I have been meaning to write this post for a long, long time. I suppose you could argue I’ve been waiting to tell this story since early April of 2022, which is when I gave birth to my son. Considering he is now nearly three years old, and I have one glorious day where I am actually on top of my freelance deadlines, the sun is shining, and I have a cup of hot coffee at my side, I thought I’d finally write a blog post about my birth story, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the epidural (I couldn’t resist the title, which is a nod to my former days of cinephilia and a love of all things Stanley Kubrick).

In other years, I’ve written reviews like 2021: The Worst… I Mean, the Best Year of My Life (a general summary) or ones featuring certain words that meant a lot to me that year or, way back in the day, month by month. For this one, I thought I’d divide it into certain topics, those pillars of my life that make me me: motherhood, writing/work, lifestyle, travel, dating, and mental health. Let’s just say some topics will be juicier than others, hah.

So, without further ado, here is my review of 2024.

So there I was, 19 years old, living in Halifax by myself. I remember putting together shelves while listening to Stevie Wonder on the record player, hanging twinkly lights on my balcony, and feeling like a grown-up buying milk at the local Sobey’s.

Halifax became my home. It was the first time I felt independent, the first time I lived on my own, and the first time I felt as though I could really shape who I wanted to become. I made friends. I studied. I worked. I did indeed wear chunky turtlenecks as I walked to my local coffeeshop to read. I fell in love with my community and the life I created. And perhaps most importantly, I started writing.

As someone who loves to learn about the history of a place – of the who and the why a place is what it is – I knew my focus was going to be on that. And Nova Scotia is filled with history; in fact, despite it being the second-smallest province by land size, it has 13 national historic sites and six UNESCO World Heritage Sites (for reference, the entire country of Canada has 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so Nova Scotia has more than a quarter of them).

On top of that, Halifax is home to the Halifax Defence Complex, a collection of five forts that were crucial overseas naval stations for the British Empire. They helped protect the Halifax Harbour from the late 1700s all the way to World War II. Despite not knowing much about this side of Halifax’s history, I was able to visit all five, and – history buff or not – I believe that they’re all absolutely worthy of a visit when you’re in Halifax.

Before my son was born, I researched “mommy and me” groups in Winnipeg and found many outdated links; the pandemic sadly forced quite a few groups to shut down, and many haven’t seemed to recover yet. Giving up on my online search, I quickly discovered that word of mouth is the best way to find out about groups for parents in Winnipeg. And because so many other websites that list Winnipeg mom groups are still outdated, I wanted to collate as many as possible so that other new moms could find these groups much easier.

Over the past few years I’ve become increasingly more interested in relationships and why they do (or don’t) work. Along the way I’ve read a lot about dealing with those who show narcissistic tendencies and emotionally abusive behaviour, and then discovered the best way to deal with such people whenever we have to interact with them: grey rocking. So what is grey rocking, and how can it help you deal with the toxic people in your life?