How photography has helped heal grief
(Casa Loma, Toronto)
Shannon’s Sunday Stories is a series of personal reflections and musings on life.
Has one message ever changed your outlook in life?
It has been roughly a year since the start of the pandemic and Toronto is currently experiencing its second lockdown. With the gyms being closed, I’ve been walking more than ever to get through the fatigue and try to maintain a sense of balance. I do enjoy jogging, but the cold, winter air is too hard on my lungs. So, I’ve been walking this winter, roughly 8-10 km a day, more or less. Nowhere exciting, mind you, just urban strolls in a variety of neighbourhoods in Toronto.
Walking has been not only a way to manage being cooped up inside, it has also been helping me to manage my grief, with the passing of my beloved 15 year-old sheepdog, Bob. He was a constant companion with a sweet and goofy disposition, and I loved him deeply. More than a year after his passing, I still find it painful that I had to put him to sleep. Isolation has not helped.
I’ve turned to a variety of things online to find inspiration or as a distraction from my grief. As a travel writer, I thought it would help my storytelling skills to learn more about photography. On one of my social channels, I started to pay closer attention to visual artists, reading their stories and following their journeys. One artist from London lives by the mantra “always look up.” I thought it was an interesting message.
On a day that I was feeling particularly sad (the gloomy weather didn’t help), I went for a stroll along Bloor Street. As I passed the Royal Ontario Museum, I suddenly stopped in my tracks, looked up to the sky and took a photo with my phone. I thought of the artist’s message: always look up.
(the ROM on the left with a bird flying above)
For the rest of the day, I continued to walk through a few different neighbourhoods, looking up and taking snaps. I was seeing buildings that I had not noticed before, interesting architecture and rooftops I had not seen before, signage I was not aware of, businesses I didn’t know existed, while noticing the sky in more detail, as grey as it was.
I realized that whenever we walk, we tend to look straight ahead or down, not up. Not only was I beginning to see my city differently, as though it was an entirely new city, but I was also starting to see life in a different way.
When I got home and sat down to look at my photos in my phone, I discovered something else. For the first time in more than a year, I was not thinking about my sorrow. Rather, I had spent an afternoon being fully present and in the moment, whilst also discovering a new art: photography. For the first time, I felt I was on my journey of healing my grief.
Then I remembered the artist’s message: always look up.
Here are some other Toronto images I have captured by looking up on my walks:
The question is not what you look at but what you see. – Thoreau
Shannon Skinner is an TV/radio host, author, speaker, and travel and wine writer.
