Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 5
June 23, 2025
Ask me anything about all things writing
Ask me anything about all things writing, publishing, the book business, screenwriting, short film, or film festivals.
You can find more about me in the About Section!
Select questions will be answered in longer posts.
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What is your fav or fav to hate self-help book?
What some people might not know about me is that I am bit of a self-help junkie.
I love self-help books.
Even if I don’t like their advice, don’t listen to it or apply it or even if it makes me angry—I just like reading this genre. I find it fascinating.
My all time fav is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. What relieved me most about this book is that I didn’t need to be taught many of its messages.
The main message—don’t be an asshole—is actually the advice I give my writing students when talking about networking and literary communities but then I add a little caveat—unless you’re poet.
If you’re a poet then you can be a bit of an asshole. I say this because I’m also a poet and sometimes an asshole.
But most of the advice in the book is actually pretty basic and comes naturally to me anyway—listen to others, ask people about themselves, etc.
Nonetheless it is still a fascinating read especially since it’s a timeless classic.
What are your fav self-help books?
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June 21, 2025
The delight of re-reading
Hello friends,
There is something so wonderful about re-reading a book. I don’t do it often, but there are some books that I love to re-read.
Mostly I re-read poetry but occasionally a novel.
The thing I love about re-reading is how different the book is from how I thought I remembered it to be. This was true of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which I had read as a teenager and re-read a couple of years ago discovering how terrifyingly relevant it is and how much I didn’t get from it the first time around.
I’m currently re-reading/audiobooking ’s Book of Delights, a collection of essayettes, which Gay started on his 42nd birthday and wrote one a day for a year.
These essayettes focus on daily delights but don’t shy away from difficult parts of life which is what I appreciate most about this collection.
I’m listening to The Book of Delights on Libro.fm, a terrific alternative to Audible which allows you to support your favourite independent bookstore.
Another Story Bookshop in Toronto is the bookstore I support on Libro.
What books are you re-reading?
Share in the comments.
Here’s an excerpt from The Book of Delights:
Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone by subscribing!June 19, 2025
I think I’ll even be haunted after death.
What is your first memory of existing?I’ve sat sat sat with these questions, Kathryn. I’m stumbling over “existing”. The gift of it. How many people right now aren’t safe, as they are, where they are. I regularly exchange messages with a family in Gaza, a child named Meera, a young artist who I connected with after this most recent slaughter in Gaza began. I check to see when their account was last active. Right now, I’m holding my phone: “Walid Family – Active 45 minutes ago”. So I know: they were alive 45 minutes ago. They still exist. I say “hug Meera for me” and “if you have lost hope, I will hold it for you”. I think about Meera’s mother, remembering her daughter’s birth, and my heart cracks.
One of my earliest memories is the birth of my brother – my older sister and I were on the other side of the village we lived in, Badela. Someone came to tell us he was born and we ran across the village to meet him. My bare feet pounding the ground. Our neighbours clapping and singing my name as I ran past them – it was like running through a gauntlet of joy.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?I was up to my chest in a bayou. Reeds. Muck. There was a crocodile easing towards me. Someone in the distance was wearing a blue baseball cap. They were in the reeds too. I shouted to them – “help me”. They turned to me – “you must kill your own crocodile”, they said. The crocodile put their jaw around my belly. Teeth sank into my doughy bare stomach. I put my hands on either side of the crocodile’s jaw. With great effort I pried the crocodile’s mouth open, lifted the beast, and forced the lower jaw right through the upper jaw. I felt pretty magnificent when I woke up.
Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?I prefer listening, long slow thoughts. I’m wild and gentle and make my own kind of loving noise in my art, but how can I be that person in our world, right now? There is work to do, and it feels like it’s loud work. Is cowardice an emotion? I hate it when I’m afraid to speak up. I want to have the courage to make noise. Or at least go to noisy places and stand up for who and what I care about.
Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?I’m still ashamed I haven’t gone to a single Black Lives Matter protest. I think that’s how my last book began. I needed to understand why I was afraid to be somewhere, in the choir of angry, justice-seeking, outraged and loving people.
What do you cherish most about this world?Reading. The flight of a pileated woodpecker. Owl duets. My tired underpants on the clothesline. The moment in spring when the forest floor goes paper white and trout lilies lift the leaves. James Baldwin. Dirt. The passion of teenagers. Tanya Tagaq’s sense of humour. Old Son House recordings. Trying to wrap my mind around the size of the cosmos and failing. YouTube clips of Carl Sagan imploring government. Ghost hunters. Thich Nhat Hanh. Beavers. Anohni. That glass is made of sand. Garlic sizzling in butter. The print of an owl wing in snow. Cross country skiing. The way stones hold time and heat. My nieces and nephew. Audre Lorde. Orcas playing with their food. Pianos. Drums. That human beings can make a musical instrument out of just about anything. Meera’s voice on my phone saying thank you.
What would you like to change about this world?I’d like the 94 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission prioritized and completed.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?I’ve spent my life so far haunted – ghosts of extinct frogs. My ancestors. Other people’s ancestors. I think I’ll even be haunted after death. Hopefully not by an angry crocodile.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?Meera Walid. I wish my love could protect her. But it’s not enough.
Jessica Joy Hiemstra is a visual artist, writer, and designer. Her writing has appeared in chapbooks, essay collections, journals, and in four full-length poetry collections that she also made art for. Her most recent collection, Blood Root (Icehouse, 2025), has sequences of stills from her animations of animals. In 2018, she won Toronto’s My Entertainment World’s Outstanding Set and Costume Design award for her work on Shannon Bramer’s The Hungriest Woman in the World. In 2021, she received second place in Brush and Lyre’s Palette Poetry prize for her multimedia entry, “Cormorant”, an animation of cormorants in flight over Lake Ontario/ Niigaani-gichigami. Some of these drawings appear in Blood Root. Jessica lives in Gunning Cove, Kespukwik, Mi’kma’ki.Excerpt from Blood Root by Jessica Joy Hiemstra. Published with permission of Goose Lane Press.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Blood Root
by Jessica HiemstraGoose Lane, icehouse poetry, 2025Reflecting on a dual upbringing in two villages, Bobcaygeon (Canada/Turtle Island) and Badela (Sierra Leone), Jessica Hiemstra’s new collection of poems delves into her relationship with home. In Blood Root, she interrogates questions of legacy, land, belonging, and the breathtaking intimacy of death. One moment tender, the next moment dark, hard, and raw, Blood Root blends diary entries, drawings, and lyricism to hold up a polished mirror to colonialism and its echoing impact. Considering beauty and horror in equal reverence “so I’m not human once removed,” Hiemstra cuts through pretence, bearing witness to humans as they confront and connect to one another and the larger world.
From Sadiqa de Meijer on Bluesky:
Support Send My Love to Anyone
Jessica Hiemstra's Blood Root is out in the world. A fierce and gorgeous book. As editor I admired how Jessica could take a breath and bravely answer to what a poem was asking for, even when that also meant a revision of the self. The result is breathtaking - I hope it finds all the readers.
The book's atmospheric and poetic illustrations, on the cover and throughout - breathers, landing places, transitions, transformations between text sections - are Jessica's own.
Support Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
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what if I become my mother my grandmother her grandmother
Blackbird, Jessica Joy Hiemstra, Drawing PencilExcerpt from Blood RootText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedhalo of my mother’s handseasing water around my body I saw the open body of pheasant as a childeggs a string of pearlsthe universe housedin every dead bodyI was given a stolen storyto understand who I amwhat if I become my mother my grandmother her grandmother*may God drownin the rage of mothersthere’s no cure for white women I grew up by a river in Badelaa creek in Bobcaygeonin nations lootedby my ancestorsmy parents were missionariesso I loathe GodI think God’s an assholeto tell you the truthI listen to snakesthey aren’t the devilI’m not ashamed of my breastsI’m ashamed of the Dutch in Indonesia
Cat with Bird, Jessica Joy Hiemstra, Drawing, PencilText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published*Anton de Kom’s mothers and fathers named bushesParrot tongues, fiery love, hanging lampP’pokaitongo, fayalobi, angalampua firefly is fayaworona deerfly lands on meI kill her without thinkingI don’t want the truthto be limp I don’t marchbecause it reminds me of churchI’ve failed Breonna Taylorbecause I’m a cowardI still think it’s about mewhile the world endseverything feels possiblewhen a baby’s borneven love, evena father’s loveI want God in the diminutive*I miss praying, I confesssometimes I think I’m prayerI pray when I hold a childwhisper to a turtle, neck exposed to crowsprayer’s the bright darting of a red-winged blackbirdI want Godto be good my drawings are hymnsfor slow ghosts of turtleswhat’s holy is the whole bodyin lightwhile I’m human to be humanmothers all the way down
Turtle A hit-on-road, Jessica Joy HiemstraJessica Joy Hiemstra is a visual artist, writer, and designer. Her writing has appeared in chapbooks, essay collections, journals, and in four full-length poetry collections that she also made art for. Her most recent collection, Blood Root (Icehouse, 2025), has sequences of stills from her animations of animals. In 2018, she won Toronto’s My Entertainment World’s Outstanding Set and Costume Design award for her work on Shannon Bramer’s The Hungriest Woman in the World. In 2021, she received second place in Brush and Lyre’s Palette Poetry prize for her multimedia entry, “Cormorant”, an animation of cormorants in flight over Lake Ontario/ Niigaani-gichigami. Some of these drawings appear in Blood Root. Jessica lives in Gunning Cove, Kespukwik, Mi’kma’ki.Excerpt from Blood Root by Jessica Joy Hiemstra. Published with permission of Goose Lane Press.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Blood Root
by Jessica HiemstraGoose Lane, icehouse poetry, 2025Reflecting on a dual upbringing in two villages, Bobcaygeon (Canada/Turtle Island) and Badela (Sierra Leone), Jessica Hiemstra’s new collection of poems delves into her relationship with home. In Blood Root, she interrogates questions of legacy, land, belonging, and the breathtaking intimacy of death. One moment tender, the next moment dark, hard, and raw, Blood Root blends diary entries, drawings, and lyricism to hold up a polished mirror to colonialism and its echoing impact. Considering beauty and horror in equal reverence “so I’m not human once removed,” Hiemstra cuts through pretence, bearing witness to humans as they confront and connect to one another and the larger world.
From Sadiqa de Meijer on Bluesky:
Support Send My Love to Anyone
Jessica Hiemstra's Blood Root is out in the world. A fierce and gorgeous book. As editor I admired how Jessica could take a breath and bravely answer to what a poem was asking for, even when that also meant a revision of the self. The result is breathtaking - I hope it finds all the readers.
The book's atmospheric and poetic illustrations, on the cover and throughout - breathers, landing places, transitions, transformations between text sections - are Jessica's own.
Support Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it
Big heartfelt thanks to all of the subscribers and contributors who make this project possible!
ConnectBluesky | Instagram | Archive | Contributors | Subscribe | About SMLTA
I love the Portuguese word saudade. Someone once defined it as “memory of something with a desire for it.”
What is your first memory of existing?My first memories of existing, oddly, was of a cemetery in Manila, where I lived when I was a toddler. I remember a beautifully maintained garden of gleaming white crosses on top of a lush bed of verdant, perfectly cut grass. This was during a pre-school trip (in retrospect, not sure what pre-school would take children to a cemetery for a wholesome outing, but apparently this one did). I remember veering off from the group and weaving through those crosses like they were trees in a forest.
It was only until I was older that I realized what that place really was: the Manila American Cemetery. Filled with the graves of American and Filipino veterans of the Second World War, it hosts thousands of the war dead, including those who died in the liberation of the country from Imperial Japan. Given the viciousness of the Pacific Theatre, I always think about that strange juxtaposition: that my earliest memory was suffused with such beauty despite the extreme violence of what that memory really represented.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?In Grade Three, my class was asked by my teacher to write a play. I wrote one (its title lost to time) about a knight killing a dragon. My teacher liked it so much she asked some students to act it out. I think that was my first taste of the joy of being creative, and the exhilaration of creating something that spoke to someone beside myself. Had my first book not been published, I would have argued that my artistic career peaked at age eight.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?The only dream I have ever remembered (and the worst one) was a nightmare: a clown with jagged teeth staring at me from outside an apartment window. The clown would just stare as he slowly walked toward the direction of the apartment, and I would just stare back, unable to move. If you’ve ever seen the movie It Follows, imagine the wraith from that movie in killer clown form.
Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?This may not necessarily be a favourite, but I love the Portuguese word saudade. Someone once defined it as “memory of something with a desire for it.” I think we’ve all felt it at a certain point in our lives, that artful emotion that is part-melancholy, part-longing, part joy of return. In the rare moments I have felt that, it seemed that I’ve been living the deepest life one can possibly live.
The emotion I detest having is my sense of impatience. As I get older, I have noticed this feverish sense that I always need to be going someplace or doing some task, and that’s led me to be more impatient with people and circumstances than I care to admit.
What do you cherish most about this world?Those moments of solitude I can find that are free of loneliness or disconnection: going to a cafe and reading a book, being a flaneur in an unknown city, sleeping under a ceiling fan on a summer day, etcetera.
What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.You don’t need to hold on to those parts of your life that cause you distress.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?Rahaf from Gaza. Those who know her story, knows why she (and so many others) deserve it.
Tell me about your new book.My debut novel Drinking the Ocean was published in May 2025 by Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books. Some describe it as a love story; I describe it as a story about love.
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Drinking the Ocean
by Saad Omar Khan Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider BooksThe day after his thirty-third birthday, Murad spots a familiar face at a crowded intersection in downtown Toronto. Shocked, he stands silently as Sofi, a woman he’d fallen in love with almost a decade ago, walks by holding the hand of a small child. Murad turns and descends the subway steps to return home to his wife as the past washes over him and he is taken back to the first time they met. Moving between Lahore, London and Toronto, Drinking the Ocean is a story of connections lost and found and of the many kinds of love that shape a life, whether familial, romantic or spiritual. As Murad’s and Sofi’s lives touch and separate, we see them encounter challenges with relationships, family and God, and struggle with the complexities facing Muslims in the West. With compassion and elegance, Saad Omar Khan delicately illuminates the arcs of these two haunted lives, moved by fate and by love, as they absorb the impact of their personal spiritual journeys.
Saad Omar Khan was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and South Korea before emigrating to Canada. In 2019, he was longlisted for the Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025 and other publications. Saad’s debut novel Drinking the Ocean was published by Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn in 2025. He lives outside of Toronto and is currently working on his second novel.Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it
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June 16, 2025
Every single day, I’m astonished that we even get to be here ...
What is your first memory of existing?My grandmother Shirley, sitting on the brown-tweed couch in our living room. The memory is warm and blurry. She’s giving me a doll wearing a yellow dress, and the doll seems giant because I’m just a toddler. It’s the only memory I have from a first-person viewpoint, other than an upsetting one, a few years later, involving a lot of blood. From then on, my memories appear as though I’m watching myself from overhead, so that first one is particularly important to me.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?I was maybe five years old, and I had a little hideaway spot between the back of the couch and the window. The view looked out onto our neighbour Barb’s garden (she was an artist and natural gardener, so the flowers were beautiful and abundant). I was sitting there, tucked behind these sheer white curtains, feeling like no one in the world could see me, and I was writing about rain. I remember thinking about how to describe the sound of rain hitting the flowers outside, and how that description might change depending on shape and colour. I imagined it being musical or like wind chimes. It’s a peaceful, daydreamy memory.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?One nightmare I’ve never forgotten was of a dark, muddy medieval town during the bubonic plague. It was hot and damp, and bodies were everywhere. Nothing happened in the dream. I just walked, feeling sick, and the sound of flies kept getting thicker.
Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?I was in the sixth grade, and there was a school dance (a hotbed of adolescent humiliation). I usually didn’t attend school dances (I read and drew anime in the library), but some well-meaning popular girl said I should join, and she even offered to share her makeup. She was really sweet and gave me a little makeover. Then one of the boys in my class (Derek…) said my eyeshadow made me look like l’d been punched, and I was so embarrassed that I hid in the girls’ locker room until the dance was over. It was such a small thing, but I had never before considered the possibility that I could ever be pretty, and that one minor comment made me feel ridiculous.
What do you cherish most about this world?The gift of consciousness. To be able to think, look around, feel, absorb. Every single day, I’m astonished that we even get to be here, that the moon exists, that there are mountains and depths of knowledge we can’t begin to understand.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?I’m hesitant to rely entirely on logic in these matters, since that presumes some sort of fundamental understanding of the nature of the universe. We’re intelligent creatures, and I’m not going to roll my eyes at particle physics—but as a species, our knowledge is limited, and failing to see that only further limits us. For all we know, years from now, claims of experiences with ghosts might be explained in ways (even logical ways) that we can’t now grasp. So, my answer is less a yes or no, and more a dazed stare into the enormity of the unknown.
Caitlin Galway (she/they) is a Toronto-based author. Her newly released short story collection A Song for Wildcats has been featured in both The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, and her debut novel Bonavere Howl was a spring pick by The Globe and Mail. Her work has won or been nominated for numerous prizes and has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025, EVENT, The Ex- Puritan, House of Anansi’s The Broken Social Scene Story Project (selected by Feist), Gloria Vanderbilt’s Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology, Riddle Fence, and on CBC Books.
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A Song for Wildcats
by Caitlin GalwayDundurn Press, 2025An arresting, vividly imaginative collection of stories capturing the complexity of intimacy and the depths of the unravelling mind.
Infatuation and violence grow between two girls in the enchanting wilderness of postwar Australia as they spin disturbing fantasies to escape their families. Two young men in the midst of the 1968 French student revolts navigate—and at times resist—the philosophical and emotional nature of love. An orphaned boy and his estranged aunt are thrown together on a quiet peninsula at the height of the Troubles in Ireland, where their deeply rooted fear attracts the attention of shape-shifting phantoms of war.
The five long-form stories in A Song for Wildcats are uncanny portraits of grief and resilience and are imbued with unique beauty, insight, and resonance from one of the country’s most exciting authors.
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June 13, 2025
The quiet satisfaction of having written a phrase or description or paragraph that just seems to click into place.
What is your first memory of existing? The earliest memory I can access at this point is being in the hospital to get my tonsils out when I was four. One day I was part of a group of children who the staff set loose in a room full of toys. The slightly older and much more rambunctious boys immediately took over all the most interesting toys, leaving me with an empty toy holster which I just sat by the wall and looked at.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?Does looking at a holster in a hospital count? Probably not. But drawing was something so ingrained in me as a kid I think it probably goes back before my earliest memories.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?Once during an unsettled period of my life I had a dream where I encountered myself as a frightened child in the hallway of my parents’ home, and when I took him/me in my arms to comfort him we merged.
That’s a ‘best’, in case that isn’t clear. Which it might not be.
Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why?Probably satisfaction. The quiet satisfaction of having written a phrase or description or paragraph that just seems to click into place. The reflected satisfaction of seeing my family accomplish amazing things. The ‘now I can rest’ satisfaction of having completed something big or daunting or physically tiring.
What would you like to change about this world?I would love it if there were a simple cure for right wing populist disinformation. We’d all be better off if fewer of us were so defiantly ill-informed.
What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?Nope. I love them as a notion or a trope or a metaphor, but I’m too much of a rationalist to buy them as a phenomenon.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?Anyone struggling to find their confidence in the face of those who purposefully misunderstand them.
K. R. Wilson’s novel Call Me Stan was longlisted for the 2022 Leacock Medal. A sequel, Stan on Guard, will be published by Guernica Editions in the spring of 2026. His work has been published in various literary journals and in the anthologies This Will Only Take A Minute (Guernica Editions) and Sticks and Stones (Chicken House Press). He can be found at krwilson.ca and on socials as @krwbooks.
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Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia
by K.R. WilsonGuernica EditionsLong-listed for the 2022 Leacock Medal for Humour
When King Priam's pregnant daughter was fleeing the sack of Troy, Stan was there. When Jesus of Nazareth was beaten and crucified, Stan was there - one cross over. Stan has been a Hittite warrior, a Roman legionnaire, a mercenary for the caravans of the Silk Road and a Great War German grunt. He’s been a toymaker in a time of plague, a reluctant rebel in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and an information peddler in the cabarets of post-war Berlin. Stan doesn't die, and he doesn't know why. And now he's being investigated for a horrific crime. As Stan tells his story, from his origins as an Anatolian sheep farmer to his custody in a Toronto police interview room, he brings a wry, anachronistic perspective to three thousand years of Eurasian history. Call Me Stan is the story of a man endlessly struggling to adjust as the world keeps changing around him. It is a Biblical epic from the bleachers, a gender fluid operatic love quadrangle, and a touching exploration of what it is to outlive everyone you love. Or almost everyone.
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I want to live in a world where everybody deserves everything.
What is your first memory of existing?I was lying on the floor of my uncle and aunt’s apartment in Hong Kong. There was an open door to the balcony, and there were these sheer white curtains blowing. I moved myself right underneath those curtains and just watched them dancing above me. Sometimes the wind would die down, and the curtains fell on my face. It was so exquisite to me. I became conscious of a self, a moment, beauty.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?I wrote a poem in Grade 5 about Helen Keller. I was obsessed with Helen Keller. It was probably inappropriate and ableist how I was obsessed with her. But the idea that she didn’t have a language to communicate with others, and then she did, was so compelling to me. Anyway, so I wrote a poem about her. It rhymed, and it was so strange to me that it gave me so much pleasure to write it. I handed it in as a book report assignment because I think I was reading a book about her and her teacher. (OMG, I was obsessed with her teacher, Annie Sullivan too.) The teacher loved it, and he gave me a A+++ on it. He handed it back to me with this look like a puppy suddenly stood up and said hello to him, and I guess that was what it was like because I was the silent Chinese girl who he didn’t even know if I could speak English never mind write a poem with rhyming couplets. So, besides the pleasure of creating that poem, I also understood that what I create can have impact on others too. It was a revelation.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?I never have nightmares. Sometimes I have gorgeous dreams of otherworldly places, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had that. I have a recurring dream that pisses me off though. It’s about contact lenses. I try to put them on, but they grow as big as saucers, and I don’t know how to put them in my eyes. I keep trying and trying, and they get bigger and bigger until they’re the size of buckets. It’s weird.
What is your favourite or significant coincidence story to tell?There are no coincidences. Just synchronicity. I have no stories to tell because there are so many. A psychic told me once that I am a conjuror, descended from a long line of conjurors, so that’s how I make sense of synchronicities. But can I conjure things like a bucket of money landing on my lap? Or a cheeseburger to knock at my door when I really need one? No. Such small scale, practical, everyday coincidences/conjuring have not happened yet. I’m working on it.
Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?I can’t think of one at the moment. Every emotion is overwhelming to me these days. I feel like I have no skin, so all the things in the world enters me and fills me with too much. Too much violence, too much callousness, too much love, too much beauty, too much of everything.
Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?Before I was medicated for my anxiety, I was embarrassed all the time. You know that anxiety-infused playback in your mind in the dead of night? Why did I say what I said? What do people think of me? Why am I so awkward? When I think back on it now, I cringe with embarrassment at my embarrassment. Haha. But honestly, after menopause? Nothing embarrasses me anymore. The drop in estrogen, for me is like the antidote to self-judgement. I’m in my whatever era. I guess what I am saying is: Embarrassment and its opposite, whatever that is, is a chemical experience.
What do you cherish most about this world?That my son lives here.
What would you like to change about this world?The world is a huge and vast place. I become more aware, as I age that I only glimpse a tiny slice. I am also aware that I have the capacity to only understand an even tinier slice. Who am I to “change” the world, per se? And yet, I have been shouting into the wind for changes for almost my entire life. I suppose I want much more dignity for all living things, including this large-scale concept/place we call the “world”. Dignity, I guess is as good enough of a word as any, and might it cover all the conditions that make such lives possible?
What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.It will be ok. You are doing exactly as you should.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?100%. I feel them with me every day. My grandmother is always leaving me things and showing me funny, undeniable signs. My grandmother has a great sense of humour. She may even have honed it in the hereafter.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?Everyone. Even those who might hate me, and I hate them. Even those who are fundamentally motivated by hate. I want to live in a world where everybody deserves everything.
Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and assistant professor at the University of Guelph in Creative Writing. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE/University of Toronto. She is the co-editor with Lynn Caldwell and Darryl Leroux of Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo, published by Inanna Publications was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection of linked stories, That Time I Loved You, was released in 2018 by HarperCollins and in 2019 in the US by Liveright Publishing. It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, named as one of the Best Books of 2018 by CBC, That Time I Loved You was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019, shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards 2019 and long listed for Canada Reads 2019. Leung’s work has also been appeared in The Puritan, Ricepaper, The Globe and Mail, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire and Open Book Ontario. She is currently working on a new novel to be released by Harper Collins Canada.Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it
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June 12, 2025
Strawberry Moon
Photo by David Poolman, 2025When I got to the hospital, one of the patient’s daughters informed me that “Everyone was off today. Your mother too.”
A nursed looked it up and apparently there’s a full moon on June 11—a Strawberry Moon. I don’t know much about moons, but it’s interesting that health care professionals notice changes in behaviour on full moons. While the science doesn’t quite back up the folklore, there have been some recent discoveries around the moon and sleep patterns which could account for some behavioural changes.1 In any case, it was true—everyone did seem off including my mother who was more agitated and distressed than usual.
She didn’t know she was in the hospital and asked why she was wearing a strange dress.
“In some circles those are called hospital gowns,” I said. She laughed and laughed.
Although she wants to wear her normal clothes, my sister and I have decided against it. The one day we tried, her personality changed and she demanded to see the manager about leaving.
The hospital gown—although distressing—grounds her to place so it’s easier to convince her she’s in the hospital.
*
After dinner we went for a walk.
This hospital ward has a doll that looks like a live baby which confuses my mother every time she sees it.
“Is that a real baby?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “It’s to comfort some of the patients.”
In the TV room at the end of the hall, they have a basket of baby clothes that the patients can fold. One day I asked my mother if she would like to fold these baby clothes knowing full well she would not.
“Ah, no,” she said. “Why would I want to do that?”
Doll therapy for Alzheimer’s patients has some benefits but also there are ethical issues.2 While it can calm patients, there is concern that it diminishes the dignity of the person with Alzheimer’s by treating them like a child when they are not a child.
As we walked through the hospital corridor, the doll was sitting precariously on a chair. My mother looked at it in concern. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make sense of it or if her social worker self was assessing whether or not the child was in danger. My mother was an intake social worker and later an abuse specialist.
A psw was nearby when I said, “Don’t worry, Mom, that’s a doll not a real baby.”
The psw said, “Some patients like it.”
“I do not like dolls,” my mother said, and we all laughed. I hoped it was clear no one should be putting that doll in my mother’s arms.
There is not much I can do for her in these terrible times, but I can try to preserve her dignity.
*
Later back in her room, we did some easy crosswords. I’m pretty bad at even the easiest crossword puzzles, so I find a question I think would be fun for my mother, look up the answer, and then give her clues until she gets the right word.
Often she doesn’t even need the extra clues like when I asked her the name of a witches’ group—my mother blurted out “coven,” without a second thought.
“I don’t know why but that just came right to my head,” she said. I could tell this made her feel good.
One thing that distresses her about her memory loss is that she doesn’t feel smart, and this game makes her feel intelligent. My mother doesn’t have a lot of hobbies, but one thing she loves is trivia. She used to have a photographic memory and was very good at Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit.
After the crosswords, we played some games of tic-tac-toe to pass the time.
“I don’t like it here,” my mother said.
“I know.”
“What am I going to do with my life?” she asked.
“You’re moving to Toronto to be closer to all of us,” I said. “Would you like that?”
She nodded.
*
Full moon or not it was difficult to get her to settle in. She needed her gown adjusted and her socks removed. It took her forever to find a good position in the bed, and then the noise of the room disturbed her. There are four beds in this room, and everyone is hard of hearing (except my mother), so visitors, nurses, and psws have to speak louder than usual. When there is activity at all four beds, the room sounds like a busy restaurant or bar.
We did some breathing exercises. Then I told my mother to shut her eyes and I would leave when she was asleep. She would shut her eyes for a moment and then open them to see if I was still there.
“You’re going to leave when my eyes are closed,” she said laughing.
“I won’t leave until you are asleep,” I assured her.
As I stood by her bed and watched her try to fall asleep, I was struck by a flashback from my childhood.
*
I was five, and it was a few months after my father had left. My sister who was twelve was at a friend’s house for dinner. I had been playing in my room and realized I was hungry, so I searched for mother. She wasn’t in her yellow chair in the living room watching TV, but a cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray, which I didn’t think was good so I put it out. Then I found her sleeping in bed.
I called to her and tried to shake her awake, but she didn’t move. I thought she was playing, so I shook her again and again. I lifted her arm, and when I let it go, it fell flat. I pinched her. I slapped her. But she was unresponsive. I listened to her chest to see if her heart was beating. It was. I checked to see if she was breathing. She was, which gave me some momentary relief.
She wasn’t dead. Yet.
I pulled back her eyelids but could only see the whites of her eyes. It was terrifying.
I wept. I screamed. I begged her to wake up. This was the first time in my life that I was truly frightened. There was something terribly wrong with my mother. Was she sick? Was she dying? I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know to call 911. I didn’t know my father’s phone number. So I curled up on the green carpet beside her bed and sobbed.
About an hour later, I heard my sister open the front door. I yelled out that Mom was sick.
My sister came into the bedroom and looked down in disgust at our mother passed out on the bed. She went to the kitchen and calmly grabbed a cup of water. When she returned, she threw the water on her face and called her a fucking bitch.
Our mother awoke disoriented, her pillow water soaked. Then she fell back into her stupor.
“She’s drunk,” my sister said. “She did this to herself.”
I remember being confused at the concept that someone would do this to themselves. I didn’t even really understand what it meant to be drunk or why my sister was so angry.
“Have you eaten?” my sister asked.
I shook my head, and we went into the kitchen where she made me a grilled cheese sandwich.
*
My mother never did get to sleep before I left the hospital.
After a few rounds of me asking her to close her eyes and her opening them, I set her up with a game of Solitaire on her iPad before heading out for the night.
“You think that will work, do you?” said the woman who addressed me when I first arrived. I didn’t particularly appreciate the intrusion. This woman is there morning til night with her mother—something I just cannot do. When my mom was first admitted to the hospital we were there for long stretches of time, but it was not something we could keep up.
Ignoring her comment, I said to my mother, “I love you,” and squeezed her hand.
“I love you too,” she said and returned to her Solitaire game.
On the walk home, I meant to watch for the Strawberry Moon but forgot to look up.
Read more from One of these days we’ll both be fine
Kathryn Mockler is the author of Anecdotes.Consider donating to Crips for eSims for Gaza.
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1“Moonstruck.” How Myths of Lunar Power Continue to Fascinate Us: Kate Golembiewski Explores the Long History of Associating Madness With the Full Moon, November 20, 2024, https://lithub.com/moonstruck-how-myt...
2Pros and Cons of Doll Therapy in Dementia by By Esther Heerema, MSW Updated on February 05, 2025, https://www.verywellhealth.com/therap...
