome key and I decided to be abstinent from everything for a year. pis j'ai décidé d'être abstinente de tout pendant un an.

Pis d'essayer d'apprendre à juste être avec moi pis d'apprendre à apprévoiser ce vide-là intérieur pis de m'adopter dans mon repas, c'est moi. Je suis faite de même, je suis capable de vivre avec moi-même pis quand j'ai atteint un an, I'm made of myself. Am I able to live with myself? And when I reached one year, I got engaged for another year of abstinence, of sex, of all the quid. And it made me feel so good that I didn't want to be in a relationship anymore. I wanted to have occasional meetings, but I thought, hey, I'm good, I found the recipe, I'm balanced at work, the family, you know, everything worked. Living with myself, the brain is clean with me.

With me, and all of me, my story, and all the kit, and I was fine, I don't change the recipe anymore, you know. And then my partner entered my life a few months before COVID. No, yeah, that's right, a few months before COVID. I had just released my book, I had gone to meet friends to put them back together, and we had common friends. And it was the beginning of a magnificent adventure, and with him and with the book.

It was the beginning of my life, assuming in all awareness who I am, what is the end that belongs to me, my responsibilities to me, stop blaming others for what happened to me, and always ask me in complicated situations, what is the end that belongs to me? What can I do here? And the rest is to learn to detach myself because it doesn't belong to me. I can't change it.

I can't do anything for someone else. I can't be there. That's all I can do for someone else. You're married and happy. Yes. Loving. Loving. In your Gaspésie.

It's been five years.'ai deux questions pour toi. C'est des questions que je pose souvent à mes invités en fin d'entrevue. Je t'ai demandé si t'étais fière de tes enfants. Tu me dis oui. Je t'ai demandé si tes enfants étaient fiers de toi. Tu me dis oui. Est-ce que t'es fière de toi? Tellement.

Tellement. Mon plus grand accomplissement, c'est d'avoir accueilli toute cette histoire absurde-là. My greatest accomplishment is to have welcomed all this absurd story and stopped trying to create distance between me and this part of my life. I am who I am. I have the strength I have today. I have gone through all these challenges and I can doing something good with that. It's my new... I'm not on a mission on Earth, but it's like it's inviting me to want to share. And that's why I thank you for welcoming me to your podcast. I know you're very listened to. Thank you for being there.

It's really a good podcast. I love listening to you. Because it's always these human encounters. There are humans behind the labels that we see on shirts. Your podcast allows you to meet these people. That's what I want to do with my story, to go behind the label, the itinerary, the dependency. I'm often thanked for this podcast. It doesn't exist if you don't come.

If you're not ready to come meet me and you're not ready to talk about your vehicle, which is not always easy. The proof is that I don't do it myself. I did it for a living in a few other podcasts. I'm often asked to do mine. And I'm not ready. I'm not ready to do it. And at the same time, it's funny because I said something earlier,

and I said, there are often people who say, hey, my journey, and every time I say that, t'sais, il y a souvent du monde qui disent, « Ah, t'sais, moi, mon parcours, puis à chaque fois qu'on me dit ça, ça va être un des épisodes les plus plates, t'sais. » T'sais, puis je convainc des gens de venir qui disent exactement ce que je dis. Il y a des gens qui sont pas prêts. Moi, je le suis pas encore, t'sais. Fait que des fois, je me sens un peu pas opportuniste, ou t'sais, en me disant comme, t'sais, « Tu viens me raconter, moi, je suis pas prêt. » Mais même, ça s'empêche pas que pas parce que je't stop me from telling you, or telling you everything from A to Z,

that I'm not able to listen to them and share them, for example. My last question. Are you afraid of yourself? Not anymore. No? No. No. No. I have confidence. I have confidence that I have built a life today where I don't need the fire anymore. It's a bit of a cliché in the rooms when we say that, but I really, literally,

have a lot of satisfaction in life that I have built. The people I let in my life are healthy people. I stopped repeating things that create me pain. I often do things that do me good. And that connection with humans to feed the relational aspect of my life, it's so satisfying, on all levels, professional, personal, relational. But I'm always afraid to go back to consuming. I never want to find myself in a situation where I say,

this is an option, this scares me, and that's what keeps me in the room, to see the new ones coming. Do you think it's strong enough if it ever happens? I've had enough obsession when someone consumes in front of me. It happens in parties. And it doesn't make me want to consume. And I leave parties at 7 o'clock because I realize that after a beer, the world becomes flat. When we're young, huh?

Who's gonna give us a high five? To spend a good part of my life in bars because of the humor. Oh, sometimes there are people who come to your house to warm you up, because they like you, but I'm like, I'm sure I'd like you better if you had four beers less in your room. Thank you so much for coming, for sharing, for writing these books that will maybe help the hell of a street girl. The beginning of the calvary of a young woman. Is it better for you?

He was written before him, but he tells before him. Which one do we start with? We start with the hell of a street girl. Okay. Because... We know the story, then we learn. We want to know why she ended up there. Good. Except if we're confused when we listen to a movie that goes back and forth, in that case you'll forget the beginning of the calvary at the beginning.

But otherwise... If you've listened to Star Wars... That's it. It depends on how you listen to Star Wars. If when you've discovered it, you've started from episode one, well's it! It depends on how you listen to Star Wars. If when you discovered it, you started from episode 1, well, read the second one, then take it. But...

It doesn't matter. The important thing is that you read them. If they want to understand your story, we'll put everything in the description, on YouTube, in the description. In fact, if you listened to the audio, go just on YouTube, in the description. Everything will be there,

in one click. And come write me, come write me. That's it, to be able to the audio, go to YouTube, in the description. Everything will be there, at a click. And come and write to me. That's it, to be able to contact you, to be able to write to you, where you got the book. Yes. Thank you for your time. I hope you enjoyed the episode. See you later. You Hello, everybody. Without limits, what is it? It's simple. I meet ordinary people who have done extraordinary things.

Without limits on time, without limits on the subject. So don't waste time, go subscribe to your favorite podcast platform and listen to this. I'm telling you, you don't want to miss this.