• Journal

    Refilling the Shell

    July 13, 2026 - By 

    a life update

    Dear Reader, life changes fast, and I’m here with an update. My website has been sitting for a while unused. I’ve been reflecting on why that is, and I think I’ve lost touch with the purpose of this space. Some of that is because I started posting somewhat-polished pieces on my Substack, and even started a podcast called THOUGHTSCRAPES on there. I’ve made 5 episodes so far and I’m really enjoying the process of creating them, but the hustle and bustle of summer and my kiddo home from school means I get to spend a lot more time with family doing fun summer things, so my priorities are settled into experiences right now rather than creativity.

    And boy has it been hot! If you’re reading this and not drenched in sweat, what is your secret? I’ve had to cut back on my mental health walks simply because I may perish in this heat. We went to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum on the weekend to say our annual hello to Scotty the T Rex and see the new owl exhibit, and even inside that building, which I’m sure is temperature controlled to protect the artifacts and displays, was almost unpleasant in its mugginess.

    It’s also been quite a rainy summer so far. I love rain and I’m grateful my house has held up its integrity with no leaks. Other parts of my city haven’t been so lucky. The cool thing about the added moisture though, is that there have been a lot of mushrooms popping up everywhere. A sign of a healthy ecosystem, so I’m always happy to find them in my yard. It’s also made me curious to learn more about mycology and mushroom foraging. I started following this really awesome woman named Alexis Nikole who goes by @blackforager on Instagram, and her entire energy around foraging is so infectious. She’s a well of amazing information and I’ve been slurping it all up, poring over books on local plant life, and can’t wait to start recognizing things in the wild.

    Possibly my biggest news is that Taylor and I are engaged. He surprised me by getting down on one knee on a video chat all the way from where he lives in Texas. He had mailed me a ring and the moment was so perfect and beautiful. I’ve never felt so seen and accepted by someone, so the yes burst out with an enthusiasm I didn’t know I was capable of considering marriage is something I’ve actively avoided in the past. Turns out I wasn’t anti-marriage, I just hadn’t found someone who loved me the way I needed to be loved to feel safe.

    As a natural reaction to getting engaged, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d even want from a wedding. I’ve decided the most important things to me (in order) are:

    1. Darwin is there
    2. I make my own dress
    3. It’s in a forest or garden

    Other than that I really don’t mind the details. I’m just so happy to love and to be loved by someone who I can share a mutual vulnerability with, and who never tries to dull my sparkle.

    I’ve picked up the knitting needles again. Strange timing, given the heat, I know, but from my air conditioned basement TV room, the seasons don’t seem to matter. I’m just making a simple dishcloth right now, or rather, finishing one I started probably 6 months ago or so, knit one corner of, and then abandoned in my knitting bag. I am going to need more practice with lace, so once this is done, I’m moving on to a nice summer top with a lace panel on the body and sleeves. I’ll make it out of this lovely dark teal cotton/linen blend yarn I’ve had in my stash for a few years.

    I started a new book a few days ago called Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a Mexican-American woman who is also a Jungian psychoanalyst. I really enjoy Carl Jung’s work, and this book seems to be a wonderful mix of Jungian concepts through a feminist lens focused on empowerment and return to form. Getting in touch with our inner wild feminine, so often suppressed in patriarchal society.

    Speaking personally, most of the men I’ve known in my life, and plenty of women too, have tried to control, hurt, suppress, or shame me into a box. I’ve lived feeling like I need to shrink to fit, and I’m sorry to say that I did. I lost parts of myself along the way. I’d bend and twist and cut off the pieces that weren’t acceptable until what was left was someone I didn’t recognize. I was someone who existed trying to be loved and learning I couldn’t be without adding or subtracting, hiding and abiding. I’m learning to love myself exactly as I am, and I’m refilling the shell I became.

    Maybe the new purpose of this space will be documenting the joy I’m rediscovering in life; the things I’m learning on my path back to the me I was before the world told me that wasn’t acceptable. I’m building back my creativity, my curiosity, and my connection with nature and my personal spirituality. I’m in the middle of healing and it’s a beautiful place to be and grow.

  • Memoir

    4 Decades

    September 20, 2025 - By 

    Today, I turn 40 years old. More than anything I wanted to make some time today to sit down at my keyboard and write something to commemorate the day and share a little wisdom I’ve learned over the last 40 years.

    Leading up to The Big 4-0 I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. I wondered if I’d wax poetic about my lost youth and dread starting my age with a 4 now instead of a 3. But the truth is, now that I’ve arrived at this milestone, when I reflect on the last 4 decades of my life, I’m just so grateful that I’m still here. I didn’t always believe I would make it this far and I’m thankful for each day. I want to hug that little girl who fought so hard to get here and let her know “we made it”.

    39 was an incredibly difficult year. After 10 years of begging for affection and to be treated right by an individual who I later found out didn’t respect or even like me, thought my writing was stupid and that me sharing my trauma was ‘attention-seeking’, among other things, I felt silenced and trapped. Then, someone came along who saw my worth and made me feel like myself again. Leaving was terrifying and unfortunately while I was seeking peace and happiness and stability again, this individual was hard at work behind the scenes spreading lies in an attempt to separate me from my support system and psychologically harm me further through attacks on my child.

    All this to say I was really battle-tested this year. We are finally okay and healing again, but in the midst of this my little sister passed away in April this year after a brief and courageous battle with breast cancer. For reasons still beyond my understanding, I was left out of her end of life completely. She and I were very close and I miss her every single day. Her death and the confusion surrounding it absolutely destroyed me.

    Despite everything, I’m optimistic. I’m stepping into my 40s with so much light and so many dreams, but I also wanted to reflect a little on the journey that brought me here and share some of the things I’ve learned in my 4 decades of life.

    The First Decade: Unsteady Foundation

    I was born into fire and had to grow up way too fast. My childhood was traumatic and filled with male rage and control. This was where my anxiety started. This was when my PTSD was born. I learned how important books and imagination are for self preservation and my true love of art and writing began. This was the decade I learned creativity was what would lift me out of darkness. It became an obsession and I started collecting and filling up spiral-bound notebooks with poetry once we escaped my dad and were somewhere safe.

    I struggled a lot with self worth, with abandonment. I’ve since learned that’s quite common for children who survive childhood abuse to move through life with a sense of worthlessness. It was a constant little reminder plaguing me: “if your own parent could treat you that way, you’re not worth much” and to be honest that feeling never really went away. I still try to over-perform and over-deliver to prove my worth because deep down I want to prove I can be valued and loved.

    The Second Decade: Growth and Healing

    Adolescence and early adulthood were a messy time, but isn’t that true for everyone? Some of the things I learned in the first ten years of life became more refined in the second. Like art and writing especially. I started to learn that if I wrote about my negative feelings, it made them easier to understand and then they’d get smaller. I have since learned that there is a term for this: “shadow work”. It’s a skill that I refined further as I got older, but I can trace the roots to my early teen years, when I started writing and journaling more seriously. I was able to start healing myself, or as I would call it “figuring out my shit”.

    This was also the decade that I got a lot of external validation for my art, which made me start thinking of it as a dream to do professionally. I started sinking all my free time into practicing portraits and sharing my art and writing with a broader audience, including friends and classmates. I learned about the power to heal through art and writing, not just for myself, but for others who are able to relate. Creative expression became more than just a hobby, it felt like it was necessary for survival.

    The healing was ugly. This was a decade where self-harm was the worst and as much as the writing and art were helpful getting my mind to where it needed to be, I didn’t always have the tools to do that in a graceful or healthy way. I was self destructive and didn’t want to live, and at one time I even wrote a letter and had a plan to end my life. I’m grateful everyday I didn’t follow through.

    The Third Decade: Death & a Reason to Live

    I never grew up wanting to be a mom the same way a lot of little girls do, but when I got that positive pregnancy test, everything changed. My body wasn’t just my own anymore, and I quit self-harming immediately. Being a mom became the most important thing to me, and I invested all my time and energy into projecting love and care onto this tiny little human that depended on me. Dave, the father of my sweet child, passed away suddenly a few weeks after we became parents together. We planned to spend our lives together, were very much in love, and his death shattered the beautiful little life we had planned.

    There I was, standing on the precipice of our future and staring into the abyss, holding this tiny spark of light. I decided to go back to school, which I was able to do 100% distance learning so I could be at home with my child in the process. This period of time taught me the value of ambition and hard work in order to achieve stability. I got special permission to complete two different 2 year programs simultaneously, and I graduated with distinction. More than anything, I wanted my child to have the stability that I lacked growing up. I’m grateful every day that I was able to be the mom I needed to be at that time.

    The Fourth Decade: Dark Night of the Soul and the Dawn that Followed

    The last 10 years have taught me that I should trust my intuition. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right, and no amount of begging for scraps of attention and affection will convince someone to treat you the way you deserve if that person doesn’t care about or respect you in the first place. I’ve learned that making myself smaller and shrinking to fit someone’s idea of what I should be will only result in me very slowly losing the core parts of myself. I’ve learned that, like a flower, I need to be nourished in order to bloom and my 40s are going to be spent around more people who nourish my roots as much as I nourish theirs.

    I’ve learned that when you walk through fire, you’ll lose some people before you get to the other side. Mourn them and move on because those who really care will be waiting for you on the other side and cheering you on. I’ve learned to be unapologetically and authentically me, because I am showing my child by example what it means to radically accept and shine in your own light. I’ve learned I don’t need to apologize for who I am anymore.

    I’ve come to believe that some people are on this earth just to live through the dark spots, to experience trauma and rebirth on a cycle, to understand the nature of trauma and fight for your truth. A very wise woman I’ve known most of my life recently told me that my super power is healing with grace from the darkness, coming back stronger, and using my experience as a guiding light to help others. This year, I want to live up to her belief in me and earn those kind words.

    Now that I’m able to write without hiding it, you’ll be hearing more from me very soon. Until next time, be kind to each other and I hope you find a reason to smile today.

    I’m back baby!

  • Memoir

    Hey Dad, It’s Wendy

    June 16, 2024 - By 

    I don’t remember the last time I saw you, but I remember feeling happy when mom picked me up early from school and told me we were leaving you. Up until that point all I remember are sleepless nights in a cold house filled with your anger. I remember your screams and shattered objects and the point press of a knife on the skin covering my starving belly. I remember the gun. I remember the way you would drive into oncoming traffic and punch the roof of your red classic car as you told us how easy it would be to end this family.

    I remember the sickening acid slime of your touch and how it ate away my innocence.

    I remember your rage and my fear. I remember your threat that if I ever told anyone you would kill my sisters and mom in front of me, and then you’d kill me too. Then I remember not sleeping for a long time, feeling like I had to stay awake to protect them.

    I remember feeling like nothing. Like less than nothing.

    And then we got on a train. Frantic in the dark, looking over my shoulder for you, I shook like a leaf as the tracks rumbled beneath us, taking our battered minds and bodies far away.

    And then I remember staying in a home with other broken children, broken women, broken families. It was from within this cathedral of victims that I told what you did. Your evil secret left my lips, then shut them for a long time when I stopped speaking. I watched the truth poison mom and blamed myself. I never wanted to speak again. Like a wounded animal, I just wanted to hide. In the dark. In the quiet.

    With your private investigators, hiding from you was an ever-changing game, but we stayed one step ahead of you. When a bomb threat was called in to the court house on the day mom went to fight for custody of us, we knew it was you. When you showed up at our school with photos of us to intimidate the principal into giving you information, they kept us safe, even after you waited outside and ran them off the road in your car that evening for refusing you.

    I got used to feeling unsafe. It was normal to go through each day filled with adrenaline and hypervigilance. I was constantly exhausted and underweight. Someone would tip us off when you found out our address and we would move under the cover of darkness to a safe location which never stayed safe for long.

    I grew up angry with bouts of rage that reminded me of yours, and I hated myself for it. I would cut myself to spill you out of my blood, to feel the distraction of pain and momentary relief of the psychological anguish that lived in my head. I wrote goodbye letters to my family several times, but a tiny glowing ember at my core provided just enough light to keep me here. I felt lonely surrounded by other people, alone in a crowd, locked up in my tower of memory.

    I was an adult when I heard the news that you died. Rare blood cancer poisoned your body and it felt poetic, like karmic retribution for the way you poisoned mine. The weight of your world was lifted from my shoulders and I felt like I could take a full breath for the first time in my life. I didn’t have to peer through the blinds or consider my safety from you. I could sleep without worrying you’d find us and keep your promise. You were my monster, but now you were just a dead old man. I think the day you died was the day I started healing.

    I fought hard for my life, never hiding from the truth but drinking it in gulps, digesting it and examining it, desperate to find the other side. I took everything you did and filed it away. I started drawing the lines between what you did and and what I became because of it. Cause and effect. If I recognized you as the cause, I could work to minimize the effect. I took all my rage that I recognized as being from you and I turned it into love. I overcame my fear of speaking and can now give public speeches that inspire others. I took all the suffering you left me with and I transformed it into something beautiful. I replaced my hate with compassion. I replaced my fear with curiosity. I replaced self harm with self love. I’m still afraid, but I do it anyway.

    To this day, my first thought in most situations is that I’m as worthless as you made me feel. But now there’s a second voice, a louder voice that is screaming for my life:

    I’m enough. I’m enough. I’m enough.

  • Journal - Memoir

    I Lied About My Life

    April 23, 2024 - By 

    I never had an easy time making friends. If you read my last post, “23 Meadow Way” you know that we moved around a lot, often urgently without getting to say goodbye to any friends I did have. When I got to a new school I was the weird kid, the quiet kid, the poor kid in decades-old hand-me-downs who rarely looked up from the floor or desk.

    When I did make friends they never stuck around for long, and in the early days that real life unfriending usually followed me sharing something about my life that highlighted how damaged I was and bummed people out. Over time I learned that the more people knew about my life, the more likely they were to leave it. Certain parts of my story made classmates uncomfortable, and certain parts of my life made their parents hesitant to invite me for sleepovers or allow their kids to come over to my house. It felt like they thought my trauma would rub off on them, like it was contagious.

    When the pattern kept repeating itself I started building defenses against it. I remember telling people I didn’t have a father at all, that I was a test-tube baby. I would make up stories about my past that had no basis in reality, but I thought these narratives might make me easier to be around. I told people my dad died, or that my mom went to a sperm bank in order to have me. I tried to frame myself in a way that was less sad, more easily digestible, more wholesome. It would work for a little while, but the stink of child abuse comes from beneath the skin of our outward mask, where it festers in the dark. Sooner or later, at every stage of my life, everyone left.

    There were friends I’d have for a year or two, maybe more. As I got older, people were more accepting, but I was never anybody’s best friend. When you move around so much, you meet a lot of people who already have best friends from kindergarten. I always wanted that. I never wanted a big friend group, just one best friend or a few close friends to have a deep connection with. I’ve had plenty of coworkers I get along with. I’ve had friends as an adult, but there comes a point where suddenly they don’t have time for my anymore. Plans get cancelled over and over until they never get rescheduled. Messages slow and then grind to a halt. Everyone carries on with their separate lives and I’ve never found a way to reverse that so I let them drift. Deep down I know I can’t really blame them.

    I haven’t lied about my life in many years now. I have embraced my history and who I am. I’ve written a lot about it, and some of that has helped people. I wear my mind on my sleeve, and I’m still not great at making friends. Most of the people I consider friends these days I’ve met through a shared love of books with my Bookstagram account, but even then people tend to drift away after a while and it’s hard not to think it’s because there’s just something about me so deeply broken that I can’t see but others can, that makes me difficult to be around. I feel very grateful to say that I do feel like I finally have a best friend. Taylor, if you’re reading this, thank you for being a real one and sticking around even through all my darkness. It’s a pleasure to do the same for you. 🖤

  • Memoir

    23 Meadow Way

    March 22, 2024 - By 

    I lived there for grade 3 and part of grade 4. We left suddenly in the middle of the night under a thick cloud of fear.

    He found us.

    That day had been like any other day, except I was home sick from school. This wasn’t unusual for me. Being too young to have developed any tools to cope with my anxiety, it manifested as physical illness. On this particular day, my panic attacks may have saved my life.

    What I learned later was that my dad had showed up at the school that day. We had escaped him on a train that took us from New Brunswick to Saskatchewan a couple years prior. He hired private investigators to find us and on this day he was nearly successful. He went into the school demanding to know where me and my sister were. The principal, aware of our situation, didn’t give him any information. We lived less than a block from the school, and despite his threats to her, she kept us safe.

    He didn’t stop there. He had photos of us, a few years old, but he took them around the playground and started asking children if they knew us or where we lived. Perhaps a little sad, perhaps a little lucky that I hadn’t formed any close friendships and nobody really knew me. We had already moved so much in the few years since arriving in Saskatchewan, and I was traumatized and withdrawn.

    He waited outside the school and ran the principal off the road in his car when she left work that day. I wish I remembered her name, because I would send her a thousand thank you notes for keeping my family out of harm’s way by putting herself into it.

    My mom got a phone call that night. It was only a matter of time before my dad found our address. My mom woke me and my sisters up from our beds and we had very little time to pack our most important belongings into a brown van that belonged to my mom’s friend. There were no seats in the back of the van, so my two sisters and I huddled among boxes, crouched like cargo while we drove through the city streets to what we hoped was safety.

    I don’t remember where we ended up that night. More than likely we either went to stay with my grandmother until we got into our next home, or it may have been the women’s shelter we stayed at for a while. All I remember is the deep sense of fear, and the knowledge that my dad was going to do everything possible to keep his promise: If you ever tell anybody, I’ll kill your sisters and your mom in front of you, and then I’ll kill you.

    I sometimes wonder if any of the kids at that school wondered where I went, and whether the teacher or principal made up a kid-friendly story to ease their curious minds, because no child should have to be aware of that kind of danger.

    Me at the house on 23 Meadow Way, blowing bubbles with my cat Muffin shortly before we left.