writer, storyteller, and chronic oversharer.
Kate van Halm Eckland writes about her experiences with grief and motherhood. A natural storyteller, Kate shares her life stories with honesty and a wry sense of humour. She is a graduate of SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, and The Writer’s Studio Graduate Workshop.
Kate is currently seeking representation for her memoir What Parents?
Kate is a mother, writer, and seamstress. Born and raised on the beautiful west coast of Canada, she earned a BDES in Toronto and now lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia with her husband and children. When she is not writing or sewing, you can find Kate out in nature.
Kate is located in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Tla’amin Nation (Powell River, BC)
Hi, my name is Kate and my parents are dead.
If you’ve met me in the wild you’ll know that this topic comes up quickly. I lost both of my parents before my twenty-fourth birthday, and it’s been a hell of a journey.
My dad died of prostate cancer two weeks after my sixteenth birthday; then, my mom was diagnosed with advanced-stage ovarian cancer one month after my eighteenth birthday. Five and a half years later, I was orphaned and completely lost without my kick-ass supportive parents.
At eighteen years old, I faced losing my only remaining parent. I looked for books and resources for young grievers and I couldn’t find much. I wanted to read a book written by a young person who had lost both their parents. I wanted a non-clinical book documenting the nitty gritty of making decisions and dealing with both anticipatory and traditional grief while also going through the bullshit of everyday life.
I never found that book, so I’ve written it.
What Parents? documents my life from fifteen to thirty, learning to live without my parents as I graduate from high school and university, get married, and embark on motherhood.
publications
‘Stiff Upper Lip’ Don’t Tell: Family Secrets, edited by Donna McCart Sharkey & Arleen Paré, 2023, Pages 217-223.
‘The Cruise’ Emerge 2021, Simon Fraser University, 2021, Pages 377-381.
‘PPS and the Quest for Marijuana’ Women Coffee Wednesday, 2017.
‘My life as a bald woman’ Ladies of a Certain Age, anthology edited by Katie Dixon 2014.
Kate has never been one to find comfort in guardian angels, a god’s plan, or any vague notion of fate. Instead, she relies on humour.
In this subversive sticker shop you will find grief themed stickers you never knew you needed.
Each collection is a collaboration with a local artist, new stickers always coming soon.
Have an idea for a new sticker? Are you an artist interested in a collab? Please contact me by email, hello@kateveckland.com
