Grief Diary #34: Lace Wedding Dress

My ex-husband and I wore identical white gold wedding bands. I sold my ring a couple of years back when my cash inflow became sparse as a newish business owner. Besides, it was not…

Grief Diary #33: Loss of Play

Starbucks coffee and a chicken sandwich in hand, I took my seat at the airport facing the bar from a few feet away. My flight to Chicago was delayed by about an hour. I…

Grief Diary #32: Exes Moving On

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry posted Instagram pictures of attending Coachella in April 2026. They seem to have found their people, like honey and lemon or pastry and cheese. They…

Grief Diary #31: Being Seen, Really Seen

My dad always gifted me books on my birthday growing up. At ten, I had all the simplified versions of literary classics like Peter Pan, Treasure Island, and David Copperfield. My grandfather, a Sri…

Grief Diary #30: Gradients of Like and Love

During the first few sessions of a coaching engagement, my client and I, we try our best to get clear on their desired outcome, a subjective or objective way to measure progress towards that…

Grief Diary #29: Aches and Pains

I come from a meandering river of pain

Bottled clouds on my mother’s face

Doubled bricks on my father’s back

Hushed guts of my ancestors

And God knows what shrouds and droughts

Before them all

Grief Diary #28: Swimming Upshore

I can’t swim, but I swam

upstream, upbolt, upside, updown

I can’t swim, but I swam

away from the nice, kind, tight man

towards new and exciting and grunt-worthy work

I said I can’t swim, but I swam

And a…

Grief Diary #26: Dead Birds

As winter began thinning here in Toronto, I have been going on more walks. On one of these walks on a sunny weekday afternoon, I saw a dead bird and a dead squirrel buried…

Grief Diary #25: University Times

I first moved to Oregon, USA, in August of 2012. I was 27, technically a fully-formed adult, although on the metric of wisdom and openness, I would have scored pretty inadequate. I moved sight…