Summer was once a shiny blue convertible under the sun, winding lazily along a scenic road. A slow drive to happy music. A backseat packed with picnic baskets and plans and people I used to know.

Every year, part of me thinks I’ll reenter that version of things, that this time, it will be different. And for a while, it kind of is. But summer always lives a short life before it crashes here, into birthdays and wedding anniversaries that can’t be celebrated. Into my sister’s death date. Her name was Shannon, by the way.

We used to gather to remember her, but we stopped doing that a long time ago. Grief, I’ve learned, is an unwelcome guest, even when it’s expected. It annoys people. Sometimes, they actually get angry. They protest the ways you’ve changed; they say they don’t like this new you. Their accusations strike like stomping feet as they list all the ways you’re doing this wrong: You’re not “moving on,” not living, not burying your grief with your dead where they insist it belongs—underground and out of sight1.

My best friend came over on Shannon’s death anniversary. She, my mom, and I ordered sushi and watched old family videos, some of which I’d never seen. What an experience to see my family alive and together again. It felt like ✨A Christmas Miracle✨, but in July, and also, not really a miracle (but still a treasure, all the same).

You know that scene in Home Alone when it’s almost Christmas, and Kevin is supposed to be with his family, but he’s not? Instead, he’s outside in the dark, in the cold, utterly alone, watching another family gather and celebrate. That’s kind of what it was like.

Watching those old family videos, seeing us all together again in the “before” times, feeling nostalgia colliding with the present—what was versus what is. Sitting with the specialness of watching my family and with the knowing that there’s no way to reenter that life; no way to be with them, touch them, hold them.

On the screen, I saw little Danielle dancing, reading, singing, playing, being a kid, and I wanted to hold her too.

For a moment, I imagined getting in the car, driving to our old house, driving back in time, walking in the front door, and once again being that version of me. Who would that Danielle have been, I wonder. In the words of Mary Oliver, what would she have done with her one wild and precious life?2

She had no idea what was coming. She knew nothing about all the selves she’d be and then lose, all the versions of her that would die again and again.

I still remember her, this child me. She was silly and spontaneous. She climbed trees until the people below shrank into faceless dots on the ground. She read the dictionary for “fun.” She wanted so badly to fit in, to be accepted. She was innocent and sensitive; she thought being perfect and unobtrusive would make her safe, and in the spirit of ’s writing—she was lovable3.

The young adult was death’s second casualty. She seemed so grown up, so far away from the fatherless child. She was fun and cool and never asked for anything. The world saw her as light and breezy; full of bright smiles and laughter that rose like bubbles, and she was not okay. She was starving. She was afraid to say no. She was lost. She couldn’t find that tiny red dot on the map that says, “You are here.” She was lonely and she was in so much pain, and she was lovable.

And then there was the adult. The wife. The widow. The woman in the ruins of another whole life and all the hopes and dreams it held. A body going through the motions. A grief machine. A soul who thought she was too broken and far away for anyone to know. And she was lovable.

And she was not broken or far away at all.

All the lives we’ve led that ended slowly or abruptly, all the selves we once were and whoever these version of us would have been, whatever we were facing then and are facing now—we are never the only ones.

Our past selves are always with us in some way. At least that’s what I believe. Maybe we can’t be them anymore, but we can reach them. We can hold them, let them know they were lovable.

This version of you that exists here today, the version of you who is reading these words, know this: You are here. And you are lovable.

100% AI-Free (you can read my AI policy here.)

Hello lovely readers,

I have been considering the time I invest here and how I might make this more sustainable. In the spirit of that, I’ve decided to shift a few things; my hope is that these changes will help with sustainability going forward. If you are a paid subscriber, you will now have exclusive access to the following:

• Paid posts and the full archive (this is unchanged)

• Additional options for engagement, suggest a topic via DM (also unchanged)

• NEW: Extras embedded within free posts (these will typically be things like voiceovers, more personal writing, art, photos, videos, etc.)

• NEW: Depth-oriented prompts (these will be unique to each story and are offered for you to reflect on, write about, and/or discuss with others in conversation)

Going forward, you will find the prompts here, at the bottom of each post. Today’s prompts are offered for free.

3

’s book, When the Ache Remains sits beside me on my writing desk. Sometimes, when I get stuck, I pick it up. Her words settle me. Turns out that as I was writing this story, I’d left off right before a section called “Loving Our Past Selves” where Lisa breathes life on the page into some of her past selves, finishing with “and she was lovable.” It felt too serendipitous to not weave the spirit of her words into the fabric of this remembering. Here is a link to When the Ache Remains.

*Past selves aren’t a new theme here. Some of the ideas in this story are from an earlier piece of writing I called “The Grief Machine.” I decided to rework that story into this one.

Cover photo by Bianca van Niekerk via Unsplash.

Okay, the post is over now for real.

Every summer, we talked about visiting Salt Spring. I had never been there, and Toby was so excited to show me all the things that made it special—the warm lakes, the roadside farm stands, the vibrant art scene, the delicious food. The places from his life before me. But the summers were always so short; life was always so busy. Salt Spring isn’t going anywhere, we told ourselves. We’ll get over there one day.

We have all the time in the world.

Time is funny that way; it goes on forever, but our moment in it is so brief. We face so many demands on our time, and some of us get so much more than others. It’s impossible to “do it all,” and the pressure and hustling and rushing makes it easy to lose sight of what matters, to assume there will be more time, to put things off.

Time is an easy thing to waste, to ignore. Until it’s running out.

The summer after Toby and I were married, we finally made it over to Salt Spring. We found a cute little cottage on airbnb, and for a week, it was our home. One of Toby’s brothers still lived on the island, and they couldn’t wait to see each other. Our first day there, the three of us met at an outdoor cafe by the ocean. It was supposed to be a lunch date, but stories and laughter carried the brothers well into the evening. I remember watching them and thinking how no one would have known anything was wrong.

My husband had cancer and it wasn’t the “good” kind. I was feeling very aware of time; every moment felt so important, so breakable. And it was our wedding anniversary. It was supposed to be a happy occasion, but I had this gnawing worry, this feeling of the world disappearing around me, this endless parade of what ifs…

What if this is it? What if this is only anniversary we’ll ever have? What if it’s not perfect?

What the hell is a perfect wedding anniversary?

Looking at Toby and his brother, anyone could see their joy was necessary. Anyone could see they needed this time to remember, to rejoin the life they shared.

What if this is the last time they see each other?

That night, Toby and I came back to the cottage to find carpenter ants marching across the floor, up the bedroom walls, the windowsill, the door frame. I rolled up a tourist magazine and killed them. We found some duct tape in a drawer and sealed off where they were coming in. Every night as I listened to Toby fall asleep beside me, I’d think about the ants and the crevice and the tape, wondering if it would hold or if we’d wake up to them crawling over our faces in the night1.

We spent the rest of our Salt Spring days exploring, driving around the island, visiting Toby’s family. We went to the cheese place and the farmer’s market. Toby read books; I taught myself embroidery. We floated on our paddleboards (I saw a leech for the first time and screamed). We rented a tandem ocean kayak and paddled out to this little island; the brochure said “white sand beach,” but there was no sand—the beach was full of jagged, broken shells. And wasps, for some reason.

There was a swing hanging from a tree, and the first thing I did was jump on it.

I remember us on this beach—the hot sun in the sky above, the wasps in the air, the sharp shore under our feet. I remember being with Toby and wanting to squeeze all we could from whatever time we had left. I told myself he could be one of those medical success stories, but I think some part of me knew that no matter what we did, this wasn’t going to have a happy ending2.

I was no stranger to the pain of regret. My sister’s death taught me what it’s like to carry the weight of all the things you wish you’d done differently, all the things you wish you’d said, all the love you wish you’d shown more generously, more clearly. I didn’t want to live with more regrets like that.

So much is out of our hands. Swinging on that beach, I knew that whatever happened, all I could do was show up for it.

Paper—that’s the traditional gift for a first wedding anniversary. That summer, Toby and I exchanged paper-themed gifts, but there will be no cotton, no leather, no fruit or flowers. That first anniversary was all we had.

Less than a year later, he was gone.

Sometimes, people correct me when I say things like this. They tell me Toby is here, just in some other form. And maybe they’re right. Maybe our loved ones really are still here, loving us, watching over us, sending us signs—I think that idea is amazing and special and worth protecting. I hope it’s the truth.

I’ve tried to be someone who believes in this. Really, I have. But I just can’t get there. It’s okay though. Like, it totally fucking sucks, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t need to be rescued or saved. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m just not a very spiritual person.

But I do think about paper, about writing.

About casting words into the universe for Toby.

100% human and AI-free.

There was a time when this picture, this moment, seemed impossible. For one thing, I thought I’d never get a wedding day. Too many bad experiences had convinced me that love was nothing more than trickery and breadcrumbs and waiting to be discarded. If you were lucky, that is. Sometimes, it was something worse.

So I decided it was easier and safer to tell myself that love wasn’t real, that it was nothing more than a silly fantasy, a lie1.

But there’s another reason this moment seemed impossible, a reason that had nothing to do with what I’d experienced in past relationships: Jessica and I, we once let each other go.

I was 10 when my family and I moved into the house that felt like my childhood home. We probably would have stayed there if not for what happened.

I loved that house. It was blue and white, and it had a huge backyard and a tire swing and a trampoline. But being there meant starting over. Being there meant that once again, I was the friendless New Kid, and this was something I did not love. And this school wasn’t like the others I’d attended; my teacher was cold, the kids were cliquey, and I could immediately sense that I didn’t belong2.

Jessica was the first person, adult or child, who was nice to me. Her birthday was the weekend after school started, and she came right up to me and handed me an invitation. It was the only one I received that year. Her party was Lion King themed, and I had no idea what was going on because I hadn’t seen the movie. I was a little weirdo who didn’t like normal kid stuff like Disney or cartoons.

My favourite show was Rescue 911.

You might be thinking that my friendship with Jessica began here, but it didn’t. We shared a love interest in grade 5, you see. It was all very intense and dramatic. Then, one random afternoon, we sat together at lunch. I don’t remember whose idea it was or who made the first move. What I do remember was that Jessica had a red juice box in her hand that she never drank because all we did was laugh.

Jessica was my first real friend. She was the one who stood up for me when I was being bullied, the one who accidentally burned my forehead with a curling iron, the one who sat with me on the bathroom floor when I was scared or heartbroken, the one who told me I deserved better.

The one who was there the night my dad died.

I used to think losing my dad at 13 somehow protected me from more tragedies, statistically speaking. What were the odds something like that could happen again, I reasoned. But ten years later, my sister, Shannon, died. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say she was killed; I’m still not sure. There’s no word for what happened to her. Maybe that’s why I’ve only ever mentioned her death in passing. Like driving by a car wreck and pointing and saying, There it is… this other thing that happened.

It was in this sharp, twisted wreckage that I’d lost Jessica.

I assumed our friendship was just another casualty of grief, that it was broken beyond repair. My dad and sister’s deaths killed so many things, so many friendships, so many connections. Toby’s death has done the same.

Some of these lost relationships have been hard. Others, I am relieved to leave behind.

But losing Jessica never felt okay.

Ten years ago, we reconnected. At first, we were tentative and unsure, fumbling but honest. We could have acted like nothing happened, but we chose to wade into the discomfort together, to make a repair that was a decade in the making and long overdue3.

And I’m so fucking glad we did.

Friendships aren’t always convenient or comfortable. They require time, effort, care, and attention. Many, maybe even most, don’t last. People grow apart, and this can be difficult, even if it’s not always bad. But friendships can suffer other endings too.

Grief, after all, is never a story about one single loss.

The grieving person knows when they are being let go, when they have become the “inconvenient friend.” They feel themselves being pushed outside the hard edges of other people’s capacities. They watch friends, family, and would-be supporters decide things like I’m too busy, it’s all too much, someone else will surely step in. One turned back here, one disappearing act there; everyone fading out like the end of a song.

The silence, the avoiding, the excluding, the polite shunning—all these carefully chosen exits add up to a mass extinction. I used to tell myself a story about what it all meant, and in this story, it didn’t matter what I did with my grief, the mere fact that it existed suddenly made me “too much.”

I was all bashed up. No one wanted to be my friend. No one could be trusted.

For a long time, this is what I believed about myself and others.

Meeting Toby taught me I was wrong about this and so much else. Being with him taught me that love is real, that safe people exist, that I can be myself with them. That I wanted to be. Finding my way back to Jessica taught me this too.

In depths of grief, where everything is so murky and heavy and airless and cold, I know how we can start to believe that we are unreachable, unlovable. But it’s not true.

Friendships really can grow here.

Friendships, both old and new, are possible for grieving hearts.

100% human and AI-free.

There was a time when this picture, this moment, seemed impossible. For one thing, I thought I’d never get a wedding day. Too many bad experiences had convinced me that love was nothing more than trickery and breadcrumbs and waiting to be discarded. If you were lucky, that is. Sometimes, it was something worse.

So I decided it was easier and safer to tell myself that love wasn’t real, that it was nothing more than a silly fantasy, a lie1.

But there’s another reason this moment seemed impossible, a reason that had nothing to do with what I’d experienced in past relationships: Jessica and I, we once let each other go.

I was 10 when my family and I moved into the house that felt like my childhood home. We probably would have stayed there if not for what happened.

Read more

It’s a strange thing to be in the centre of your own brokenness, to notice others are suddenly tiptoeing around you, to realize you are being watched, not witnessed; circled, not cared for. To feel yourself dissolving in the silence.

Grief has a way of revealing things, like who we can trust, who will help us find our way back to ourselves, who will show up when it’s messy or inconvenient. When Toby died, I noticed how people sorted themselves into categories: safe or unsafe, solid or slippery, friend or something else. I felt the chill of closed hearts, the weight of carrying what wasn’t mine, the sharp edges of newly broken things.

I felt like people were waiting for my grief to go away, like they suddenly didn’t know how to be around me if “it” was there. Like there wasn’t room to exist, to stretch out, to scream or breathe or cry, to be cared for, to be seen.

I felt the ache of old wounds that hadn’t closed and never will. And I was again reminded that some pain never leaves us.

Maybe you’ve felt how grief changes the room, how it makes people uncomfortable, makes them panic, snatches their words from them. Something real could take place, however fumbling, however awkward, until the silence rolls in and smothers it. Until the not-so-gentle reminders that grief is too scary. That it must be hidden or disavowed or made palatable.

Maybe you know what it’s like to keep pain stowed away at all times, tucked out of sight, rendered unnoticeable to others, even though it’s never unnoticeable to you.

The pressure to deny something so big and life-altering and painful is exhausting. I don’t want this anymore—this self-abandonment, this performing. It really is too much to ask.1

I’m realizing I can have something different.

This is the part where it might seem like I’m about to tidy things up somehow… all this messy grief—I’ve left it strewn about, and that’s not how we do things, is it. It probably sounds like I’m about to say Here is The Grand Lesson; here is how this terrible loss made me “better.” As though any lesson could be worth someone’s life.

Or It’s okay because I get to carry them with me in my memories. As though this is any consolation.

You will hear no such things from me.

Yes, I hate having to live without my loved ones. I hate the unfairness of it, the gnawing loneliness of it, the never-ending pain of it. But I don’t hate my grief.

I am learning things I want to share with you, things I couldn’t have known when I was just a child facing my dad’s death, things I was only beginning to understand when I was barely an adult facing my sister’s. I am learning how to turn toward grief (and myself) in ways I didn’t know how to do when I was younger. I am learning what it means to hold pain with respect, tenderness, and care.

I am learning about authenticity, vulnerability, honesty, and discernment. I am learning the cost of trying to stay close to certain people, that chasing isn’t something I want, that I can let them go. I have wept for lost relationships, for having to grieve so much all at once. I am also learning that by letting go of people who suddenly couldn’t or wouldn’t offer their friendship, I can make room for new friends to offer theirs.

And I am learning that it is okay and good to stay connected to Toby, to the things he taught me, to what it felt like to love and be loved by him.

100% human.

This is one of those times.

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I started writing this poem last month, on Toby’s death anniversary. I can still feel the pinch in my back from spending weeks bent over the keyboard, trying to get it “right” (as if there’s such a thing). This poem and I have been stuck inside a jar together, and I felt I couldn’t climb out until it was finished. Just when it seemed all the air was used up and there was nothing left, something would shift, and I’d find that there was one more breath, one more gasp after all.

I’ve decided to share this poem as an image to preserve the enjambment (line breaks).

I really did meet Toby in a doorway. We really did almost physically bump into each other. Maybe it’s the poet in me who sees the symbolism of a chance meeting in a doorway, maybe it’s grief recasting the moment as something other than what it was, but something about it has always felt otherworldly. Anyway, this poem is about many things, but if I had to put it into one sentence, I’d say it’s about how, in the wake of immense loss, we tend to circle our old life, looking for a way to re-enter things as they once were.

(If you liked this poem, you might like Bright and Electric.)

Grief Casseroles is 100% human. I do not use AI.

*Cover photo by Cynthia Magana via Unsplash

Over the past year, I’ve been sending a few poems to different literary magazines. I felt good about it. Optimistic. My hope was that I could add more publications to my name, which is one of the many things unknown writers are supposed to do if they want to be taken seriously by a publisher or an agent. Or anyone ever. (Just kidding about that last part. Sort of).

Anyway, one of the poems I submitted was Grief Casseroles—the poem I named this substack after, the poem I wrote about the morning my sister died. The poem I kept thinking was finished, and then I’d check it over once more and decide the words were no longer sitting right, and that I definitely had no idea what I was doing as a writer. Toby watched me change this poem around again and again. He’d dutifully listen to each new version, and then he’d say, “It’s really good. Stop fucking with it.” (That’s a direct quote. Also, I didn’t listen.)

Toby will never read the version of Grief Casseroles that currently sits on my laptop, and that breaks my heart a little. Or a lot. As I sent it and other poems to magazine after magazine, I felt sure that at least one of them would accept something. I allowed myself to get excited, allowed myself to assume that in a few months, I would open an email that said, We are happy to inform you…

But I never saw those words. Not this time, anyway. Instead, they said, “Go away, we don’t like your writing.” Okay fine, no one said that. It was more like some version of, “Thanks but no thanks. Better luck next time.” Every publication rejected every poem I sent. Ever since, I’ve been scouring my writing, trying to see it through the eyes of these magazines. What was the mistake, the word, the line that made them look away? Or maybe they just hated the whole thing. I’ll never know because writers aren’t furnished with feedback or reasons; just a yes or a no, and a warning that publications don’t have time to offer anything more than that.

In the face of so many rejections, it’s hard to not make assumptions, to not tell yourself a story about what it must mean. I’m not going to lie, I definitely did this. And then I received one final email, one final rejection, only this time, there was something extra—something personal. Someone took a moment to let me know this:

There is much to admire in your poems, which observe so closely an experience many can't bear to witness at all. The line "It all starts to look like work" says so much, so simply about the experience of grief.

I was (and am) so grateful for this kindness. Poetry is a funny thing, a very particular thing. Sometimes, it feels like a hopeless thing. Then a little sign comes along and reminds me it’s not. Hopeless, I mean.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about words I read here from another poet, another Danielle—. She wrote a poem that recently went viral (it’s a fantastic poem, and you can read it here). I’ve been reflecting on her last line, in particular:

Please, give me the gift of your trying.

In a world where we suddenly can’t tell what’s real; where we are pushed to hide inside branded storefront versions of ourselves; where everything is suddenly “cringe” and no one wants to be seen because of what it might mean; where pressure cooks our mistakes, our wobbles, our humanity and serves them up to whoever is watching; in this world, trying is brave. Being human is brave.

These publishing rejections have been traveling with me, sitting like stones in the bottom of a mental backpack. But I can feel their weight shifting, making room for something else. Like Danielle Coffyn’s poem, I am learning to see these rejections as evidence of trying.

Holding them this way, with an open hand, feels different. I can finally set them down.

I’ve been thinking about something else too, something my sister said. Actually, it was something she wrote in a school assignment I found after she died. She was asked to write about her family, and in a child’s pure heart and unsteady hand, she wrote, “My sister’s name is Danielle. She’s studying psychology. She writes really good poems.”

Of all the things she could have written, she chose those words.

And then I started thinking about Toby and how it felt to have him turn toward me with such careful noticing, to have someone care so deeply for the writer self I’ve held inside because I didn’t know how to let her speak, because there were always so many good reasons to stay hidden. I sat and reached back in time, remembering to how it felt to hear him say: Don’t hide your art. Don’t create this only to leave it here where no one can see it.

Show it to the world.

The thing about being alive is that it inevitably brings us into contact with painful, difficult things, and I am not talking about rejection emails from publishers.

I didn’t share this rejection story because I’m hoping for comfort or reassurance. I’m not asking something of you, rather, I want to offer something to you: I want to tell you that your trying means something. Your voice, your heart, your presence, your art, and yes, even your wobbles—this all matters, maybe more than you know.

You’re the only one who can offer these things to the world.

My work is 100% AI-free.

If you’ve been with me for a little while, you might know that I started Grief Casseroles for my husband, Toby. He always used to say, “You need to start a Substack,” and I’d always say, “What the hell is a Substack?”

I wish I would have listened to him back then, back when he was still here to see all this. He would have been reading along and chatting with you in the comments. You could have known him, in a way.

I can’t believe it’s almost been two whole years without him.

I don’t remember my dad’s second death anniversary, but I do remember my sister’s.

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When my husband died, I decided to write publicly about grief. I knew not everyone would “like” it.

Some would say I’m distributing biweekly downers, that I’m going around dumping bags of sadness in email inboxes, that I just have a burning urge to remind everyone of all the ways a life can be ruined.

Grief. What do you imagine when you hear that word? A faceless figure sitting under a dripping grey gloom? A castaway sloshing about in a lonely ocean, cold and blue? A body tumbling down an unlit abyss, wondering where the bottom is?

It’s all too depressing, too unnameably terrible. Too much to look at, or know about, or help with, or feel.

It’s just too… griefy.

Grief is the greatest teacher we never wanted… I wrote that in one of my earliest stories here. Just kidding! What I actually wrote was “death is the greatest teacher we never wanted” but I think we can all agree the point is the same.

Okay, I’m going to be serious again now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I remember walking into my old therapist’s office just days after my sister, Shannon, died. When she greeted me, she stood and wrapped me in a hug. Oh Danielle, she said. I cried and I let her hold me. When our hug was over, I saw she had been crying too. I wasn’t supposed to be there for grief, but these things have a way of happening.

I remember a lot of silence. I remember fumbling for words. I remember swinging violently between numbness and torment, and I remember all of this lasting for years1. In those early days, we were so far away from knowing what happened to my sister. In the haze of this uncertainty, we were left groping pointlessly for the truth about her death only to find rumours and deceptions and denials. Later came the harassment and attacks. Maybe someday, I will be ready to write about these things.

Back then, I might not have known all the details of my sister’s very preventable death, but I was aware that it ruined my life, and that is not hyperbole. One night, I went to bed knowing that my family had certain people in it, that I had a certain place in the world, that life was more or less predictable, and that whatever surprises tomorrow held, they wouldn’t be the killing kind.

And I was wrong.

As I sat across from my old therapist in the weeks after Shannon’s death, I thought about how I had been in that same therapy room so many times, wrestling with an eating disorder, very much feeling like it was the most difficult thing I’d ever do.

And I was wrong about that too.

Losing my dad at 13 taught me about our culture’s unspoken contract on grief, which is basically that you agree to be subject to ongoing invalidation and toxic positivity. Losing my sister taught me about time, about how you don’t get it back, about how trying to control uncontrollable things pulls you away from yourself and everything that matters.

About living with regret.

About being present and showing the people you love how much they mean to you.

If you have read this far, I suspect these are things you might already know.

In any case, I am not here to “teach” you. Not like that. I’m here to share art with you; to name complexities with you; to build roads with poetry, metaphor, and story; to access things we feel but don’t talk about. To take life’s sharp pieces and spread them on the ground where they can catch the light.

I’m here to hold pain tenderly and with love.

So yes, I write about grief, but not always about death. I’ve grieved living people, and I’ve grieved places, homes, jobs, schools, neighbourhoods, relationships, and dreams. I’ve grieved versions of myself that were innocent, unmarred. I’ve grieved moments I can’t get back, and moments I wanted but never had. I’ve grieved things I barely remember and things I wish I could forget.

So yes, I write about grief, but not with a magnifying glass under the sun… I don’t wish to scare you, to burn you, to send you fleeing. I wish to join you, to give you hope. I can’t promise you that what’s painful will eventually “go away” because it might not. Some wounds scar over, some stay open. Both kinds require ongoing care.

I wish to offer you hope that whatever you’re carrying, however not okay it all is, you matter. You belong. You can still make a life here. And it’s okay if you don’t believe any of that right now.

So yes, I write about grief, but as someone here recently pointed out, much of the time, what I’m really writing about is love.

A memory turns on like a light.

We’re in the cabin.

The night hangs in the sky like a velvet curtain. Stars blink above the trees. The lake sits below, shining in the dark.

You’re in the kitchen. I can see you so clearly—the way you stand, the way you hold yourself, the way you make a room feel.

Your movements are fluid. Easy. Pain-free. Are you sick here, in this memory?

You’re making a snack—I watch you peel back the wrapper from the brie, slice the round into thick wedges, shake some crackers onto a plate.

This is where you asked me to marry you. It was winter then—the December air glazed the ground with frost; every surface sparkled in the sun. We took the canoe across the lake. Wisps of fog rolled along the water as you paddled us toward the outcropping—the little patch of rock we called “our spot.” We’d spent many lazy summer days there, tucked between the trees. That August had been hot. One afternoon, I’d spent an hour trying to swat a horsefly as it buzzed in circles around me. You read your book and laughed, impressed when I finally got it.

We stepped out of the canoe, the soft crunch of frozen moss under our feet. “You know you’re my best friend, right?” That’s what you said before you reached for the box. I threw my arms around you.

You recorded this moment. We are smiling and laughing and crying, tumbling in joy so big and contagious and alive.

The world felt like it was ours.

This night in the cabin—is it from the day you proposed? I’m not sure. I don’t know which memory I’m in or where it belongs.

Gone are the days when I can ask you about such things.

You walk back to me—plate in hand, balancing a tower of crackers, cheese, and chocolate. You’re wearing the grey knit sweater I bought you.

We sink into the couch, my cheek on your chest. Your guitar leans against the wall. My knitting sits unfinished on the table. The moon spills into the room. We are sated, held inside this wilderness, cradled by the night.

You drift to sleep beside me. I stare into the silence.

The memory clicks off.

How terrible to keep waking up here, on the wrong side of everything.

Sometimes, I pretend we are still cocooned in the cabin, falling asleep next to our plate of snacks. In this universe, we get a different phone call, nothing is stolen from us, everything is okay after all. You are still here—no one has to know how close we came to this other version of things.

I am never shoved into this strange life, surrounded by shrugs and sayings like, There there. It is what it is. The show must go on! As if I am unaware, as if I could forget, as if I’m not kept separate—the too-young widow in her subterranean cell.

I hear the movement of the world above—car doors closing, dishwashers beeping, phones buzzing. Sleep, work, kids. Sleep, work, kids.

The cold closes around me. The walls are bare. I don’t know what pictures to hang.

I can’t move.

I’m afraid if I do, I might accidentally make this place bearable.

I often include psychoeducation related to the Grief Casseroles I share. Sometimes they are in the body of the story or poem, and sometimes they are here, at the bottom, like this one :)

*Rather than the pressurized notion of responding to grief with “moving on” (which implies leaving behind/forgetting/cutting off), many people (myself included) find the idea of “continuing bonds” more realistic, open, accurate, and flexible. You can read more about continuing bonds here: Overview of continuing bonds.

Somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow, in the dead space that stretches for days with no hours or walls or comforts,
when it has all clearly fallen apart, and you’re caught in the wreckage, 
cut open on the sharp edges,

it’s always then, in these moments, when someone steps in to say,
You’re so strong.
How heavy a mantle that is to wear. 
How flattening. How one-dimensional.
How unwanted.
And, maybe in some strange way, 
how laughable.

You’re so strong, they say
as my husband lies dying
a mere year after our wedding,
as the weight of my sister’s casket digs 
into my shoulders,
as my father’s body disappears
into the back of a hearse.

You’re so strong—
the former human
being recast, put on display—
a statue slotted into place,
watching the world from inside this glass case.

Someone comes to dust me off once in a while.
“The Strong One.”
The golden trophy.
Indestructible.

You’re so strong.
Okay.
But what if I wanted to be something else?

Listen, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m worried you’ve skimmed this far and now you’re pissed because you think I’m saying never do that… never tell someone they’re strong.

But this is not my message.

Let me back up a moment: It’s not bad or mean to tell someone you think they’re strong. It’s okay to notice and name someone’s strength.

Quite possibly, that someone might need the reminder, might appreciate your careful noticing.

But here’s the thing: People also need to be seen and supported, and that part doesn’t always happen.

I describe this experience in The Grief House:1

As if performing the accolade, they deem you Strong, Resilient, and other things that didn’t seem like choices.

You think about what this means. About what this leaves room for and what it doesn’t.

You think about what it’s like to carry this grief teetering inside like an overfilled cup—how the liquid sits just at the brim, jostling under your throat. Threatening to spill.

You think about how it’s something that can never be set down, left at home, forgotten on a side table.

You think about how it’s not really your grief that makes it hard to find your way around. It’s other people.

They won’t give you permission to grieve.

The problem with “you’re so strong” happens when it’s used to step around difficult things, to bypass suffering.

When we reduce someone’s most difficult, lonely, frightening moments to a survival story about their strength, the person inside gets lost. Erased. “The strong one” becomes recast as superhuman, as someone who doesn’t need help, as someone whose suffering can be ignored.

Ignoring suffering won’t reflect a person’s strength back to them, no matter how many times we call them “strong.”

However…

Noticing someone’s strength alongside supporting and witnessing can be helpful and encouraging. Where we want to be careful is that we don’t focus on strength without attending to pain—that we aren’t using “strong” as a sidestep or a shield because we are afraid of turning toward suffering.

It’s the difference between, “You’ve got this!” (followed by nothing else), and “You don’t deserve this. I’m not going to watch you bear this pain alone” (followed by actually showing up).

We can’t paper over pain with labels. Or I guess we can because we do that shit all the time, but the pain underneath doesn’t go away—it just leaves the person carrying it more alone.

It’s important to see, remember, and care for the whole person who exists inside their survival story.

To the bereaved, the wounded, the survivors: Some people, some family, some friends won’t ever offer genuine support or permission to grieve. Abandonment in the aftermath of grief and other hard things is devastating and horrible and far too common. It’s an awful thing to experience.

When we are living with the kind of pain that doesn’t go away, that cuts down to the soul, we need to let this hurt touch the air in the presence of caring others. We need people who are willing to see us in our strength and in our grief, our anguish, our humanity.

And those people are out there, I promise.

If “the strong one” in your life steps out of their glass case and reaches for you, hold the door open.

If they peel back their bandaid to show you a wound, take their hand in yours and say ouch… that hurts.

I’m here.

My first plant was a Venus flytrap. I saw it in a store when my parents and I were shopping. There was a whole table of them—they looked like little green aliens crowded together with their mouths stuck open. A sign explained that these were carnivorous plants. A small cartoon showed how their jaws snapped closed around their meal.

Wait, what? A plant that had… jaws?

A plant that ATE INSECTS??

This fascinated me.

I picked one up from the table to get a closer look—it was kind of scary with its row of sharp needle teeth, its wide-open throat tilted toward the ceiling, its eyeless face groping for a meal.

If I was a fly, I wouldn’t land in there.

I showed it to my parents. “Can I get this? It eats bugs.”

My Venus flytrap lived a short life on my bedroom windowsill. I checked its little mouth dozens of times a day, waiting to see if an errant housefly found its way inside. I wanted to know how it worked, how a plant could have jaws that closed around an insect. But it sat inert and flyless.

And I was impatient.

My plant needed help, I decided. I thought of places I’d seen flies. The long, rectangular fluorescent light fixtures at my elementary school always had lots of dead flies trapped inside, especially in the library. But we didn’t have fluorescent lights in our house, and if my mom saw me climbing on things to check the lights for bugs, I knew she would not like that. (She is probably reading this story right now, thinking, omg, where is she going with this??)

Eventually, I went outside and sourced a fly. I held it in my fist, but not too tightly—I felt it buzzing in my hand as I opened the sliding door and started back toward my bedroom. I tried to act natural; I didn’t want my mom to see me and ask, “What are you doing?” because if I told her, I knew she would get mad and say, “NO, YOU CANNOT BRING A FLY INTO THE HOUSE I DON’T CARE IF IT’S TO FEED YOUR PLANT!” and then I might have to put my plant outside, and if that happened, who would check on it dozens of times a day?

I carefully opened my hand, pinched the fly and dropped it into the mouth of my Venus flytrap. Its jaws stayed open, gaping up at the ceiling. The fly wriggled for a moment, then it flew away. It probably buzzed around our house until it died, possibly inside a light fixture. (Just kidding; it wasn’t in any of the lights. I checked.)

There was so much I didn’t know about my Venus flytrap. I didn’t know it could “count,”1 for instance, that it used something resembling logic to assess if what it felt was an insect or a false alarm. I didn’t know it spent precious energy closing its mouth, that if there wasn’t a meal inside, it could die.

None of this was explained on the tag.

Before I met my husband, Toby, I’d been in a long-term relationship with someone who was abusive. The abuse was never physical; it was something more difficult to name, and therefore, more difficult to recognize as abuse. This man and I had met before; we weren’t strangers—our sisters knew each other, but then my sister died. It was only then, in the aftermath of her death, that this man pursued me. I won’t speak to his motives, but I will say that I was terribly vulnerable and confused and willing to hold onto anything that looked to me like love.

Only what he offered wasn’t love.

I wanted out almost immediately, but I didn’t know how to leave, so I tried to make things better. Or at least, make them tolerable. I gave him more of myself. And more. And more. But nothing I did mattered. Was I the starving plant, dying from the inside out? Or was I the insect caught in the trap? I’m still not sure.

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I don’t really care about the new year. Sorry. Please don’t hate me (cue rash of unsubscribes).

Don’t think I’m trying to hang onto 2025 because it was such a great year—I’m not and it wasn’t (at least not for me). But now that it’s 2026, I can no longer say, “My husband died last year.” And this feels like another loss.

The new year just arrived, and it has already taken something from me.

That’s not very positive, Danielle.

I know, I know. But I want to tell the truth, if that’s okay. And the truth isn’t about being positive; it’s about being honest. It’s about leaning into what’s hard, awkward, uncomfortable, painful, confusing.

My husband died in 2024. His name was Toby. I write about him often. I write about losing him. About losing myself. I write about facing a life I never wanted. And nothing about that has changed just because the year did.

Time has a place for Toby’s death: April 11^th. A piece of paper confirms this. Every once in a while, I have to show it to someone to prove he died. But death has a way of refusing to stay on a piece of paper or inside a moment, a day, a year.

Toby’s life, his existence, and his death—it all feels like it was yesterday and also like it was another life. One I dreamed instead of lived.

I remember when time pulled me away from my dad’s death. And my sister’s. I remember what it meant to lose that proximity to them.

I noticed how the passage of time seemed to mean something to others, to the unbereaved, specifically. For them, the new year signalled the ending of one thing and the beginning of something else. Out with the old, in with the new, as they say. And the new is shiny, glossy, happy: A blank canvas upon which to project our bright, unapologetic colours; our best, most fulfilled selves.

The new year means it’s time to “move on,” time to forget. That’s what the grieving often hear. Even when it’s not said aloud, it’s communicated in the absences.

The bereaved wake to find connections flicked off like a switch. We feel for them in the darkness. In the silence. But the doors are locked. Whatever once was has been left to shrivel and die in the January cold.

Grief does something weird to time—I watch it pass around me, but I am frozen. Immobilized. Caught between caring way too much and also not at all.

I am still—seized in a slipstream, pulled along by inertia.

In grief, time is a moving vehicle with no brakes. It won’t slow down. It won’t pull over. It won’t stop.

Time didn’t ask if I was ready for my husband to die. It didn’t wait for me to gather myself. It didn’t give me a moment to lie in the wreckage, to be with my broken pieces, to grind the shards into my skin. Time doesn’t concern itself with such things—it just silently drives forward.

Away.

The grieving are left twisting in a backseat of the universe’s making, while passersby make surgical comments that cut just so.

I know grief doesn’t have a timeline, but...

Have you thought about moving on?

Don’t you think you should be over it by now?

There’s so much pressure to hurry up, to move through the world as though nothing has happened. To shove our grief into stages1.

To pretend our dead never existed.

I just want to know one thing: Who is all this pretending for?

Also, I’ve tried that. I’ve pretended. Not because I wanted to, but because that’s what was required of me. And I was so damn good at pretending, I almost lost myself in the character others wanted me to be. It seemed that if I wanted support and connection, I had to sanitize my grief, scrub it away, make sure it didn’t infect the people around me. So I did.

Spoiler alert: It didn’t work.

Something else I’ve learned: Support that requires us to pretend is unlikely to be supportive. And connection that requires self-abandonment isn’t connection at all.

Grief is its own timekeeper, and it won’t be rushed.

I’m in no hurry to forget the people I loved and what they meant to me. I’m in no hurry to erase what matters, to free up time to waste on unimportant things.

So, what does a person do with such immense grief?

Fuck if I know. But also: I have an idea.

What do I do with it is the wrong question. It sets us up to view grief as a noxious intruder that must be eradicated.

But I don’t see it that way, and I never have.

Grief is sacred. It’s something to care for, to honour, to respect. It asks us to pay attention to what matters. We can’t do that from a place of pretending it doesn’t exist, of trying to force it to be something else.

Grief is a human experience. It belongs here, and so do you.

As I drive to the hospital to see my grandma, I pass inflatable Christmas scenes, crumpled and airless in puddles. Lawn Santas stranded in mud.

The weather might not be pretty, but I don’t mind. The rain makes it easier to pretend it’s not Christmas. Does that make me sound like a Grinch? Probably, but that’s okay. I want to like Christmas, but I can’t. And I know I’m not the only one.

The weight of Christmas hovers like an expectation. It’s in the dull throb of a headache, the clench of a jaw.

The sick feeling that scrapes the bottom of a stomach.

When my sister died, my mom and I stopped “doing Christmas.” The holidays came, and we left. The first year without my sister, we went to the Caribbean. I had never been that far away from home. I packed eight library books—some of them hardcovers. One of them, a Tolstoy. I didn’t know the airlines would weigh our luggage; my bag was 74 pounds. It was A Thing at the check-in counter (you can read that story here).

Eight years after my sister’s death, I met Toby. Being with him changed me on a cellular level. His warmth, his sensitivity, his humour, his love—he held it all out toward me like an invitation. An open hand. I felt the energy between us—how alive it was, how steady. I knew how deep it would reach.

What it would mean to lose it.

I turned toward Toby and thought I hope I never find out.

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When I was a kid, my grandma had season tickets to the Vancouver Whitecaps, though they were called the ‘86ers then. I often went to the games with her. She’d buy me french fries from the concession stand in the stadium. They were served in a drink cup for some reason, and they were usually soggy, but I loved them.

And I loved going to the games with my grandma. She was the loudest fan in our section. She knew all the soccer chants and songs; she wasn’t shy about starting “the wave,” and she wasn’t shy about cheering. When something exciting happened, she’d clap her hands so loudly that I’d have to cover my ears.

And when we scored a goal, she’d jump out of her seat and scream YAHOO! ATTA BOY!

My grandma had been going to the games for so long, she’d developed friendships with everyone who sat around her. One man in particular always stood out to me. His name was Cosmo.* He was what you might call a “superfan.” He had a huge team flag and a team bandana and a loud voice.

One year, there was an ‘86ers game on my birthday. I was young, around 8 or 9 years old. My grandma was very excited to tell everyone it was my birthday. When Cosmo got to his seat, she nudged him and said, “Guess who has a birthday today!”

Cosmo looked at me, a smile breaking across his face. Then he leaned in conspiratorially and said, “I’m gonna catch a ball for you.”

Sometimes, before the match started, a few ‘86ers would kick two or three soccer balls into the stands for fans to keep as souvenirs. The odd time they were even autographed.

I’d been going to the games with my grandma for a long time, and I’d never seen anyone in our section come close to catching one. I thought about how cool it would be to catch a ball on my birthday, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Cosmo was just one person in a sea of thousands. I smiled at him and this thoughtfulness as I returned to my cup of french fries—my little hands smeared with salt and ketchup.

When the match was about to start, hope began tugging at me—my mind bounced back and forth between maybe it could happen… and there’s no chance.

I put my cup of french fries under my seat and leaned forward, straining to see the players getting ready to kick the soccer balls to the fans. I tried to contain my excitement, my silly hope. Cosmo flashed me a smile as he shimmied out of his row toward the aisle. He stood on the stairs between our section and the next—one random spot, one fan among thousands.

Disappointment welled inside me as I watched the soccer balls fly into the crowd on the other side of the stadium.

Then I saw one last player—ball in hand, glancing over the crowd. I looked at Cosmo standing on the stairs—back straight, chest out, both of his arms wide open.

In one fluid, casual motion, the player on the field struck the ball. A hollow THWACK echoed as it left his foot and sailed through the air.

Straight into Cosmo’s arms.

My mouth hung open. Everyone in our section clapped and cheered as Cosmo returned to his seat, the ball tucked safely in the crook of his arm. Then he turned and handed it straight to me. “Happy birthday!” he said.

I looked down and saw the players’ autographs scrawled all over the ball. I hugged it close to my chest. Cosmo smiled. He acted as if catching that ball had been nothing.

But to me, it felt like a miracle.

Soccer feels like another universe where I have one foot in all these lives—childhood, young adulthood, adulthood.

Me as a child watching the ‘86ers with my grandma. The magic of Cosmo handing me that ball on my birthday. Those few years when our family was intact, when I was going home to a dad and sister who were still alive.

Me as a child learning the sport—my dad as the coach, teaching me things I still remember all these years later. I tried out all the positions, but I felt most at home as a defender—I liked playing where I could see everything. Protecting the net, the goalie, the team—something about that felt like an instinct, even as a child.

Grass stains, shin pads, ice packs, blisters. Hands reaching into plastic ice cream buckets full of orange slices at halftime. You could always tell which ones were mine because I slurped up the juice and left the flesh on the peel.

Me picking a jersey in youth soccer. I chose the number 2.

Me as a teen, running on the cold ground—cleats digging into gravel, mud, turf. Picking bits of earth out of bloody knees. Puffs of breath disappearing into air.

Me as an adult, watching my sister play the sport—her talent for it, obvious. Her thick ponytail, her long stride. The hiss of the ball hitting the slope of the net. The number 2 bouncing on her back, same as me.

Me, lacing up my cleats again. My husband, Toby, and my mom watching and cheering from the sidelines. My sister’s soccer duffel beside the team bench—a small white 2 embroidered on the flap. For the longest time, I kept her empty water bottle, the loose change, the wrappers—all these random bits of life she’d left inside, made sacred because she touched them.

Sometimes I imagine running on the field with her, passing the ball to her, calling her name. I imagine what it would have been like to play together as adults. To have my sister running with me.

Now there’s another death, another empty seat. Toby is gone, and I have another loss to live with, another ghost to imagine.

Me as a widow. Me as a question mark of a person, reaching for something familiar, reaching back in time to my sister’s old team, to her coach. To someone who remembers her and Toby.

Me finding my way back to this sport again and again.

Returning to the same parks of my childhood, my youth. Running on the same fields, the same rectangles of earth as my sister, as our dad. The same sidelines where Toby and my mom sat together, watching and cheering.

The same sidelines where my mom now sits alone.

I walk up. My feet collecting beads of water, brushing blades of grass. The rain in my hair. My sister’s duffel slung over my shoulder.

On my back—my number, her number, my number. The significance of a memory being passed back and forth between us.

Happy birthday to my grandma, who turns 100 today.

* A pseudonym

When Toby and I met, one of the first things I learned about him was how much he loved the outdoors—hiking, camping, mountain climbing, canoeing, swimming—he loved it all.

A month or so after we started dating, he took me on my first overnight hike. He was so excited for me to see these little birds that lived partway up the trail. Canada jays, they’re called, but he called them whiskey jacks. “They love people!” he’d said. He wasn’t kidding. Those friendly, curious birds were hilarious and memorable.

For Toby, being in nature was restorative. It was spiritual. And after spending so much time in the wilderness with him, I understood why.

The years we had together were filled with outdoor adventures. Toby gave me the confidence to do what felt impossible, to climb mountains, to camp at the top above the rest of the world.

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He used to tinker with things at home too; he loved supercharging my toys. I’d bring something to him and ask, “Can you make this toy light up/beep/go faster?”

He’d inspect whatever I’d given him, turning it over in his hands. Then he’d say, “Sure I can.”

He was very good at math, science, and engineering. But unlike some of my classmates’ parents, he would not do my science projects for me.

When I was 10, my family moved, and I started grade 5 at a brand new school where I didn’t know anyone. Almost right away, I noticed that all my classmates loved the science teacher, Mr. K. I, on the other hand, was scared of him. One time, he casually mentioned there was going to be a huge earthquake right after school, at precisely 3:05pm. This terrified me, so I went to the office with wide eyes and a trembling chin and asked if I could use the phone. When the secretary asked why, I sniffed and said, “I need to call my parents to warn them about the earthquake.”

She slowly pushed the phone toward me, a confused look on her face. I guess she didn’t know we were about to be hit by The Big One. Both of my parents tried to tell me there wasn’t going to be an earthquake, but I didn’t believe them. Later on, the principal’s voice came over the PA to announce that there was no earthquake scheduled for the afternoon.

I didn’t believe him either.

I wasn’t scared of Mr. K because of the earthquake thing though. I was scared of him because he always assigned super complicated science projects that took forever to make. And my parents were very strict about homework—I was not allowed to do anything until all my homework was done. No friends, no playing, no hobbies, no TV. Nothing. So whenever Mr. K assigned a science project, I knew it meant I’d be stuck under a pile of homework for days and days.

And every science project also came with an added bonus of potential social humiliation because Mr. K always tested them in front of the whole class.

This one time, he had us make trebuchets, and a few kids brought ones that looked like they could do some actual damage. When it was time to go outside and test them, I asked the girl in front of me how she made hers. She shrugged and said, “My dad did it for me.” When it was her turn, the whole class watched as she placed her trebuchet on the ground, loaded the sling, and fired. Her rock soared through the air, far past everyone else’s. Mr. K stood across the field, pointed at it, and yelled, “THIS IS THE DISTANCE TO BEAT!”

Even though I was new to this school, I learned very quickly that if your plasticine boat sank, if your volcano didn’t explode, if your trebuchet didn’t impress, everyone would laugh at you. The kids here had long memories and no mercy.

One morning, we all filed into Mr. K’s classroom to see that he’d written “The Great Canadian Egg Drop” on the chalkboard. He explained that for this project, we were to construct something that would protect an egg from breaking should it fall from some incredible height, like the top of an elementary school, for example. To test our projects, he said he was going to climb on top of the school and throw them off the roof to see which ones broke after slamming into the concrete below.

For some reason, I forgot all about this particular science project until the night before it was due. I was sitting in my bedroom when I suddenly remembered it was the eve of The Great Canadian Egg Drop and I had nothing to show for it. Full of panic, I ran to my parents and announced, “I FORGOT ABOUT THE GREAT CANADIAN EGG DROP!”

They were confused. What was “The Great Canadian Egg Drop” they asked. I thought everyone knew about The Great Canadian Egg Drop; Mr. K made it sound very popular, but I explained it anyway. Then they were mad because they thought I’d purposely avoided doing the project. Parents don’t like homework surprises. Especially not science project ones. And especially not the night before they’re due.

My mom sighed and turned to my dad, “Chris, can you help her with this?” Then she added, “I don’t even know if we have any eggs.”

But we did. I grabbed one from the fridge and brought it to my dad. I watched as he gathered a small cardboard box and a newspaper. We sat together on the living room floor and took page after page from the newspaper, scrunched them into balls, and put them in the box. When it was half full, my dad carefully placed the egg in the centre. Together, we scrunched up more sheets of newspaper and placed them on top. When the box was full, he sealed it with packing tape and handed it to me.

I was feeling very smug about my egg until I got to class in the morning and saw that everyone else had their eggs nestled inside bubble wrap, insulated lunch bags, and padded baskets.

And I was the only one whose egg did not have a garbage bag parachute.

Pfft, whatever, I thought. So what if all my egg had was a cardboard box? My egg didn’t need a garbage bag parachute. My dad worked in the biomedical engineering department of a hospital. He fixed motorized wheelchairs and spent his days making things way more complicated than this.

That’s what I told myself anyway.

Then the boy I had a crush on pointed at my cardboard box and shouted, “HA HA! YOUR EGG’S GONNA BREAK!” I felt my cheeks redden with embarrassment.

I wanted to shout back, “No it isn’t because my dad made it!” But I looked down and said nothing.

Mr. K collected our projects and told us to go outside and wait by the playground. A few minutes later, he appeared on the roof and shouted down at us, “When your egg lands, grab it, and then move out of the way!” Our elementary school was a tall, two storey building—Mr. K stood right at the edge, and, one by one, he unceremoniously chucked our eggs off the roof.

My classmates and I squinted toward the sky, watching parachute after parachute fill with air and drift gently to the ground. After each landing, everyone would huddle around to watch the big unveiling, shouting predictions about whose egg survived and whose hadn’t.

Dread clawed the insides of my stomach as I watched everyone else’s egg glide slowly to the ground, knowing that mine didn’t have bubble wrap or a pillow or a garbage bag parachute. Mine was going to hit the ground like a brick.

Mr. K had thrown about half our projects off the roof when I looked up and saw that my egg was next. He took my cardboard box and turfed it off the roof like all the others. It tumbled through the air and slammed into the cement with a loud THUD. One corner of the box was squished from where it met the pavement. My classmates gasped. And then they laughed.

I imagined my poor egg, smashed to liquid inside.

I grabbed my cardboard box and scurried off to the side. I crouched down with my back turned to everyone, hoping to check my egg in peace, but all the kids followed and crowded around to watch. As I was picking at the tape, someone blurted, “It’s SO going to be broken!”

More laughter erupted around me.

Full of embarrassment, I peeled back the tape and slowly opened the flaps. Piece by piece, I plucked the balls of newspaper and put them to the side. I could feel my classmates hovering and staring, buzzing with barely contained excitement.

Finally, I caught a glimpse of my egg—its white shell nestled in the centre of the box. I carefully removed a few more pieces of newspaper, took a final breath, reached in, and lifted it of the box.

I turned it over in my hands—there wasn’t a crack on it.

“NO WAY!!” I heard the other kids shout in amazement, “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT DIDN’T BREAK!”

A smile spread across my face.

Someone whined, “She probably hard boiled it.”

“Piss off,” I said, putting my egg back in the box and hugging it close to my chest. I stood and turned to face the crowd, “I didn’t hard boil it.”

My egg survived The Great Canadian Egg Drop. And so did I.

My dad, Chris, came into my life when I was 6 years old. He was the only dad I ever knew. He was diagnosed with cancer not long after The Great Canadian Egg Drop. He died less than a year later. He was 37.

There were so many things he never got to do. As I wrote this story, I closed my eyes and remembered him; I remembered our family, our old house, our innocence. I pictured my little hands opening our fridge and taking out an egg for this project. I saw myself sitting on the floor of our living room, ripping up the newspaper with my dad, setting my egg inside its box.

If he had lived, I wonder what he’d remember about this story.

I wonder what our family would have grown into, had it been given the chance.

**Cover photo by Vika Strawberrika via Unsplash

From the outside, it might have looked like a regular martial arts gym, but it was so much more than that. To a lot of people, it felt like home. Gyms aren’t known for being welcoming, inclusive spaces, but yours was. Yours was a gym where everyone belonged.

It used to sit at the back of a little strip mall, until the city decided they wanted to build something else there. Machines came and chewed all the little businesses down to rubble. Down to dust. The gym would find a new spot, no big deal. You weren’t sick then, so even though this felt a bit sad, it was also okay.

I thought about taking a stone or a broken piece of the foundation, just to have something concrete from where we met. But I didn’t. And now, I can’t. It’s gone.

I heard about your gym from a co-worker. She and I got to know one another after a stabbing at our workplace (you can read that story here). We saved someone’s life, and that meant we suddenly had something in common.

Shortly after the stabbing, we had a shift together. “You like sports, right?” she asked.

“Yeah, I play soccer,” I said.

“What about jiu jitsu? I’m in a women’s class. It’s Brazilian style.” She pulled out her phone and started showing me pictures. “You should come.”

I swiped through the photos. “I don’t know…” I said, handing her phone back. “I don’t really know anything about Brazilian jiu jitsu.”

She wrinkled her nose. “So? Neither did I when I first started. You can learn. Plus they let you try a few classes for free.”

“Yeah, maybe…” I said. The thought of learning something new seemed exhausting.

“Everyone there is really nice,” she tried again. She made it sound so simple, like I’d be a fool to not try a free class with a bunch of nice women.

“I’ll think about it,” I said. But what I really meant was I’ll overthink about it, and what that meant was I’ll mentally review all the reasons why I definitely shouldn’t try this new thing.

In his book, Knife,1 Salman Rushdie wrote, “On such coin-toss moments, a life can turn.”

Or many lives, as it turns out—mine, yours, and the one we built. Going to that class is how I met you. Sometimes, I sit back and think about all the random, unrelated events that led us to one another; how every time a coin was spinning in the air, it landed on the side that brought us together.

And the next thought I have is why? Why did all these little things bring us together only to take you away?

The gym was small, but full; its windows glazed with sweat and effort. There was room for only one class at a time, and kickboxing was right before women’s jiu jitsu. I stood just inside the door; the class was winding down, but students were still throwing punches and kicks. I looked around at all the trophies and belts, wondering if I belonged. And then I saw you, standing in front of your class—calm and confident, your students taking in your steady leadership—their respect and admiration, obvious.

I noticed you right away. Later, you’d say the same about me. All this noticing, but we would spend months passing one another without a word or a glance. You’d mop the mats after your class so they’d be clean for ours, but you always kept your gaze down at the floor, your face, serious.

Later, you explained that you kept your distance, not to be unfriendly, but because we were a women’s-only class, and you wanted us to feel comfortable, to know that the space was ours. Your earnestness was so obvious; you kept way more distance than you needed to.

After we’d been together for a while, people would ask us how we met, I liked to tease you about this: “Well, Toby waited a year before he made his big move,” I’d say.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Whatever,” you’d say, with a smile.

You were aware, considerate, and sensitive, and these are rare and special things.

I’d been going to jiu jitsu for almost a year when you sent me a friend request on social media. We’d never said “hi” to one another. We’d never even made eye contact.

I accepted your friend request.

I snooped through your profile, of course. I was single and rebuilding what had been torn down by an emotionally abusive former partner. You were single as well, it turned out.

The following week, I walked up to the gym door, same as always—water bottle in hand, duffel bag slung over one shoulder; only this time, just before I reached for the handle, the door unexpectedly swung open. And there you were.

A year of noticing, of circling, and suddenly, we were face-to-face for the first time. You stopped when you saw me; the open door resting against your body, your palm on the handle, people stacking up behind you.

“Hi,” you said. But it wasn’t a greeting; it was an announcement.

“Hi,” I said back, not looking away.

We paused like that, holding our place inside that moment. Just for a second, but it was long enough to know: We were standing on the edge of something, you and I, feeling the pull of one another, letting the world move around us. That was our first conversation; those two words. Nothing else. I never stuck out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Danielle.” You never said, “Nice to meet you, I’m Toby.” We never introduced ourselves.

That encounter, it wasn’t an introduction. It was a collision.

All the random events, all the coin-toss moments that had to line up just so, all the times I almost never went to your gym.

Can you imagine?

So many near misses, and we still found each other. You and me with our love that always felt like magic, that was its own huge universe—bright and electric. Who you were, who I was, what we were together… it was too singular, too pure to die. Even as I felt it being taken away, that’s what I told myself. But those words didn’t work. Nothing I did or could do saved you.

And now my body is spinning, sunless and alone. Orbiting a void. Waiting for something familiar… the wave of a clear note, your warmth in a room, the tug of your gravity. But the air around me is empty.

Are you really just a memory, tumbling in the dark?

Sometimes I pretend you’re still here, that even though your body died, your soul didn’t.

That you really are still with me.

That I’m the kind of person who could believe in that.

100% AI-free.

Years ago, I witnessed a stabbing.

It happened just after midnight. I was at work when a teenage boy approached me and asked for directions. (For some context about my former workplace, have a look at this story.) As I was helping him, we shared some small talk and a few laughs. He seemed kind, and at my old job, kindness was unusual, especially at midnight.

I watched him head down the stairs and turn up the street. A group of teens stood directly in his path. He walked toward them. A sick feeling came over me; something about the situation looked dangerous. I couldn’t tell you what, exactly—groups of teens aren’t uncommon; neither is walking alone, even at midnight.

But experience taught me that I worked in a place where violence could erupt at any time, for any reason. Or no reason at all.

Without warning, the group of teens descended on the boy I’d been talking to and laughing with just minutes earlier. They stabbed him several times in the back and leg. And then they ran away.

The leg wound was to his femoral artery.

I radioed for police and paramedics, grabbed a first aid kit, and tore through it. I tossed medical supplies all over the ground looking for something useful, but I knew we had nothing for wounds like this. A co-worker ripped off his belt and made a tourniquet. A second co-worker came to help. Our hands covered the holes in his body while we waited for the paramedics. Bystanders stood and stared, mouths agape.

The boy pulled out his phone and called someone. “I’ve been stabbed,” he managed. His words dragged like heavy feet, stumbling through the sentence. I could hear the person on the other end, a faceless voice full of confusion and panic. Before he could say anything else, he slumped to the side—his hand fell onto the bench, phone loose in his palm, blood smearing the screen, the voice on the other end of the line calling out for him.

We did everything right in a situation we were never trained for, but we knew he was bleeding to death in our arms.

He was 17 years old.

When the paramedics arrived, they took in the violence and the blood and the boy. We stepped back so they could take our place. I saw something in their faces that looked like fear.

My shift was almost over, but I didn’t go home. The police wanted to take me to the detachment. “You saw the whole thing, so we have to collect your witness statement while it’s fresh,” they said. I followed them to the patrol car and slid into the backseat.

“Do you know if he’s going to be okay?” I asked from behind the cage.

“I’m sorry, I don’t. But it’s very serious.”

I hugged my backpack and thought about the morning my sister died. The police drove my mom and me to the hospital to see her body. I sat in the backseat of a patrol car then, too. I knew what it was like to be woken up by the police at a strange hour. I watched the dark, empty streets out the window and thought about the boy’s family having to experience that.

All the lights were off at the detachment. “Just take a seat here in the lobby,” one of the constables said. “Someone from the Major Crime Unit is coming in to take your witness statement.”

“Okay.”

I did what I was told—I took a seat and waited, but I felt restless. I thought about getting up—I wanted to move, to run, to scream,1 but I stayed in my seat. I assumed there were cameras in the lobby, and that screaming and/or running back and forth would be weird and frowned upon and not something I should do right before giving a very important statement.

I thought about calling someone, but it was the middle of the night, and I didn’t want to wake anyone. So I just imagined; I imagined what it would be like to have a partner to call in a situation like this, to know I was going home to someone who would pull me into his lap and kiss my head and hold me while I cried.

I knew what love looked like (in theory), but not how it felt. This incident happened before I met Toby. Back then, I was going home to a partner who didn’t love, or even care about, me. Going home to a person like that is worse than going home to no one at all.

So I just sat there all night in the unlit lobby, alone and awash in the aftermath of adrenaline, letting the current of it carry me away. I knew I’d eventually wash up on some distant shore where I’d lie in silence, waiting for my insides to dry up and harden. In the meantime, my body would walk and talk and smile and act like things were normal because this is what the world asked of me.

All this death and violence and cruelty in the world. I tried to stay away from it, I really did, but it always found me. Every time it pulled me under, I’d sink all the way down to the bottom, wondering if this was it—if too many bad things had happened. If this was the time I’d resurface to find that the tide had finally pulled me too far away from myself and from others.

I got home just after 7 am—ragged from what I’d witnessed, numb from being awake all night. I crawled into bed, wide-eyed and unable to sleep. I stayed under the covers, my mind blank but racing.

My phone rang a few hours later. It was a duty manager from work. “I heard about what happened,” she’d said. “How terrible. Well, I’m just calling to see if you’re coming to work today.” I looked at the time, confused. I wasn’t late; my shift didn’t start for a few more hours.

Right, I thought. This call was not about my well-being. Empathy—you were relieved if you got it, but I can’t say it was an organizational core value.

I didn’t take any time off work. I went back angry and raw, hypervigilance revving like an engine threatening to spin out of control.

I asked everyone who might have an update about the boy’s condition. I needed to know what happened to him. Finally, someone told me:

He lived.