"love"

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Before my son was born, I researched “mommy and me” groups in Winnipeg and found many outdated links; the pandemic sadly forced quite a few groups to shut down, and many haven’t seemed to recover yet.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 And because so many other websites that list Winnipeg mom groups are still outdated, I wanted to collate as many as possible so that other new moms could find these groups much easier.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?

We’ve all been there, right? We can’t stop thinking about them. Listen to just about any love song and you’ll hear it repeated again and again, a theme that repeats itself over and over on the radio. It might be someone we’re casually dating. It might be an ex. It might be a person we only had one date with. Whatever the scenario, we just can’t stop thinking about them. In fact, we might even feel a little bit obsessed; it might start to affect how we sleep, eat, interact with others, and live our lives. And I don’t know about you, but for me, that is not a healthy way to be, feel, or act. So, what’s actually happening in our brains when we feel this way about someone? And how can we stop an unhealthy thought process so that we can move on with our lives and focus on ourselves instead?

Oh, hi. Right. I have a blog. A blog I used to love with all my heart and post on multiple times a week and that led to my entire travel writing career and that I still rely on for a bit of ad money so that I can buy diapers. And yet… the last post I wrote was a review of 2021?! And I’m writing about a post about 2022… in June of 2023?!

So here we go. In 2022, I had a baby.