I have one son who just recently turned 5 years old, but I have always been very close with my sister's kids so I've been around children and babies most of my adult life. One piece of advice I would give is: respect your child. So much of how many societies view child rearing is based in control, but they're people and deserve to be respected and understood. Naturally you need to adapt this so that you're speaking to them in a way that's age-appropriate, but kids are intelligent and intuitive so we don't need to undermine that just because they're young.

I would say my favourite part of being a parent is rediscovering how magical the world is. When we go for walks, my son can get so absorbed in something most adults would view as mundane for a long time. It's easy for parents to roll their eyes and rush the little ones along but instead, get down on their level and try to see what's so fascinating. Going for leaf treasure hunts, catching crayfish in the river, jumping in puddles aren't things I would think to do on my own as an adult but it's a blast as a parent. My least favourite part is that the world can be a scary place and while my husband and I are doing our best to help our son build resilience and be able to manage some of the hardships, we can't protect him from everything and that's scary! I also think a lot about other children in the world, I'm very passionate about advocacy for children and youth, so it can be difficult knowing how many children there are in difficult circumstances.

I have my Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts and a lifelong interest in comics, manga, and animation. I've always drawn silly comics for my friends, so it was natural to me to do the same once I got pregnant. What wound up happening was I was putting them in a journal to give to my son as an adult so he could get to see things from my perspective and maybe have some nice memories of our life. I decided to put a couple on my art page and got a decent response, so I kept up with it. Soon I was getting messages from all over the world from parents who said the comics resonated with them, and that they felt less alone in parenting when they read them. It was a really nice feeling to know there was a connection with so many other people. I do have a few that I won't share because I think some do just need to be for my son, though.

I'm working on putting more effort in continuing the comics. I've been hand-drawing a bunch that I'll redo digitally to keep them coming. We are hoping it'll be safe to do some traveling this summer so I'm sure that'll generate some inspiration. I would love if one day I could build my platform to be able to speak on parenting practices, child development, and other topics that I have professional interests in, such as trauma and its relation to brain development. I would say anyone considering sharing their art online should do it because they enjoy it. If you turn it into a grind, a brand, side hustle, whatever, it'll suck every ounce of joy out of it immediately. And always put a watermark or digital signature somewhere that would make it difficult to remove because your art will absolutely be stolen at some point. Have fun with it, and let yourself be authentic and vulnerable.