As a writer I appreciated the considered decisions that Dr Gold put into the stories and her background of experience. Both Yom Kippur and In Sickness and In Health plunge us into the complicated lives and the rich tapestry of characters being human. They are masterclasses in how to write deep characters.
I was intrigued by the way Rogers spun and wove images of leaving, attaching them to place, people, relationships, to states of being, and even to the person she once was.
Rogers and I have had similar yet different journeys. After living in Hong Kong and mainland China for more than two decades she left those new homes and returned to Canada. I always wonder what motivates others, like me, to live in different countries. I also wonder what really motivated me to return to Canada, three decades (France, England, Australia) after I first left.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I flew to Vancouver for my first suicide prevention conference. I certainly didn’t expect a dance party. I was apprehensive. What if this conference was just too much for me to handle? If you’re thinking the same thing, here’s what it was really like at the conference. I felt validated and empowered to make change. And yes, there was dancing!
Since 1987, when my teenage brother died by suicide, I didn’t talk openly about him or his death to protect myself because in the beginning when I did tell people, some of them pummelled me with horrible chastising words. I don’t need to share those words with you here. If you are like me, a suicide loss survivor or a person with lived experience of suicide, you know what I mean.
Garden Inventories is about so much more than green stuff. I learned about the history of parts of southern Ontario and Pakistan, about apples and roses and mulberry trees, as well as about Mughal and Persian civilisations. It made me think about my different lands and the nostalgia I carry for each of them.
Colleen Brown’s first book If You Lay Down in a Field, She Will Find You There arrived in my letter box just after my own mother died. With my grieving so fresh, I wasn’t sure I could read the memoir about the author’s mother, who was murdered in 1974. However, the beautifully written vignettes and the focus on life, not death, lured me in.