{"id":22780,"date":"2019-01-24T18:13:55","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T23:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=22780"},"modified":"2019-01-24T18:13:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T23:13:55","slug":"traci-melchor-shares-story-of-mental-health-in-the-workplace-with-local-business-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/traci-melchor-shares-story-of-mental-health-in-the-workplace-with-local-business-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Traci Melchor shares story of mental health in the workplace with local business leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you were feeling dark or anxious today, how many of you felt comfortable enough to phone your boss to say you needed the day off because of it?
\nTelevision personality Traci Melchor would venture a guess to say that not many of you would say yes \u2013 but that is something that needs to change, she says.
\nMs. Melchor brought her story of mental health in the workplace to local business leaders this fall as the closing keynote speaker at the Aurora Chamber Women\u2019s Summit. Hosted by the Aurora Chamber of Commerce at the Royal Venetian on Industrial Parkway South, the Summit\u2019s theme was \u201cEmpower, Educate, Elevate,\u201d and featured a full roster of speakers chosen to provide support for women entrepreneurs and provide advice to help women in business achieve their goals.
\nMs. Melchor, in a discussion hosted by Elvira Caria, shared her very personal experiences struggling with mental health and finding that all-important work-life balance.
\nShe started to notice her struggle, she said, a few years ago when she was chosen to co-host the CTV chat show The Social. At the time, she was already working on two full-time shows and was raising two children as a single mother.
\n\u201cIt seemed like a great idea \u2013 let\u2019s have more work!\u201d she said, with a chuckle, noting that what attracted her about the opportunity on The Social was the opportunity to shape a new show from the ground up. \u201cAbout three months into the show, I got a cancer diagnosis.\u201d
\nSupporting her in her battle with the rare DFSP form of cancer was Chris Hyndman, who co-hosted CBC\u2019s lifestyle show Steven & Chris with his partner Steven Sabados. Ms. Melchor had her surgery and had to spend the six months of The Social\u2019s first nine months on the sidelines before making the decision to go back to work. Shortly thereafter, Hyndman was found dead in an alley outside of his Toronto home, a death which made headlines across the country.
\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t make sense of it because I was actually supposed to go to their house that night,\u201d said Ms. Melchor about making the sudden decision to spend the night at home with her mom while her two kids were away. \u201cThe last time I spoke to Chris, he was in Barbados and we had the best conversation ever. I told him I loved him, he told me he loved me\u2026we were making plans to go over that Sunday\u2026and every box was checked. That keeps me going and it just keeps me hopeful.\u201d
\nBut she wasn\u2019t sleeping. She was burning the candle at both ends. If an author was booked to appear on The Social, she would diligently do her homework reading the book cover to cover \u2013 even if only for an eight-minute segment on the air.
\nOne such book was the memoir written by Justin Trudeau, just prior to becoming Prime Minister. In it, he wrote about his mother Margaret\u2019s struggles with mental illness, including a time when, at a low point, mother dropped in on her eleven-year-old son\u2019s gym class \u201ccrying and distraught.\u201d
\n\u201cI remember reading that and thinking, \u2018Wow,\u2019 and something connected with me,\u201d Ms. Melchor recalls. \u201cIf that could happen to me, with the resources around her, why couldn\u2019t that happen to me? We had to pre-tape Bell\u2019s Let\u2019s Talk Day when he became Prime Minister and he picked The Social [to discuss this topic]. When we got to formulate how the interview was going to be, and I really wanted to talk to him about that day when he was eleven, he explained it and he was living it. In his eyes, I saw him reliving that as an eleven-year-old and I remember thinking there was something wrong with me.\u201d
\nAnother component of Bell Let\u2019s Talk Day had her interviewing a mother who wrote a book about her son\u2019s own struggles with mental illness, a fight which he ultimately lost.
\n\u201cI read her book and just got through it and every day before the show we would have a run through with the producer and I was just breaking down in my office,\u201d she said, realising she just couldn\u2019t do it anymore without taking time off to address her own struggle.
\nIn the first couple of months, she said she just couldn\u2019t wrap her head around it. She liked her job and everything that came with it, but couldn\u2019t understand \u201cwhy my mind was failing me and not allowing me to be there.\u201d She experienced guilt, she said, because she had never not worked, but she found the support she vitally needed from her employers, who connected her with a therapist she still sees today.
\nIn the end, she said it is important to be kind to everybody because you never know what that person just went through. If someone is \u201cbitchy,\u201d it could just be a symptom of something else.
\n\u201cIf you are having an episode, feeling dark or anxiety, are we feeling powerful to go to our bosses or call in sick because you\u2019re depressed today?\u201d Ms. Melchor asked the packed audience last week.
\nVery few hands went up.
\n\u201cWe need to fix that, folks.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you were feeling dark or anxious today, how many of you felt comfortable enough to phone your boss to say you needed the day off because of it?
\nTelevision personality Traci Melchor would venture a guess to say that not many of you would say yes \u2013 but that is something that needs to change, she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/2019-01-24-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Vq","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-17 10:34:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}