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 under the melting snow on the sidewalk. The insides of the bird were mangled by the winter cold, but the squirrel…

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 unseen, only aware of relatively high crime rates and rainfall. I didn’t care; anywhere would be better than where I was,…

After I was born, my mother had many, many miscarriages. I vaguely remember her being rushed to the hospital or her coming back home with a heart of gray and dark. I grew up thinking her dislike of me was due to what I took away from her when she housed me. I emptied her…

As I waited for the Toronto Courts to finalize my mutually-filed and straightforward divorce, I thought writing a novel based on my marriage was a good idea. By that time, I had done enough bad writing to know that my characters had to be three-dimensional, even the villain should have a past that garners empathy…

Last week, we got a peek into the chambers of the Beckham family palace as the oldest son, Brooklyn (I love this name, by the way), announced over Instagram that he wanted no contact with his celebrity parents. I intentionally use the word “peek” here because we have no real understanding of the intricacies of…

I’m friends with all my exes, but two. With one of them, I don’t want to keep in touch, and with the other, he doesn’t want to keep in touch with me. Not keeping in touch is hard when you want to, or your trauma brain thinks you want to. For me, wanting to keep…

A couple of years back, someone I met on Hinge wanted me to get on a call, something I don’t really like to do as an introvert who hates speaking on the phone. But I humored him because I will generally give anything safe a try once before I rule it out. “What’s your favorite…

I learned a new word today – Salvation Fantasy. Registered trauma therapist, Kina Wolfenstein (@cptsdtherapist) mentioned this in an Instagram post that I was meant to see today. Because yesterday, while falling asleep, I fell into a salvation fantasy: I thought of how “cool” it would be if my last ex came back and apologized…

When I separated and divorced from my ex-husband a few years back, I also left my corporate career and sprang into coaching and freelance writing, destabilizing my financial security along the way. My first-ever therapist advised me against this career pivot, but I fired her and jumped ship anyway. I’m not the only person who…