Mother’s Day isn’t easy for everyone. I know. Maybe you’ve lost your mum, never got to be one, have a complicated relationship with her, or have lost a child. Whatever it is, here are practical ways to prepare for the day, manage what comes up, and get through it.

I keep hearing the same question - quietly, almost apologetically - in community halls, after talks, in emails from people who take a day or two to work up to sending them. How many times do you have to be knocked down and expected to get back up? This one's for anyone whose hard situation isn't something that happened once.

Had your world turned upside down by grief? Feeling lost, unsure what to do, or how to get through the next hour? Here are five practical tips I often share with people in your shoes—real things you can try right now to ease the chaos and take back a little control.

You can never truly learn a braided river - it shifts day by day. Life’s like that too. In this piece, I reflect on how kayaking New Zealand’s unpredictable rivers helped me let go of control, trust myself to make good-enough decisions, and keep going when the current gets rough.

A bittersweet reflection on the final season of family life as it once was. On school shirts drying in the sun, toast at the kitchen bench, and how parenting is really just a long, slow letting go. A piece about memory, love, and the quiet ache of change.