“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength”

Gandhi

Hello and welcome to my portfolio. I completed this site as a part of my first PIDP course, Teaching with Technology. My name is Amber Cachelin, RSE (after I obtained my Red Seal Certification in Construction Electrician, I learned that it is now recognized as the trades equivalent of a 4-year Bachelor’s degree and we can put letters after our name (RSE for ‘Red Seal Endorsed’. Neato!)

I will warn you, what follows could be described as a short novel, but I will include a TLDR at the end…

I come from a unique background of being raised by a mother who came from a progressive left wing family in which the women were the breadwinners and/or single working mothers, and a father who came from a very traditional family with gender roles that seemed to be stuck in the 1950’s. Family values and ‘a woman’s place in the home’ were preached by my paternal grandmother who was very loving and whom I love dearly, and independence and feminism were ingrained in me by my mother and my maternal grandmother, both of whom I also love dearly.

As someone who has ADHD, I felt from an early age that I didn’t want to stay in the home, and I definitely wouldn’t thrive in a sedentary environment. I was ‘diagnosed’ at 14 years-of-age, but nobody ever told me what it meant, and I didn’t know at the time what any ADHD traits were, aside from having a hard time paying attention. My mother opted for Omega 3 supplements as treatment. For as long as I can remember, I was interested in fun and exciting things like music, the great outdoors, and science, but everything else was a struggle, and I didn’t know why. After being a socially awkward misfit in elementary and high school, muddling through with A+’s in interesting classes and C-‘s in the boring ones, I completed part of my Bachelor of Science degree at TRU (UCC at that time). In the classes I was interested in I excelled, but in the classes that were required that I wasn’t interested in, I struggled hard. My mother presented a carrot and mentioned her field of work was thriving, it paid well at the time, and it required only one year of school – The Community and School Support Program. So I shifted focus (as ADHD does) and I went for it. That program changed my life – as I learned how to support others, I learned how to support myself. I enjoyed working as a Support Worker for a few years, but as with all things and ADHD, it became stagnant as there was no new learning, challenges, or room for growth. I began to struggle again. I needed a change. I became a workaholic, working 1 to 2 other part time jobs just to learn new things and keep my brain alive. My main side-gigs included ‘pet food sales person’, ‘care-aide’, and ‘DJ/karaoke/rock trivia host’. But it still wasn’t enough.

I married a man who was starting out as a Carpenter in 2010. Having this exposure sparked my interest in the trades. I never thought of trades as an option, because until recently, society didn’t present trades as an option for women. My father was an electrician, and his father was a millwright, but because that side of the family didn’t encourage women in the workforce – let alone trades – I was never shown any part of it. After I made my decision, both my father and my husband were wary of me entering the trades. They were worried about the challenges I would face as a woman, as they had both seen what it was like. But don’t tell a person with ADHD what they can and cannot do. It will only give them further motivation to go against the grain and accept your challenge. I decided I would show them, and I did. It didn’t take long until my father was my biggest supporter. It turns out electrical fit me like a glove, and I excelled. I rose to all the challenges, and even after being unfairly dismissed from my first electrical job, I persevered and got another one in a company that valued the females in the trade just as much as the males. The struggle I faced through my apprenticeship was a different kind of struggle. I felt it was a ‘good’ struggle, and that I was fighting for something worthwhile. Proving myself over and over, and changing peoples minds about where the value of a woman lies – that was a very rewarding struggle. Not the boring, stagnant, mundane struggle of wash, rinse, repeat that I was used to. I was fortunate throughout my apprenticeship that my work experience was very well-rounded and I learned a lot. The two main companies I worked for recognized my strength and competence, and gave me good, challenging tasks. I focused on my goals and stayed as positive as possible, and used the few negative attitudes around me as a springboard to soar high above their expectations and leave them muttering in foolishness.

Fast forward to 2016, I wrote my IP exam and became an RSE. It was around this time that I became aware of and involved in TRU Women in Trades as a mentor and guest speaker. I had to have a major surgery in 2017 and I wasn’t able to work for 3 months. It was horrible – I became very depressed and anxious as I usually rely on physical activity and keeping busy to raise my neurotransmitters and keep my mental health in check. I also had to take medication that further affected my mental state. When I was fit for work again, the company I was working for had slowed down and there was no work for me. I decided to use this opportunity to start my own electrical company, Greensleeves Electric, in July of 2017, which was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. For the first year and a half, the stress was out of control and the struggle was unreal. Almost every week I wanted to quit and find a ‘real job’ with far less responsibility, but something kept me going. There was a small voice that would whisper ‘just one more day’. And so I would give it one more day and things would get better until the next big ‘crash’. This rollercoaster went on, the struggle continued, but so did I.

Then one day I got a phone call. Since I started my company and launched my website, I received constant business-to-business solicitations and attempted scams, and it had become tedious to constantly bat them away. It was Kamloops This Week on the line – I won a Reader’s Choice Award for ‘One of the Best’ in the Electrician category. They wanted to know if I wanted to purchase an ad. I had never heard of the Reader’s Choice Awards and I politely declined. I mentioned it to my husband the next day and he perked up ‘That’s a legit award!’. So I called them back. I’m still not sure how this happened, as my company wasn’t very well known in it’s first year, but someone nominated Greensleeves Electric, and people voted, and we won! Every year in the 5 years since I started my company, we’ve won. I’m very thankful and grateful for my supporters who made this happen, and for the allies of females in a male dominated field. For the most part we are welcomed, but there are still the disapproving traditionalists who have yet to change their minds.

In June of 2020, I received a phone call from my WITT contact at TRU. She wanted to know if I would step into the role of Women in Trades Coordinator for 2 months. After the Covid-19 shut down, their Coordinator had found another job and they were stuck. Reluctantly I agreed, even though we were in year three and we were starting to get busy. During my apprenticeship from 2011 to 2016, it was rare to see very many other females in the Trades building. When I came back in 2020 and saw how drastically the WITT program had increased female enrollment in the trades in four short years I was sold. I was elated to see so many women walking through the halls. I wanted to stop every one of them to ask them what trade they were in, and to give them encouragement.

As my role at TRU continued to grow, and my part in this profound movement was becoming larger and larger, it was becoming increasingly difficult to juggle both my growing electrical company that I sacrificed so much for and this amazing new potential for permanency at TRU. Both roles were very rewarding but it was becoming apparent that I wouldn’t be able to maintain both in the long run. Finally in the summer of 2022 I was offered to expand my role at TRU to Electrical Instructor and after the 2 weeks of instructing were over, I knew I had to make a choice. I enjoyed teaching much more than I thought I would, and after much agonizing internal debate, I decided to scale back my company and direct more of my focus at TRU. Greensleeves will be my side-gig for now as I navigate through this change. My wonderful staff left for new employment in early September and throughout the Fall 2022 WITT Class, I still juggled – acting as the WITT Coordinator when the program started again mid-September, struggling to finish up the last of Greensleeves’ ongoing contracts, instructing the Electrical portion of the program, and also taking my first PIDP course.

When I came across the quote by Gandhi at the top of the page, it resonated with me deeply. Life is not easy, and it’s a struggle no matter what road you take. But you can choose your struggle, and with experience you learn what kind of struggle is worthwhile, and what kind of struggle is a waste of effort and potential. It’s not always clear what path is the best way to go, but if you enter every crossroads with a positive attitude, a purpose, some degree of foresight, and a willingness to follow through when things become difficult, you will eventually arrive at a place where you can look back and marvel at how far you’ve come.

TLDR: I have ADHD and sometimes that makes life hard. It’s like being an Apple OS in a Windows world. But I learned to work with it and interface the best that I can and like macs and PCs, I have strengths that non-ADHDer’s don’t have. I found this strength in electrical.

I also come from a family with mixed values in terms of where a woman belongs in the world. I chose to cultivate my own sense of belonging based on where I naturally fit, and carved out my own place in the electrical trade. The quote at the top of the page speaks of struggle, and it resonates with me as a life with ADHD is full of struggle. But struggling through something to make it to the other side and finding yourself in a better place is what makes us stronger in the end. Even when we don’t ‘win’ the struggle, we can learn from it and grow in a new direction.