I will keep this long. In my absence I would like to ask that you pet a dog, do your healing work, be open to learning, look to the sky for the beauty and the medicine it can provide, be real and honest, treat each other well and smash the patriarchy HARD.
To my friends, thank you for also being my family. I feel sorry for you guys because after all this time thinking I’m annoying you’re now going to really miss me. When you are feeling sad please remember how funny I was. I hope you can hear me laughing when you are laughing. I love you. I’m not afraid to make this weird. You shouldn’t be afraid either.
Light a candle and send me the energy of encouragement to move forward on my journey. Send me reminders to release and detach. Let me go and I will try to do good work on the other side. I wasn’t great at life here but I think I can do better elsewhere.
Please feed someone hungry, help an animal and every time you do a deed like this know I am so proud and thankful for you.
Living with ALS has not been easy. I wish there was more awareness, research and hope. This shitty illness took my incredible mother Barbara Kovac (nee Olive), Grandma Sophie Olive and Uncle Billy Olive. Somebody needs to cure this thing so cool people are not lost because of it.
I tried my best. I’m still proud of myself for hanging in there and holding things down since diagnosis in 2006. I might not have looked strong but I know I was.
Ultimately it was not a genetic disease that took me out, it was a system. There are not enough supports and services promoting quality of life and Independence for those who are not healthy and able-bodied. Look to unhealthy societal structures and government. There is desperate need for change. That is the sickness that causes so much suffering. Vulnerable people need help to survive. I could have had more time if I had more help.
I credit my Grandma Jean and Grandpa George Kovac for looking out for me after I lost my mother. Their generosity and belief in me sustained me quite a while and allowed me the gift of a safe comfortable home/my sanctuary in my loved neighborhood of Riverview.
My small but mighty circle know who they are. It was an honor to know you, love you and be known and loved.
I couldn’t have survived as long without you. I wouldn’t want to. Special thanks to my right hand ride or die Shayla. Your unconditional love and acceptance was everything to me.
I wanted to be a writer so at least this will be in print. I wanted to be a mom and my amazing dog Shanti made me feel like I was.
I wanted to do healing work and in a way I did. I wanted to be loved and I finally learned to love myself. Now I want to be brave, explore and travel, and see how it feels to be light. I hope there is sun, and tea and peace where I go or something even better.
Do something nice.
See you.
♡ Dhara
3 thoughts on “Sathya Dhara Kovac”
Shaking things up right to the last breath. Literally.
Truly rest in power, Dhara, and sorry that I, among many others, was not able to know you better, sooner, and that I myself, had few resources to personally offer. Because this is on all of us. Our character as a Co munity is how the most vulnerable of us are cared for and supported.
As Margaret Mead said, civilizarion begins with the evidence of a healed femur, which says that unlike animals who quiickly die when they break a leg bone, a healed femur means that the person was carried, protected, and lovingly cared for.
And people with permanently debilitating illness deserve our love, care and attention to have joyful fulfillment in life like the rest of us strive as a right to attain, if we call ourselves a civilized community.
Even more so.
I experienced the Home Cade system with Family who needed and qualified for the help to care for our loved ones at home, and it was breaking then, for the past 20 years. So when I saw the Ad in the paper, I volunteered for the Homecare Advisry Board and sat on it for some months, a few years back.
I quit as it appeared to be a cover for poor management and resources, and I didn’t want my useless presence to allow the toxic and under-resourced system to exploit my participation, as it was, to enhance its credibility. Then sick family members again took my full attention and devotion.
Because that’s what happens with volunteers, who normally are at the far reaches of their ability to help, and with no resources or paid advocacy office and “go-to” person doing this full-time, as a job.
We need to start a hub. Demand that a real advocacy position be created and paid by our tax money, so that people in Dhara’s position, and many of us possibly soon enough, get the effective resources needed to help the “live”/age in place as a right.
And as well, accepting homecare importantly provides efficiencies to the aging and care systems, rather than having to go into care, requiring huge capital costs, infrastructure, Administrative personnel, staffing, etc., and the person losing all autonomy and human rights, and agency when placed in Residential care, besides. Think Residential School system, right down to the often execrable treatment of loving Family and friends who potentially witnness abuses there and are not welcomed or tolerated if they may witness.
This situatiin that Dhara found herself subjected to and broke her will
to grace us with her company, is not what Dr. Evelyn Shapiro and her colleagues , who were internationally acclaimed experts in the field of Homecare right here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, ever envisioned would result so terribly in only a few decades. Years of government not keeping up and effectively cutting back on services for these “invisible” Homecare consumers has weakened and “privatized” (“Family- managed Care allotments, obviously inadequate here) the Homecare system that may have bloated levels of Administration , nut we cannot conclude one way or another as there seems to be a lack of accountability to the consumers, tax-paying public, etc.
Perhaps it is time also for the Provincial Auditor to take hold of this situation and review with all the stake holders from the providers of this service, publicly and now apparently, priivately, as well as the consumers, their Families, friends and advocates.
This is frankly asinine as it stands, with nothing that appears on the horizon to halt more tragedies like Dhara experienced.
La lutte continue.
You deserved better. Rest well.
Hi Sathya I’m Sean in Toronto I never met you but as soon as I saw your story and pictures this majorly touched my heart my ” psychic vibe ” is if I had a chance to meet you we would have been super close friends. I have been a long advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. If anyone has any disability in this country it is next to impossible to get the appropriate help every word you spoke is the truth. I have also been following Dr Craig Hogan from The Afterlife Research And Education Institute on You tube I have seen all his afterlife evidence he has and I’m convinced now there’s an afterlife and our mind continues after our body ceases to function. When I eventually cross over please don’t forget me as I want to meet you I will always remember your story and please remember me. Until then, rest easy angel. Sean