The Create Festival

ere is a a piece of writing by Jennifer's dad, Arthur:
She was always our Icarus child. Jen was the happiest and the saddest of the three brilliant, beautiful and different sisters, someone who out of the womb had passion and personality, determination, grit and intelligence, sensitivity and softness underneath the fire. She grew up in Toronto, amid the Jewish community, with a family whose tradition of caring and concern for social justice became a part of her soul. Her mother is herself a healer; her father an academic; and she carried both sides inside her--body and soul, mind and spirit--while challenging and stretching her elders and peers. When she graduated McGill in Humanities, she went to Brazil with an international organization whose mission was to work for the betterment of people's left out of the modern world. With a gift for languages, she added Portuguese to her Hebrew, French, AND German, and worked for over half a year on a commune northeast of Brazil, one of the poorest areas of the world, building shelters, creating an economic substructure, planning for political goals. If she had been in a Henry James novel, she would have visited Europe, but her story is of our time, a woman who wanted to right the wrongs of the world, one at a time, who wanted to serve others rather than be served, who felt a pain which she wanted to alleviate in others. She often went sailing, always when in trouble going to the country or the sea, placing herself in the hands of the larger cosmos, reflecting on her place and her life. She had sailed in the Toronto Harbour and had seaman's papers, and for the rest of her life told me that she wanted a boat eventually, not a car. Nature for Jen was close to the nature of the Romantics, a place where she could reflect on and capture her moral being, serene and contemplative. In her poetry, published occasionally and performed often in the coffee houses and stages of Toronto, she celebrated the city--as in the wonderful allegorical verse about cycling down the St. Clair Hill, "Let it Ride", and she certainly reflected on her origins and inner passion. But, as well, the sea surrounded her:

I am the wallbreaker

I am the sea
I am the current of sound
spreading it's wings
shattering the stones
placed between you
between me

I am the wallbreaker
I am the tides,
rising high rising low
sifting sand
between layers
that separate
you from me

.............

I am the wallbreaker
I am the sea
my waves crash
through the walls we erect
that separate
you from me
that try to separate
you from me

Four years ago Jen decided that she would combine her love of the arts and her quest for healing into a profession. She took a three year program in Integrative Arts Therapy, telling us that all the arts together could act as a means of healing, that to be too narrow denied the full range of human creativity and emotion. When I told her that she had suffered herself and that would help her understand others, she said that she knew the role of the wounded healer. When asked if politics might be an avenue of concern, she laughed. I want to help people, she replied, not get lost in systems. She loved human beings, a much harder thing than loving humanity, and she wanted to cure the world one person at a time. In tune with a new beginning she used a new name for her profession--Sjenta; one incorporating her past while seeking to get at the beginning and find a new ending. She was mightily successful at the task, far more so than she realized, carrying all of her self-doubts with her. She wound up teaching at ISIS and working for Sheena's Place, Fred Victor House, St. Michael's Hospital and at Mary's House, a house for homeless women, contributing, protecting, ministering. Her friend Jennifer Clark described part of her last few years:

I met Sjenta in January of 1997 while working as an artist at Sheena's Place where she ran the Drop In. From the beginning she was unendingly helpful, cooperative and stimulation to work with. She did everything she could for the women at Sheena's Place. Everything about her helped people: her diplomacy, her dress, her food, her creativity, her presence, her energy, her wild red hair. She was all fire and light and she gave that inspiration and love to everyone she met...

I met some of the other people in Sjenta's life at the memorial held for her at Sheena's Place, Wednesday, March 18th. Around 35 women came to honour her. We talked about her fire, her energy, how much she loved her family, how much it meant for her to help others, how much she had accomplished. Everyone had stories of how she had affected and changed them, how she had made difficult insights clear to them. Sjenta taught us to honour and love ourselves, to have compassion, to honour the spirit, to honour the feminine in the world, to trust intuition, to have strength. Many women saw her as a model, wanted to be like her, were inspired by how she was her own woman. The consensus was that she had left an indelible and infinite imprint on us and that we would always honour her by supporting her qualities in others that we meet. That her energy will always be with us, be a strength to us and that nothing would ever change that. We are not certain why Jen decided to leave life at this time. There is a deep family history of depression, and there was a pattern to her highs and lows, which her family and friends knew and monitored, but the pattern did not hold this time. The rush of depression came like a tidal wave, and very quickly took hold of her being. She lived a committed, intense life, one which honoured her gender, her tradition and her family. As her parents and two sisters saw her leave this world, we talked about the trust we had in her and the love that would keep her eternal. Her life, to a parent, is unfinished, but it was one with its own shape, course and integrity, a life she wrote. Jen was interested in the mystical tradition of Judaism, a tradition which believes that no good deed is ever lost. If that is so, then much of her will always be with us. Arthur Haberman
April 1998