First things first, I’m sorry there won’t be an e-book this month. $10 subscribers will receive a $25 coupon off the cart total for e-books you buy from the store. Click here to get that coupon.
Content warning: Police, mental health, trauma
Why is there no e-book this month? Long story short, there was a police incident at our next door neighbours’ house after a mental health wellness check went horrifically wrong and the house burned down the night of May 23, 2023. We were evacuated and watched it all happen on our security cameras from afar, and it was extremely traumatizing. We’ve been trying to offer support to the neighbour’s roommate who lost everything in the fire as well as process what had happened on this quiet street where I’ve lived for 30 years this month. Our street was filled with police and other emergency vehicles until late Saturday night, and it was hard to get some quiet time to think and write. Even today, we have repair crews outside the house making quite the noise.
On top of this, all of our services went down – Internet, TV, phone, security system – so we’ve been working on slow internet using our cell data. This has made working on the site and the e-book beyond frustrating.
None of us in this neighbourhood have received any support from victims’ services, emergency social services, the police: No one seems to notice there’s a community in crisis.
Here are the stories from our local media with photos…
Our home and neighbourhood have long been our sanctuary, and it’s been visited by an unimaginable level of violence that’s rocked our sense of safety and security.
We’ll be okay – we have each other, we have support, we have resources to seek help as we need it – but this last week has been a bit more than we can handle.
Today is better than yesterday, and I think over the next few days we’ll start to relax and not flinch at every little sound we hear, but it’s just too late to try to finish the e-book for the end of the month. It’s in a good place – but it’s still more than a few days’ work to get it ready to share.
I’m working on shorter posts to share with you, things I can write in between the interruptions of the day, so you’ll see those on the site over the next week. (If it weren’t for not having the e-book ready, you might not even realize anything was amiss.)
Thank you for all your support and kindness!