Brief Life Update: Funerals and Milestones

I am currently sitting between piles of dirty laundry, unpacking from one trip and repacking for another, slowly coming to terms with the fact that my present-day reality is dictated by funerals and milestones. Yesterday, I returned from Toronto, Ontario where I celebrated the life of my beautiful grandmother – my Omi and my dad’s mother. Tomorrow, I depart for the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia where I will spend the one-year anniversary of my dad’s passing, a day I have been dreading and a milestone I am not prepared to face.

Grief and loss have completely consumed me these past couple of months, to a point where I have been unable to separate dreams from reality. Although I know I have had my fair share of adventures and experiences, the memories somehow seem so distant. I hiked the highest mountain on Bowen Island and climbed the tallest waterfall in North America, I visited college friends in Seattle and San Francisco and showed my younger brother around Vancouver and Victoria, I started training for my second full marathon and made plans to move to Nanaimo… and yet I feel as though I’ve done nothing at all.

Between my dad’s birthday and Father’s Day in June and my Omi’s passing and funeral in July, I have never been more emotionally drained in my life. As the days come and go and the weeks blur together, I desperately wish I could go back to a time when death was nothing more than a foreign concept. I no longer remember what normal feels like and I worry that I may never find my old self again.

I don’t know what I will be posting next or when I will return to social media, but I will be back when I am ready. In the meantime, I hope this answers some of the questions I have been receiving. Thank you for understanding and thank you for your sweet messages.

With ♡, Julia Elizabeth