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on Sunday

on Sunday

on Sunday i will wake.   disappointed. again, as so many times before.   to find it’s true.     from the other side now.   inside out.   hoodmother. the back of motherhood.  her…

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  • by Tara McGuire
  • Posted on May 5, 2016May 13, 2020
  • 12 Comments on on Sunday
On the Loss of a Child

On the Loss of a Child

I have been asked to write an article for Hospice Yukon to be included their Spring Newsletter.   The theme is ‘Child Loss’…ugh. I never thought I would ever be in the position to write something…

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  • by Tara McGuire
  • Posted on February 23, 2016May 14, 2020
  • 14 Comments on On the Loss of a Child

The Hole Family

Yesterday marked six months since Holden’s gorgeous soul left his young body.  It was a hard day.  We were tidying up (in the Japanese and allegedly magically joyful way), putting away the decorations, tossing the…

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  • by Tara McGuire
  • Posted on January 4, 2016May 14, 2020
  • 20 Comments on The Hole Family

Recent Posts

  • San Miguel Writer’s Conference 2025
  • Chatelaine: Microdosing and Menopause Anxiety
  • New Essay in Montecristo Magazine
  • Words Can Lead the Way…
  • Holden After and Before
  • Celebrating Holden Through Art

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taramcguire

writer • editor • storyteller • voice-over • 📚 Holden After + Before 📚@theseferproject • probably went swimming today 🦦• she/her

Some things about my friend Erin. She is smart, fu Some things about my friend Erin. She is smart, funny, thoughtful, and kind. She looks gorgeous in every photograph, which is honestly kind of annoying. She always brings a gift. Her smile comes from deep inside. She makes me laugh all the time. She loves with a big, open heart. Her puppies are a joy! She hates swimming in cold water. Actually, she just won’t don’t. She loves Olivia and Geoffrey with a fierce heart. She is a loyal and constant friend, even and especially, when times get rough. There is not a more graceful person. She’s really mad she can’t drive her car anymore. 
💜
Erin has early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The illness has taken so much from Erin and her family. Which doesn’t seem fair. And still, she is beautiful and funny and smart.  She knows what she likes and what she does not like. 
💜
Today Erin will cut the ribbon at the Vancouver Alzheimer’s walk with her husband Geoffrey and daughter Olivia by her side. Today’s walk raise his money for important research into the causes and treatments of Alzheimer’s disease. Please support if you can 💜@alzheimercanada @alzheimerbc 

#alzwalk2025
🎈 H A P P Y • B I R T H D A Y !!! 🎈 To th 🎈 H A P P Y • B I R T H D A Y !!! 🎈 
To the one who seems to be in all of my selfies, who has been there every step of the way, and who I can’t imagine walking forward in this life without. I love you @l.ours_polaire ❤️
A man named Maurice wrote me a poema (because femi A man named Maurice wrote me a poema (because femina) on the beach. It is so beautiful here and yet I’ve been very troubled. With you-know-whos-you-know-whatting. Just down the sand a person recovering from top surgery is enjoying a salty swim. My husband is a frolicking slippery wave kid. L+J are pink and healthy and resting and beautiful in love. Pelicans dot sky ellipses above whale spouts. We are all joyful. Poetry made things better today. 

Gracias Mexico. 
🏖️❤️

Open your eyes 
The beauty is always around you 
Like a butterfly 
And flowers of life 
It doesn't matter 
Where you are from,
If we only speak with the truth 
of our hearts
Close your eyes 
And breath 
The beauty is always in you 
Everything is in movement 
Like the breaking waves 
touching your feets 
The constantly whispering wind 
Life is poetry 
Flow with your energy 
You are the island of your dreams 

- Maurice Meijer
Saying adios to this magical festival and city tod Saying adios to this magical festival and city today. It’s been wonderful to meet so many new people and writers and talk about craft and life in this beautiful place, which is an obvious creative vortex. 🪅🪅🪅

Muchos gracias @sanmiguelwritersconference for hosting this tired Canadian writer and rejuvenating my faith in the power of the written word! ❤️

#smwc2025 #sanmigueldeallende
Oh heart, oh brain, oh sad liver. 
🌮 📕 🌮📕🌮
Today I am grateful for: teaching workshops to beautifully engaged writers, reading from Holden After & Before in the scented garden with brilliant Canadian writers, morning yoga, complex lunch conversations, fascinating keynotes, this transfixing city, my sister, my love, flowers, horse bar crawls — gracias sweet 🐴 Heman! , food food food, learning learning, and  many, many new friends. Especially the American ones who are all saying variations of… “sorry.” 
❤️@sanmiguelwritersconference #smwc2025 #sanmigueldeallende #sanmiguelwritersconference
A flying start on Day #1 at @sanmiguelwritersconfe A flying start on Day #1 at @sanmiguelwritersconference! 
❤️
What a gorgeous city and writing/reading community! We were treated to a snazzy faculty lunch at the astonishing Hyder private residence. 
❤️
Already making new friends and nursing headaches. Our eyes & ears & brains are dazzled! 
❤️
#smwc2025
Congratulations to our dear friend @geoffrey_bird Congratulations to our dear friend @geoffrey_bird on his astonishing photography show “The Light We Hold Onto.” This collection of still captures of projected imagery is the culmination of Geoffrey’s masters in photography @falmouthphotographyonline. The show, honouring his beautiful wife and my BFF, Erin, took my breath away. With this work, Geoffrey manages to close the distance between then and now, between love and loss, between fear and joy, between friendship and devastation. This work is beautiful and powerful and full of respect. More than a subject, Erin is an active participant in the project, which is how, with their daughter @olivia__bird, their family has approached Erin’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis for years. Be here, be now, be kind, have fun, learn, do the best you can. It is a visual testament of resilience and surrender and grace and shows with great technical skill what love can look like on paper. It is making something beautiful when there are so many other alternatives. It’s opening and sharing when closing down might feel easiest. I couldn’t be more honoured to call you my friends. ❤️ 

@alzheimerbc @alzheimercanada
This year‘s Vancouver Writers Festival has me fe This year‘s Vancouver Writers Festival has me feeling inspired, troubled, and grateful. So many exciting writers to listen to and beautiful work to learn from, old and new friends to meet, and panels to host! I feel like I’m at the best kind of buffet!

Congratulations to @hurtigleslie and your wonderful team including 450 !!! volunteers for creating such an expansive, diverse, and welcoming festival. 

My mind and heart are saturated and my bookshelf is full! Then, a little Sunday morning rinse to lock it all in. ❤️ 📕
Hello from a windy day in The Soo! A very quick tr Hello from a windy day in The Soo! A very quick trip to Sault Ste Marie to present a keynote at The 10th Annual @anishinabeknation Health Conference. I spoke about integrating joy with grief to  create some kind of meaningful life. I met many lovely people doing meaningful work in health literacy and Indigenous health agency. And, of course, I also met several other women who have lost children to overdose. ❤️ Then I had a chance to walk down to the St. Mary’s River boardwalk. I was only here for 16 hours, but more people stopped and smiled and said hello than has happened in Vancouver in the last year. ❤️
Thank you @stan_wesley for your bright fashion and warm energy. I give you a 5 ⭐️ yelp review!
Every once in a while, I have the pleasure of work Every once in a while, I have the pleasure of working on a book and with a writer who touches my heart and a special way. “Just Tell Them I Love Them - A Hospice Chaplain’s Invitations to Live Well,” showed me that while the death of a loved one is painful, it can also be a powerful channel for learning and transformation. 

Working with Helen Burke @please_be_loved helping her edit her beautiful manuscript, was a masterclass in gratitude. As spiritual counselor, ordained interfaith minister, and hospice chaplain, Helen has served as a trusted companion at critical life moments when questions about life‘s meaning become essential. 

Even now, nine years after Holden’s death, Helen showed me new ways to decipher the experience. She lives in Philadelphia and would often start emails with “hello from the city of sisterly love!” ❤️ I wish I could be in Philly tomorrow to celebrate! 🥂 

Officially launching tomorrow, September 29! Please find a link for direct 📕 sales on Helen’s profile @please_be_loved  This book is a gift and will help so many who are struggling with questions about the meaning of our lives and relationships. ❤️
Feels like Christmas! 🎁 Just look at these babi Feels like Christmas! 🎁 Just look at these babies! 📚 

I am delighted to be moderating two panels at this year’s @vancouverwritersfest.
 
📚55. GOOD READS 📚
Friday, October 25 | 1:00 PM | $27
Waterfront Theatre

The premise of our Good Reads event each year is simple: hear from three authors of must-read, unputdownable books. That’s exactly the word used by UK reviewers of Holly Gramazio’s magnificent debut, The Husbands, which has been praised by Gabrielle Zevin as a “time-bending gem.” It asks how we navigate life and love if we have never-ending options. Rajinderpal S. Pal’s However Far Away is an unforgettable, sweeping family saga set against the backdrop of a Sikh wedding. Michelle Winters’ Hair for Men thrums with female rage in a story of punk, coming of age, and breaking with convention. Make space in your evening and your bookshelf for these buzzworthy books.
 
📚 72. LESS IS MORE: Celebrating Short Stories
Saturday, October 26 | 1:30 PM | $27
Revue Stage

Good short stories can share expansive truths with the smallest details. Each of these authors has built a reputation for articulating our depths with exquisitely crafted, luminescent prose. Together, they discuss why short stories are, in many ways, a true artistic form, and how a narrower word count leads to more expansive characters. Multi-award-winning, bestselling Billy-Ray Belcourt shares a masterful yet playful collection about Indigenous love and loneliness in Coexistence. Jen Currin’s Disembark features queer characters navigating new worlds, new circumstances, and new methods of relating to the people around them. And Amanda Peters’ Waiting for the Long Night Moon describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place. 
📖 
The entire & amazing & comprehensive festival lineup is available on the festival website. 

🎟️ Tickets on sale to members September 10 and to the public on September 17! 

See you there!
Whirlwind weekends in Niagara-on-the-Lake with my Whirlwind weekends in Niagara-on-the-Lake with my ride or dies!! 
❤️🐿️
Seeing sweet Manami @hara.manami perform @shawfestival blew my mind — the play “Snow in Midsummer,” is stunning, emotional, clever!! Happy birthday, oh talented one !! 🥳 ⭐️ 

The rest was basically wine, food, beautiful houses, flowers, sweating, e-bikes, Niagara Falls, rivers, lakes, and nonstop laughing. 
❤️
I love you! @leslielandell @mariannestowethomson @lindawarner_rn @sandiejane0 @hara.manami @leinadueck 
🐿️ 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️(missing a few)🍷🚴🤩
Twenty-three years ago we got married on the beach Twenty-three years ago we got married on the beach and here we are… chips and beer on the beach! 🍻 Happy anniversary, Babe! 
@l.ours_polaire! 
❤️
Yes, we had to take the ditch witch out of your van and pressure wash the inside before we could go camping. And yes, it rained most of the time, and yes, our air mattress had a hole in it. Just a slow leak, which wasn’t too bad … as long as we were both in the bed our asses didn’t bottom out and  freeze. ⛺️But yes, you did mix tarp water with your rum and yes, we played crib by candlelight on the same red-checkered table cloth where Holden ate his floatmeal and Lyla first tried birthday cake. And yes, I got to enjoy a cheeky tiki 🧉@florasbamfield and yes a huge humpback 🐋 jumped right in front of us, flashing her enormous tail!! And yes, we did take shelter from the deluge in a treehouse outhouse, which honestly did not smell so fresh. But yes, a young woman named Tory loaned me her homemade sweater and put my jacket in the dryer while we listen to a man named Matthew sing in the Wreckage (which I mostly am, but who isn’t). And then! … the sun came out, as it eventually does, and for a few splendid hours Pachena Bay took our breath away! 
❤️
And yes, everything is a metaphor.
❤️ T H A N K Y O U!! ❤️ The 2024 Holden C ❤️ T H A N K Y O U!! ❤️

The 2024 Holden Courage Graffiti Jam was a huge success!! 

Thanks to @vanmuralfest and your amazing staff Jennifer, Jess, Britany, Miriam, Adrian for your vision and flawless execution! This year’s jam was beautifully laid out, so chill, and so much fun!! Thanks to all of the on-site workers and volunteers! 

Thanks to our wonderful curator @jillian.mundy for bringing such a diverse and talented group of writers together! 
EACH, MOLEK, CASE @casemackeen, EATS broguymanz, SIGIL @cruciflex_!! I am dazzled by what you can do with a wall in such little time. It was lovely to meet all of you and spend the weekend together. 

Thanks to Cameron @mainstreetbeer for the fun beer collaboration on SEFER Pilsner! We sold every last can and will be adding $1000 to the Holden Courage Memorial Fund for Artists to continue to support street art in Holden’s name. Thanks to @oodlesofowes for designing the cool label. Thanks to @lylamollard and @l.ours_polaire for beering with me. 🍺 ❤️

Thanks to @bcaletrail for the vast array of tasty beers to sample! 🍻 

❤️ @craige13 for stellar photos! 📷

Grateful to all our sweet & generous friends (small and big!) who came out over the weekend to enjoy this vibrant art form and a cold beer! 🍺 When I see people making and appreciating graffiti I can’t help but think of Holden. Keeping his memory close is worth all the effort. ❤️

~ tara
Last night was very special. My dear friend Geoffr Last night was very special. My dear friend Geoffrey Bird @geoffrey_bird presented his work in an intimate backyard show called “Traces of Me.” This collection is Geoffrey‘s third project as part of his masters in photography @falmouthphotographyonline. 
💜
The tender and evocative backyard laundry line setup had me feeling grateful and nostalgic for simpler times (we’ve had so much fun together!) and heartbroken for their many losses. These photos document the range of emotions one must bear while caring for a partner with Alzheimer’s. Geoffrey’s skill as a photographer is extraordinary but his heart, and the way he cares for his gorgeous wife, and my sweetest friend, Erin is a testament to enduring love and to the grace their family lives with every day. 💜 

Rather than hide away, Geoffrey, Erin, Olivia, Alix, and Lanie have openly shared their family’s slow journey through Alzheimer’s with family and friends with generosity, patience, humour, and vulnerability. 💜

We don’t get a choice in what we are faced with in this life, but we do have choices around how we react. Creating art is an honourable reaction. 💜
============================
Artist statement: Traces of Me is the third in a series of projects that I have developed for my Masters degree in photography through an online program with Falmouth University in the U.K. 

Traces of Me - Self Portraits of a Care Partner’s Journey is a collection of self-portrait images that reveal the often suppressed range of emotions experienced by a care partner. While a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is devastating for an individual, the long-term implications take an emotional toll on partners and family members as well. These photographs are part exercise in self-directed therapy and part invitation to those experiencing similar emotions to feel welcomed in openly sharing their own caregiver’s journey. 

The images are also produced with sustainability in mind. They have been optimized to use only traces of ink in the final printed output of the work.
Happy long weekend! Had a lovely (rare solo) day. Happy long weekend! Had a lovely (rare solo) day. Reading, hiking, swimming, gardening, sewing, watching human specks fly over the house & hearing them hoot! 
☀️ 🌸 🏊 🌊 🐕 📕 🌱 
And now, on the 100th anniversary of James Baldwin’s birth, watching “I Am Not Your Negro,” on Disney+. Fascinating &  brutal.
Putting the rain back in rainforest. Can almost he Putting the rain back in rainforest. Can almost hear the plants smiling. Wish you could smell it. 🌱🍃
Happy happy happy birthday @lylamollard!! T W E N Happy happy happy birthday @lylamollard!! T W E N T Y - O N E ! ! ! 
❤️ 🎂 ❤️
We love you so much and couldn’t be prouder. You are 100% absolutely you! And a bit of a kitchen wizzz. And a competent driver, joke cracker, lover of cold swims and long walks. Oh, and did I  mention cool? Yes, obviously very cool. ❤️
It’s difficult to express what this week @sagehi It’s difficult to express what this week @sagehillwriting has meant to me. With one last full day of writing today, I am still processing and will be for a long time. 

The alchemy of landscape, hilarious, kind and smart writers, learning about fiction writing from the extraordinary @maddiethien, thoughtful curation by the organizers @taradawnsolheim etc…the rural vibes, playwrite performances, new friends, readings, songs, racquetball, mosquito  bites, fox sitings, mole funerals, deer rug lounge chats, chapel prayers, and being fed like a treasured guest… this place, its charms, and its people will live on in an important chamber of my heart. ❤️

#sagehill2024
Making Dadding look easy, even when it’s not! ❤️Cam, we love you for your kindness, patience, strength, unwavering loyalty, kitchen dance moves 🕺🏽, radical hoodie game, fondness for beef, and occasionally funny jokes. ❤️ Happy Father’s Day! ❤️
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