So long for now

but not forever, I promise.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska via Pexels

So much has happened since my last letter. Right after I published it, I made a big decision: I’m selling my house and moving across the province.

I would love to write a big long letter about why I’m leaving, full of links to books about widows and single moms making new homes and lives for themselves, and someday, I will do just that. But right now, I’m just too busy clearing out and cleaning up, obsessively checking out real estate listings, and managing all the feels around here. We’ve lived in this house for going on eleven years, which is longer than my youngest daughter has lived, period, so yeah. It’s a lot.

To everyone who expressed an interest in taking my Solo Parent Questionnaire, I sincerely apologize for the delay in writing it up and sending it your way. I will do so as soon as I’m done dealing with the seemingly infinite supply of minor crises involved in moving house.

All By Our Shelves will be back in your inboxes in June, when (fingers crossed!) my place has been sold and I know exactly when and where I’m going next.

In the meantime, as we all head into the emotionally treacherous territory that is Mother’s Day weekend, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from this screed I wrote for Lit Hub, all about the ‘struggling single mom’ trope in romance:

The single mom romance I want to read stars a woman who is genuinely happy and at ease in her life—and not because she’s thin, beautiful, young, and independently wealthy. Maybe she’s none of the above, but she and her children are just fine all the same. They have found a way to work around the systemic barriers to their socioeconomic security—or maybe the story is set in the future, when we all get equal pay for equal work, and caring for young children has once again been taken up by the village. She isn’t secretly yearning for a romantic relationship; maybe she even actively does not want one—not because she’s worried about the impact of her love life on her offspring, but because she likes her life just the way it is.

You can read the rest here, if you like.

See you all on the other side!