The Heart That Healed Us All

Some days you wake up and forget for a second. Then you remember.

This book is about my daughter Zoe, and about how I kept living after she died.

Zoe was born with a heart defect. When she was fourteen, she went into cardiac arrest and had a stroke that left her in a coma. Doctors said she wouldn’t wake up. She did, and she spent the next four years fighting her way back. She died in March 2021. She was eighteen.

The book starts long before Zoe, with my Gram. She was an Indigenous woman who took me to pow-wows when I was little and told me to listen to my guides. A lot of what got me through Zoe’s illness, I learned from her.

It’s about my marriage, my other girls and the friends who showed up for us, including some who aren’t in our lives anymore.

I wrote it for anyone who has lost someone and is still here, trying to figure out what living looks like now.

This book talks about the death of a child and childhood abuse. Please take care of yourself while you read.