It's Okay To Be Broken

There’s a line I wrote in my book:

“Death taught me how to love. Love taught me how to live.”

But this week, a week filled with grief, memory, strangers, airports, emotional landmines, old roads, new insights, and unexpected connection... taught me something else:

It’s okay to be broken. In fact, sometimes breaking is the only way through.

I didn’t expect that lesson to hit me before I even reached Ontario.

A Window Seat, a Stranger, and the Worst Day of His Life

I rarely pay extra to change my airplane seat.

But something nudged me to switch to a window seat on my flight out east, and that choice changed everything.

Beside me sat a man who looked… kind and yet exhausted. As soon as I sat down he and I started talking and he asked me how my day was going and then I asked him how he was. He said, “Yeah, I’m good.”

He asked me if I was from Toronto and that led to me explaining why I was going back. Then I asked him the same question... I'm not sure if it was the fact I had been open about returning to put wreathes up on graves or he just needed to share but... Suddenly his tone and answers started to shift. He explained he was going back to Newfoundland but there seemed to be more. I pushed a little and he said he had gotten a bad call that morning.

I froze... "How bad?" I asked.

"Really bad" he said.

Instantly I was back to being 21, and getting that awful call... grief recognizes grief.

So I gently asked again: “Are you actually okay?”

He paused. And then his voice cracked.

“No. I just found out my daughter died this morning. She was 38.”

And in that moment, everything shifted...

I would say, what are the chances he and I were sitting together, but I know better.

The Gravol I had taken earlier should’ve knocked me out cold... it always does.

But somehow, I stayed awake beside this man who was living the worst day of his life. A day I could relate to in so many ways.

For four and a half hours, we talked in waves:

• he’d speak

• he’d break

• he’d apologize for breaking

• I’d quietly remind him he didn’t have to

• then I’d shift the topic so he could breathe for a moment

• and then he’d circle back when he was ready

At one point, he looked at me with tears running down his face and said:

“In 60 years, nothing has ever broken me. I didn’t think anything would. Today… I’m broken.”

I reached across, laid my hand on his arm, and told him:

“It’s okay to be broken.”

And I meant it. I meant it because I know what breaking feels like in every cell of my body.

Coming Home to the Places That Shaped Me (and Shattered Me)

This trip back to Ontario was already going to be emotionally loaded.

It was my first time returning since my mother's house had sold. The house she loved and had called home for years... was gone. For the first time in my life, I had no home to go to in Ontario. Just memories and ghosts and the places you go when you’re trying to heal.

I visited my mother’s grave.

My brother’s grave. My father’s. My aunts, my grandparents.

I drove through the neighbourhoods I'd known my whole life. The roads where I learned to drive and process while tunes were cranked and I took the corners and curves and fields and forests as my solace. The place where my brother’s accident happened... a place I hadn’t returned to in decades.

Every one of those stops cracked me open.

And I let myself break.

I let myself cry in parking lots, on back roads, and quietly at gravesites.

I let the grief pour through without trying to tidy it up.

Because grief isn’t linear.

It’s not clean.

It’s not polite.

It’s messy and uninvited and heavy and holy all at once.

Yet in between every hard moment, something surprising happened:

I laughed. I ate amazing meals. I saw old friends. I was wrapped in love from people who know me. I felt alive and human and grateful.

Grief doesn’t remove joy... it makes space for it.

The Universe Sends the Right People at the Right Time

There was one more moment that shook me this trip.

I went to buy my favourite ice wine, and it was sold out. A woman who was working there saw how disappointed I was and said she’d check one last place. Nothing.

Then she offered something rare: “If you’re comfortable, I can take your number. My husband has quite the collection and there might be one left.”

That night, she texted: She found one.

I went the next day, tried to pay, and she shook her head.

“Before you take this, I need to share something.”

Her husband had died two years ago. Yesterday was her first shift back. She said she’d been wrestling with how to return to the place he loved but it had been time and when she saw my disappointment over the wine, she decided she wanted to let some of his collection go to someone who truly appreciated it. She gave me two very special bottles.

We stood there... two strangers connected through loss... and talked about love, grief, memory, and moving forward.

We cried. We hugged. We understood each other in a way only bereaved people can.

And once again, the message was loud and clear:

It’s okay to break.

Some things, and some people, arrive only when we do.

Grief Isn’t Just Death

People forget this.

Grief is:

• the end of a relationship

• the loss of family ties

• losing a home

• losing the future you thought you were building

• losing identity

• losing a version of yourself

• losing a sense of belonging

• losing who you were before life cracked you open

We walk around carrying invisible fractures, trying to “be strong,” but the truth is:

Real strength doesn’t come from holding it together. Real strength comes from breaking and choosing to rebuild anyway.

This week reminded me of that.

I shattered in small ways. I healed in small ways. And in between, I lived fully.

The Truth I’m Taking Home

It’s okay to be broken. It’s human. It’s necessary. It’s healing.

Brokenness is not failure, it’s evidence that you loved deeply, lived fully, and risked your heart.

And if there’s anything I want people to remember, whether they’re grieving a death, a family, a marriage, a home, a hope, or a dream, it’s this:

You are allowed to break. You are allowed to feel everything. You are allowed to fall apart and begin again.

Because in the breaking, we find truth.

In the breaking, we find healing.

And in the breaking…we find ourselves.