Five Years a Writer

The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared by Casey Mulligan Walsh Publisher: Motina Books Release date: February 18, 2025 Review by Amanda Le Rougetel Persistence is a survival strategy that many of us learn the hard way. Things happen in our life and to survive them means simply carrying on. No choice: Just. Keep. Going. Casey Mulligan Walsh learned this lesson at an early age and kept learning it as her life unfolded. She was orphaned at ten; her only sibling died when she was twenty; her first-born child was killed in young adulthood; and her first marriage dissolved in an acrimonious divorce. To call Walsh a survivor is a bit of an understatement. Her memoir tells the tale—yes, of these huge personal losses, but more significantly, maybe, of her persistence in surviving them as a wholly loving woman and, over time and with great patience and faith in herself, growing into her own thriving person. In unflinching prose, Walsh lays down on the page the events of her...

I arrived home from class on Friday in time for a late lunch. The class had been the final one in a 4-week session of a new course that was great fun to co-facilitate with my teaching partner, Deborah Schnitzer. The 12 women (it is almost always women; where are the men?)  — these women  around the table were eager to play with words and be in community with other writers looking for some creative fun. We were all sad for it to end.  One never knows at the start of something new how it will unfold or how it will wrap up, but, if we are lucky, each person dives in to participate honourably in the collective endeavour, whatever it may be. When it comes together, it is great.  When it falls apart, it can be bad.  In my kitchen, as I prepared and ate my late lunch after class on Friday (February 28), what  I witnessed on my screen was colossally bad . I had seen a news update flash across my phone as I packed up from class, so it was those barest of details th...