For The Love Of… Magazine
In my own creative work in visual art and poetry, I discovered something. Death and grief show up consistently in my work. Sometimes intentionally, and other times it’s subconsciously.
Death, dying and grief are experiences and concepts that I am forever navigating, traversing, and picking apart. The things I create from these concepts are deeply personal, a little confronting and oftentimes without a home. For as long as I’ve been writing or creating art about death and grief, there has not been somewhere to put it.
Then an idea came to me. I have been the founder and editor of an online literary magazine before, and a reader for other magazines, so I thought, why not create an online magazine specifically for art and writing on the topics of death, dying and grief. I know there are many creators out there, like myself, who don’t have anywhere to publish or share these works with others. Nowhere, other than their own website and social media, that felt safe to put these creations out there, in a space where they are held with care amongst others.
So, For The Love Of… Magazine was born. I spent months working on the design of the website and the layout of it all, deliberating on the images I would use and the logo I would draw. The name took some time to reveal itself to me; usually, naming things isn’t such a battle. One night, the words For The Love Of came to me in a dream. Now, I know that death and grief aren’t always filled with only love, and sometimes you lose someone with whom you may not have had a good relationship. But I also know that the other side of grief is love, or at least, care. It hurts, and you grieve because somewhere in your body and heart, you cared. The person, relationship, life, or experience had some effect on your life.
This online magazine is a home where all works on death, dying, and grief belong. It is a place for people to show and share their grief with others who understand, or who want to understand. It is a place for all types of grief, from disenfranchised, ambiguous, anticipatory and collective grief. It is a place for work on all deaths, the devastating, the unexpected, the expected, the unplanned and messy, the traumatic, and the ones filled with love and beauty in the last moments.
As a mortality doula, writer and artist myself, I am honoured to be caretaker of this precious space. To welcome all the works with open arms and to understand them through the lens of my lived and professional experience.
Send me your heartache, your tears, your anger, fears and love in all creative forms. I’m waiting for you.
Website: https://www.fortheloveofmag.com/
