I am currently working on a final exam of grief. The teacher is always silent during the final exam. As a teacher, I know this well. When your students write an exam, your teaching is done and you hope you have prepared your students well for the exam. And then you get to mark them […]

Spending time remembering someone we love in nature is good for our soul.

it sometimes helps to read a book to give words to all the complex feelings that are in your heart.

Let your family take pictures of you at your best and at your worst. In time, it will be the only way your grieving family will see your face.

Remember, we don’t get over grief. We carry it with us into the future.

Grief is universal. We will all grieve at some point in our lives. But, we all grieve in different styles and in different timeframes. What comforts one person in grief may not comfort another person in grief. This is what makes comforting a grieving loved one tricky. One size does not fit all. There are […]

“Kaze no denwa – the idea of keeping up a relationship with the dead is not such a strange thing in Japan.” –Krissy Howard 2017

When my mom died, I had to move. This meant moving to a new neighbourhood and school and saying goodbye to everything familiar, including my friends. Adjusting to so many unwelcome changes felt overwhelming. Every day I struggled not to cry in front of my new classmates. I failed most of my classroom work and […]

After I accepted the shock of my mother’s unexpected death, I had to learn how to grieve, but I didn’t know how. And everywhere I turned, I saw messages saying, “Don’t dwell on the past”, which kept me from grieving my mom and instead, suppressing it, the best I could. These were all unhelpful messages […]