What do you do with your grief when the world won’t stop long enough for you to process it? It will find a place to rest if you don’t get it out. As they say, the body keeps the score.

On April 18th, 2024 my Dad passed away. I was in the room with him, alone, when he left his body. His breathing slowed and stopped, and he was at peace.

He wasn’t in particularly good health recently, but his passing was sudden and unexpected. Even when you know someone isn’t going to live a long life, you still can’t predict how the shock of them passing will affect you. Here are the things that have come to me since.

I feel guilty for writing. I feel guilty for not writing. I should be exercising more. I should take my kids to more activities. Why haven’t I taught my four year old to read yet? Why haven’t I read the stacks of non-fiction books on my shelf that will help me become a better person? How come I can’t be more patient? Why don’t I enjoy being a stay at home parent more? It’s boring! How can I say that time with my sweet children is boring? That feeling is going to damage my kids and make them feel unloved. I need to choose myself. I need to sacrifice myself for the good of the kids. I can’t model poor mental health, I need to take more breaks. I can’t take more breaks, the kids need me. They aren’t getting enough vegetables and we eat too much meat. Why haven’t I saved up for an electric car yet? I should never have let my French lapse. I can’t ask for even more help, I am already overly lucky. I should be working, other parents work and take care of their kids, why don’t I have the drive to do both? Why am I not making my own income and helping our family financially? Why haven’t I started my Masters yet? Why didn’t I do more with my undergraduate degree? I’ve made terrible life choices. I shouldn’t have broken that boy’s heart. I wish I could apologize to that old friend I let down. Am I a terrible friend? Do I make bad first impressions? I’m too desperate and not confident enough, that’s why I have such a hard time making new friends. I should be volunteering and working and being a wonderful Mother and wife and sister and daughter. Why can’t I be content and grateful for my wonderful, privileged life? I am failing at everything.

Around and around and around it swirls, cutting a path of destruction through my mental health, my patience, my sanity. Ripping up all the rational thoughts and emotions in its path and tossing them aside like a house pulled off its foundation. A self-esteem eating twister of martyrdom. The Guilt Tornado.

If you are late for a meeting, are you worried? If you are late for an appointment, are you concerned with how your tardiness is going to affect the schedule of the rest of everyone else’s day? If you are taking too long in the grocery store line, turning left, using an ATM, ordering food, or anywhere people may queue up behind you, do you feel like you should be rushing?

What about if you are late for a playdate? Trying to go anywhere as a parent feels like trying to run in quicksand. Or with bags of rocks weighting you down, which are actually the diaper bag, the food bag, the beach blanket, the bikes, the extra clothes in case someone gets wet or pees their pants, the “Oh shit!” emergency towel, and you are probably carrying at least one actual human as well as you struggle to the carseats. I used to pride myself on how punctual I was, and now I feel like I am always late for everything and I hate it.

“We’re going to play Truth or Truth,” my tipsy sisters inform us, gathered around my small kitchen table. I’ve never played. You get to ask a straightforward question to anyone, and if they answer honestly, the power of the question gets passed to them.

There were a lot of silly and a lot more cutting questions asked, and blunt answers given. As the evening turned to midnight, I had the last question. I turned to my husband, the only man in the room, and asked “If I continued to be the person I have been for the last year, would we get divorced?”

“Yes.”

The first year of my daughter’s life was beautiful and turbulent. I had a gorgeous new baby, a girl! I was so pleased to have a daughter and a son. How could I be so lucky? There is nothing like newborn cuddles and wiggles and noises. Everything they do is wonderful and sweet. The second time around you are more confident, although nearly just as nervous because every new being is so different; you’ll never have all the answers to everything. Children are like small pieces of your heart that live outside your body. They are soft and vulnerable, and you’ll never be able to protect them to the extent you wish you could. And they will test you.

When I became a mother, I knew I wouldn’t have as much time to write. Slowly and with the help of my support system, I was able to dedicate a day a week to wordsmithing for about a year. It was so gratifying.

I had many ideas for blog topics, but I focused my energy on different areas of my craft, mainly creative writing, and editing, even though those pieces were left less complete than the articles I could sit down to let flow from start to finish.

And then I had my second child, and all those precious moments of creativity disappeared into the fullness of keeping two humans alive every day (three, if I count myself, and some days, that was a struggle).

I dream of writing now, instead of actually doing it. Could I write more? Of course.

“I’ve never met a Writer before",” a man remarked, upon my answer to what I did for work. This statement made me question - now that he had met me, could he really say that he now had? It is in our nature to ask someone what they do for a living when we first meet them, like it will immediately tell us more about them by learning how they spend their working hours. When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a Writer. I like the prestige that comes with the title, as if the person is now imagining me with ink and quill, jotting down manuscripts by candle light, or more modernly, sitting with my Mac laptop in a pristinely white room pulling creative narratives out of thin air. I feel a little pain of guilt every time I use that answer though. I sometimes feel inauthentic about it, even though in any job I were to hold that involved writing, it is the most valuable and marketable skill I possess above someone who is not comfortable with word-slinging. I identify as a Writer, but have I earned that title? This question gnaws at me.

Our first baby was due on November 5th, 2019. Around 3:30am on November 6th, I started to wake, restless. I felt a few pains in my belly, a little discomfort, nothing serious. I dozed for about 30 minutes before I got up to connect with my body and see if the time had arrived. I sat on my couch in the dark and held my protruding abdomen, feeling it pulse more regularly. My husband awoke around 6:00am, and asked what I was doing. “I’m in labour”, I replied through the darkness, “You should go back to bed, we don’t know how long this will be.” If only I had known. Actually, it was probably better that I didn’t know.

*Note: Don’t worry, I didn’t include all the gory details. You’re safe.

Hello New Day, what have we got in store? Brain buzzing with all the things you need to accomplish? Why don’t you take out your notebook and make an updated To Do list? There, that’s better, all your priorities in a straight line. Now, check the calendar, make sure there aren’t any appointments you need to get to. Oh, 12pm exercise class? Alright, what shall our goals be for before we have to leave? And what will we focus on after we get back? Nothing pressing? Great! Go enjoy some free time, or fit in some chores that you’ll be happy to have done later on.

Sound like a nightmare conversation? Well, you and I are different. That example is a pretty typical morning dialogue that I have with myself on any given weekday, or even weekend. We are all wired differently, and that is a little insight into how my circuit board works. Lately, I have found myself clashing more and more with people in my life who can’t seem to wrap their heads around how my brain functions. And a lot of stuff has been coming up for me.

When I wrote the title, just the title of this piece, I felt my tear ducts well. As many of you will know, my Mother passed away when I was very young, a few months before I turned five. She had cancer, she fought, and she didn’t make it.

Considering I was so young when it happened, I feel like I have a surprising number of memories of my Mother, for which I am grateful. I remember an Easter and a Christmas, her sitting in a rocking chair and holding my hand through the bars of my crib, her cooking for us.

I can honestly say, I have never been so tired, for so long as when the sixth-twelfth weeks of my pregnancy hit. I was exhausted for “no reason” almost every day. Aside from the nausea and almost total loss of my love of food, I didn’t really feel pregnant and I definitely didn’t look it. So, when I was tired, it’s not like I had something like I was working a lot or I had a cold that I could look at and say “Yeah, this is why.” And of course because we were keeping it hush hush, I couldn’t talk about it either. I was still working regularly, but there were days where I had to put down my lap top and take a nap (A nap! I never nap!). I was still getting up at 6am for our boot camp classes, and there were days I could barely make it through the exercises, let alone push the pace as I often did. Many days when I got home from class, all I wanted was to get back into bed.

Waiting to share the news that you are pregnant feels like forever (when you’re happy about it, anyways). And that was only two days in. I hadn’t even gone to the Doctor yet. It didn’t matter. I felt sure. I wanted to call my sisters. I wanted to FaceTime my best friends and hold up my pregnancy test with the little pink cap and the big digital ‘YES+’ on it and wave it and tell them all they were going to be Aunties & Uncles. I also found myself with the weird urge to Tweet things I was already feeling, like ‘Sitting home reading pregnancy books and listening to classical music. Yup, just what I thought 30 was going to be like.’

When we started trying to conceive, I thought it would be totally casual. We had originally talked about waiting six months, and then decided (or rather, I decided) that we were not going to worry about waiting and sort of see how things went. I have been a cycle tracker for two years already, so that was part of my regular routine. It meant I did happen to know the week I was supposed to be ovulating. The first month, I was quite sick that week. I had a weird cold that kept mutating into all kinds of different symptoms. I was out for the count for several days and really not so much “in the mood,” although I insisted on trying anyways. Probably not the best circumstances, but does that really matter? I don’t know. I do know, that when two weeks had passed, and the inevitable signs arrived that I was indeed, not pregnant, I was much more disappointed than I had expected. It caught me off guard. We hadn’t really begun “trying” yet, how were my expectations already this high? I think I had built it up in my head that it was going to be easy. I forgot all the stories people had told me about trying for years without success. I only thought about the ones I had heard about people who made it on their first try. I remembered that my parents conceived that way, easily, with both children. I remembered reading an article about fertility (with no research into its credibility) and being buoyed about hitting 80% of the markers they say indicate that you are fertile. Expectations can be a killer. They can change the way you feel about everything.

When I was seventeen, I worked as a cashier at a grocery store in my hometown. I was friendly, and efficient, and I took pride in my line moving faster than anyone else’s. I still made time to connect with as many customers as I could in a day. One day, a woman came through my till and when it was time to pay, she took out a beautiful, pink leather wallet. I gasped.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.
She smiled. “I got it in Paris,'“ she said.

I was in awe. As a teenager from a small Island on the West Coast of Canada, I had of course daydreamed of going abroad, having adventures in foreign places. Meeting colourful people and having life changing experiences. Europe was such a foreign place to me then. I had been to England once, which was fantastic. But Paris. Years of seeing the Eiffel Tower in movies, on posters, of hearing about French romance and daydreaming of walking in those historic places, of looking at the skyline from 300m above. Of the art, the language, the significance. They were all there, in that pink wallet.

You know when people say they are going to have a Year of Yes? Jump at every opportunity, go to every event? Well, I feel like this year is becoming my Year of No.

That sounds like I am going to spend the year hiding at home doing nothing, but in actuality it is the opposite. What I really mean by my Year of No, is that it is going to be a Year of Yes for myself. I have made a habit of putting other people’s needs first.

As the new year begins, I find myself a part of the quintessential time of transition that is so typical of a turning of the tides.

As anyone who has followed along with me in the last few years already knows, I have worked with my husband in his business for four years, and not in a capacity that particularly pleases me. As a writer at heart, being a bookkeeper is not something that brings me joy. I also am not great at it. I have never had any proper training for it, it’s not my instinct. Have I royally messed up his books beyond repair? No. I have had the assistance of an accountant, I have asked questions when needed, all our taxes are in line, everyone gets paid on time. But I bet, actually I know, that everything isn’t always…totally correct.

We arrived at the traffic stop in the dark, the cold, the rain. There were a few cars already waiting. We got in line. It was alongside Kennedy Lake, on the way to Tofino. A big upgrade being done to the treacherous road.

A lone flagger stood in a fluorescent rain suit with a STOP sign. Cars whipped by us to the left, and it was our turn to pass through the rock and rubble in a single lane. As we passed by the flagger, I saw that it was a woman.

“I would never want to be out alone in the dark like that. I would want a tazer.” I said.
“I think tazers are illegal,” offered my husband.
“Either way, I’d still want one. Or bear spray.” I said.
“Yeah, I’d be worried about the bears.” he said.
“That’s not what I’d want them for. I don’t think there will ever be anything in this world that I will be more afraid of than Men.”

“I like that you’re broken, broken like me,
Maybe that makes me a fool.”
-lovelytheband, Broken

Do you think it’s better, to be the broken one? Or the one that picks up the pieces?

I feel like in my life, I am rarely seen as the broken one. I have been told more than once that I am a rock for people. I am the big sister, the planner, the coach. I stand as tall as my 5ft 3in frame will let me (or I get a stool). I smile brightly. I hug tightly. I look for moments I can extend kindness and expel doubt. I try to bring light, to everything, when I can.

The truth is though, I feel like I am often one of the most broken people in a room. The rooms I stand in are usually pretty privileged ones, but all the same.

So I have a question for you: Do you let income or gender become a factor in the way your household chores are divided? Let me explain why I am curious.

My husband recently injured his hand quite badly. When my partner is in pain or needs time to rest and heal, I am more than happy to take care of them. In fact, I enjoy it. I want him to feel like he has the space to get better. But in thinking about how I was going to handle the extra work over the next few weeks, I realized it wasn’t actually going to change my routine that much. Which in itself, annoyed me a little.

When I moved in with my now husband (5 years ago already!), we easily fell into a domestic routine. Even though he had been living alone for quite some time and was perfectly capable of keeping the house tidy, I took on more of the household chores. There was no conversation or division, it just happened. And it has evolved over the past few years. Currently, I’d say I do at least 80% of them. And I don’t think that’s fair.

I didn’t wake up this morning with new wrinkles or new wisdom. I woke up like any day: a little sleepy, wanting tea and breakfast (which was waiting for me when I got up thanks to my sweet husband). But there was…something.

Yesterday, I had all kinds of things come up for me, some that have followed me into today. I was too focused on what I didn’t have instead of what I do have. I crave variety in my life. Without it, I shut down. I get depressed. I disappear. If I had the choice, I would have a different social engagement every few days. Or at least I would have something that kept me interacting with people regularly. I would get tired, yes, but I know my limits and I would schedule in the time I need to rest. I miss that about my 20s. I miss having a revolving social calendar, always something, or someone to look forward to. It’s different now. We’re not all single, many of us have started families. we have jobs we care about and are dedicated to, projects and passions that take time. Friends that you were closest to, even still are, are spread around the globe. I think I maybe got too used to having those connections right at my fingertips. I miss that more than I like to admit sometimes. It makes me worry that I’m not alright on my own yet, that I haven’t grown past that point. Although, maybe I am, and my extroverted side just misses the energy.

We're unsure you've heard our stories told
Or seen our names in headlines bold
Disregarded by the press
Portrayed as if our life’s a mess

The narrative, that we’re at fault
As if we can avoid assault
You don’t see, the way we try
You don’t like to think of why

We don't walk the dark alone
We're never caught, without our phone
Our keys, we clench, within our fists
Defense from monsters, in the mists

It's not the claws, of beasts we fear
Tis' eyes from which the shadows leer
The minds that do devalue us
The mouths that scare and snarl and cuss

The hands they grab, the pupils stare
At clothes you rip and strip and tear
Our bodies and our souls you bruise
When you treat us as, a thing to use