I know the exact day of my cycle the way some people know their PIN numbers. Automatically. Without thinking. It lives in my body and in my phone and in a notes app that has become the most private document I own. I have been trying for four years. I want to write that sentence without softening it because I spent a long time softening it, saying things like we are not not trying or it will happen when it happens, and what that softening really was, was protection. Protection

I did not know, when I packed for Canada, that I was also packing for a version of motherhood I had not been told about. My son was two when we arrived. He was a quiet child, which I told myself was just his personality. He did not like loud sounds. He did not always respond when I called his name. He arranged his toys in straight lines and cried in a specific way when anything was moved. I thought: he is adjusting. We all are. Give him time. By the time he was three and a ha

My mother called on a Tuesday. She does not call on Tuesdays. She calls on Sundays, after church, when she has the full energy of the Holy Spirit and approximately forty-five minutes of things to say. A Tuesday call means something specific. It means she has been thinking. It means someone's child just got married. It means the conversation is going to end with her saying "I'm not getting any younger" even though it is me who is not getting any younger. I have been in Canada

I have a good life here. I wanted to get that out of the way before i say anything else. The house is beautiful. The children are in a good school. The neighbourhood is the kind where people wave to each other and the streets get ploughed quickly after snow. The car is nice. The groceries are not a source of anxiety. When something needs to be fixed, it gets fixed. When my children need something, they have it. I do not take any of this for granted because I grew up in a home

Something happened to me in my first year in Canada that I was not prepared for. I have a child. I know I have a child because I brought the child with me. What I did not know was that Canada also knew I had a child, had feelings about this, and intended to do something about it every single month. The first time the Canada Child Benefit landed in my account I sat with my phone for a full five minutes. I called my mother back home. I said: they sent money. She said: who sent

There are days I sit very quietly and ask myself a simple question. Did I actually do this to myself? Not in a dramatic way. Just casually. Usually while scrolling, or when the day is moving slower than expected, or when someone sends a voice note in the family group and I realise I have been in Canada for three years and I still cannot explain what a T4 is to my mother. It starts small. Then the thoughts begin to stretch. It does not help that everyone back home is eating. Y

I had already made peace with starting again. Taking a role below what I had done before was something I understood, at least on a practical level. I told myself it was part of the process, that I just needed time to adjust, learn the system, and find my way back to where I had been. What I didn’t expect was what came next. The conversations about performance. They weren’t harsh or confrontational. In fact, they were framed carefully, almost gently. Feedback about growth area

We talked about everything before we moved. Work, housing, money, the schools, even the weather. We tried to think ahead, to prepare ourselves for what life might look like in a new country. It felt like we were being responsible, like we were doing it the right way. What we didn’t really talk about was us. Not because we didn’t care, but because we assumed we would be fine. We had already built something together. We had gone through challenges before and come out stronger.

I didn’t expect dating in Toronto to feel this complicated. Not because there aren’t people. There are plenty, and the apps make that obvious. You can match with someone new every day if you want to. That part is easy. What isn’t easy is what happens after. Conversations start well enough. Sometimes they even feel promising. You talk, you laugh, you think maybe this one might be different. But then something shifts. Replies slow down, plans don’t materialise, or things just f

I didn’t think the cold would affect me like this. I expected the weather to be different, but I thought it was something I would get used to quickly. I had the right clothes, I had prepared in the way people told me to. But knowing about winter and actually living through it turned out to be very different things. The first thing I noticed wasn’t even the temperature. It was the quiet. Back home, mornings had movement and noise, people talking, cars passing, something always

When I first arrived, I thought finding a place to live and getting a job would be the hardest parts. Those were important, but they weren’t the parts that stayed with me the most. What stayed was the feeling of not quite belonging. It wasn’t always obvious. Most days, things worked. I went about my routine, spoke to people, got things done. On the surface, everything looked fine. But underneath, there was a quiet distance I couldn’t ignore. It showed up in small ways. Conver

When people talk about resilience, it often sounds like something strong and intentional. Like a decision you make, or a quality you carry with you. But for me, it didn’t feel like that. Most of the time, it just felt like continuing. When I first moved, everything felt unfamiliar in ways I didn’t expect. Not just the language or the systems, but the small things. How people interacted, how things worked, what was expected of you. It felt like I was constantly adjusting, even

When I first moved, I didn’t think about identity. I thought about practical things, work, housing, how to get around, how to settle in. Everything felt immediate, like there was always something that needed attention. There wasn’t much space to think beyond what needed to be done. But over time, something else started to surface. It wasn’t obvious at first, and it didn’t arrive all at once. It showed up in small moments, in conversations, in how I responded to simple questio