We Don’t Need Funerals for Every Ending

Daughter letting go of her mother in kindness, love and honour.

Some goodbyes don’t need graves.

For most of my life, I thought freedom required finality.

I thought the only way to be free from pain was to end the relationship that caused it. Completely. Permanently. Cleanly.

Especially when it came to my mother.

My mother did not know how to mother me. She did not know how to parent me in a way that felt safe or nurturing or emotionally real. Much of my childhood was shaped by harm she has never acknowledged and never taken accountability for. My grandparents raised me in the ways she could not.

For years, I believed this meant the relationship had to end.

That in order to heal, I had to emotionally bury her.

Because what other option was there?

No one had ever offered me another framework.

Until therapy.

One day, while I was explaining the complicated, painful distance between my mother and me, my therapist said something that felt almost too simple:

You don’t have to kill the relationship. You can retire it with honour.

I had never heard anything like that before.

Retire her with honour?

Not excuse the harm.
Not pretend the past didn’t happen.
Not force closeness that doesn’t exist.
But also not turn the relationship into a funeral.

That small shift gave me a kind of freedom I didn’t know I was allowed to have.

Because I realized something profound:

I didn’t need a dramatic ending to create peace.
I needed permission to change the role she played in my life.

To move her from mother to person I wish well from a distance.
To release the expectation without erasing the history.
To let the chapter close without burning the book.

And once I understood that, I started seeing my entire life differently.

That realization started changing how I saw all my relationships.

Because once you stop believing every ending needs a funeral, you start noticing how often people try to hold funerals for you.

Not celebrations.
Not graduations.
Funerals.

I have had people say, both directly and indirectly, that my growth felt like abandonment to them.

We rarely speak abandonment out loud. It usually arrives disguised as criticism, distance, resentment, or quiet sabotage.

But underneath it is the same message:

You are leaving me.

When you come from communities shaped by loss, instability, displacement, and survival, relationships can start to feel like safety infrastructure. Like home.

So when someone evolves…
When someone changes…
When someone moves in a direction you didn’t expect…

It doesn’t feel like growth.

It feels like being left behind.

And when the nervous system believes it’s being abandoned, it often reaches for the most extreme solution it knows:

Finality.

If you’re changing, you must think you’re better than me.
If you’re growing, you must be rejecting where you came from.
If you’re leaving this version of your life, you must be leaving me.

Emotionally, it becomes easier to bury someone than to sit with the discomfort of distance.

So we cancel.
We cut off.
We erase.
We rewrite the story so the ending hurts less.

We turn people into villains because villains are easier to grieve than complicated humans.

Growth is not abandonment.

Movement is not betrayal.
Change is not violence.
Distance is not hatred.

Sometimes, it is simply life continuing.

We were not taught how to downgrade relationships with dignity.

We were taught closeness or exhile.
Ride or die.
Family or enemy.
Loyalty or betrayal.

But life is not that binary.

Two truths can exist at the same time:

Someone can love you and still be harmful to you.
Someone can have been important and still not belong in your present life.
Someone can be struggling and still not be safe to keep close.

You can release someone without hating them.
You can outgrow someone without dishonouring them.
You can move forward without turning their humanity into a crime.

As I began to grow into new versions of myself, I noticed something else.

Not everyone celebrates your evolution.

Some people try to negotiate with it.
Some people try to slow it down.
Some people quietly try to pull you back to the version of you that felt safest to them.

Growth changes the ecosystem of your life.

And not everyone can adapt to that change at the same pace.

For some people, your evolution feels like a mirror.

So instead of growing, they try to shrink the mirror.

Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is let the relationship change form.

To stop forcing proximity where alignment no longer exists.
To stop performing versions of yourself that no longer feel true.
To let distance be honest.
To let silence be neutral.
To let the chapter close without turning the story into a tragedy.

Most relationships don’t end in explosions.
They end in evolution.

Maybe we need new agreements:

• Someone else’s growth is not a personal attack.
• Distance is not the same thing as rejection.
• Relationships can change form without becoming tragedies.
• You don’t have to destroy someone to let them go.
• You don’t have to shrink to be loved.
• You don’t have to stay to prove loyalty.
• You are allowed to become unfamiliar to people who only knew your survival version.

There is grief in this.

Because sometimes the people who knew your old life cannot follow you into your new one.

And that doesn’t make them evil.
It doesn’t make you better.
It doesn’t make the past fake.

It just means the chapter changed.

I’m learning to let endings be quiet.
To let distance be kind.
To let memory remain intact.
To let growth be enough reason.

Because we don’t need funerals for every ending.

Some goodbyes don’t need graves.

Sometimes we can simply retire the relationship with honour — and keep living.

With love,

TIKA <3

When Surrender Becomes the Teacher

OPERA HOUSE, TORONTO

*** Winner of the 2025 Helen Henderson Literary Award for exceptional writing by CILT. ***

There are moments in a life when the body speaks louder than any stage, louder than any ovation, louder than even your own ambition. For me, that moment arrived when years of touring, moving from stage to stage, carrying the weight of performance, expectation, and survival, all collided with the silent truths my body could no longer hold. Injury forced me to stop. For someone who had built an identity on motion, sound, and presence, stillness felt like exile. But it was in that exile that surrender became my teacher.

My name is TIKA. I am a musician, a composer, a Canadian Academy Award-winning songwriter. I am a cultural strategist, a curator, a multidisciplinary artist, and a plus-size model. My life has been defined by creating spaces for sound, art, and visibility. In 2018, I was touring extensively, performing across the country, building my career as a touring artist, when I was booked to perform at the Opera House in Toronto. Alongside the show, I had interviews with major fashion magazines, workshops with leading organizations, and a press tour that demanded precision and energy. It was the culmination of years of preparation, visibility, and performance.

My manager at the time called with what I initially perceived as care and excitement. She informed me of the booking and the accompanying opportunities. I packed my bags, gathered groceries, and carried the weight of long-standing hyper-independence that had defined my life. I had always relied on myself for work, travel, and life—but that week, it betrayed me.

The first Airbnb I stayed in was noisy with construction. The Airbnb management company offered me a better property, a penthouse suite. It seemed ideal until I realized it was a four-story walk-up with no elevator. I carried two large suitcases and four grocery bags up four flights of stairs. By the time I reached the top, my back gave out. I did not yet know it, but I had herniated a disc. That injury became a defining moment, reframing my understanding of what it means to live with a disability in a world that often ignores pain.

Despite the injury, my manager remained passive about my pain. She saw it, yet treated it as an inconvenience. I had workshops to lead, interviews to attend, and the show to perform. I performed seated, enduring pain that the people closest to me seemed unwilling to acknowledge. Yet even in this state, every show sold out. People came not for my mobility or stamina, but for my presence and my music.

During that trip, I also realized something profound about my relationships. Toronto is a city built on motion, visibility, and performance. Many of my connections there were tied to me as a performer. After my injury, I continued to cook for others, chop vegetables, and do chores, but few noticed me hunched over or in pain. My existence outside of the stage went largely unseen. In Montreal, by contrast, life moved at a slower, more intentional pace. Friends checked in constantly, helped me with daily tasks, and made my healing a priority. It was there that I discovered which relationships truly allowed me to be a human being, not just a performer.

Returning home, I faced the full weight of recovery. I could barely get in and out of the tub without help. For the first time, I had to rely on others. Friends cooked, cleaned, and assisted me through basic tasks. I had never received this level of care—not from family, not from work, not from anyone in my immediate circles. This experience reshaped my understanding of care. Care is not optional. It is essential.

While healing, I confronted the harsh realities of the music industry. I gained over 100 pounds during my injury, and the industry responded with exile. I was no longer welcome in the spaces I had inhabited for years. Yet in this exclusion, I discovered clarity. Those spaces did not reflect my values, my humanity, or my artistry. They were not my home. In their absence, I began to understand the work I was meant to do: creating spaces for true artistry and authentic care.

It was during this time that I surrendered to a new path: composition. A friend told me about the Slate Music Residency Program at the Canadian Film Centre, one of the few programs for musicians transitioning into composing. I applied, and out of more than 200 applicants, I was one of six selected. The program was meant to last nine months but extended to four years due to COVID. During that time, I immersed myself in the craft of scoring, voiceover work, theme songs, and immersive sound design. Had I not pivoted to composition and surrendered to this opportunity, I would have had no income at all during the pandemic—unlike so many of my peers, who, as touring artists, faced complete financial halt. By the grace of God, I caught this path just in the nick of time. Through surrender, I discovered unexpected abundance, stability, and growth beyond what I could have anticipated. Composition taught me to advocate for myself, honor my limits, and value my craft in ways that touring never had.

This transition was also profoundly personal. As a touring artist, I had existed in a state of constant servitude—to audiences, to venues, to expectations. Composition allowed for intimacy, for introspection, for the creation of worlds within sound while seated at my piano. I learned that my value was intrinsic, not performative. That my craft, and I myself, were worthy of respect, care, and sustenance.

The herniated disc injury taught me vulnerability. It taught me reliance. It taught me that pain can reveal systemic patterns, even within our own communities, and that the presence of care can transform survival into growth. My body broke, yes, but it also taught me to rebuild in ways that honor both the self and the support around me.

Today, I stand not as a victim, but as a victor. I continue to create, to compose, to perform, and to care. I continue to honor the sacredness of rest, the power of vulnerability, and the beauty of intentional presence. My body, once a source of limitation, has become my teacher. My experiences, once isolating, have become the blueprint for a life grounded in resilience, creativity, and community.

I share this story to illuminate the intersections of artistry, care, and disability. It is a testament to the strength in surrender, the abundance in adaptation, and the possibility of thriving beyond expectation. In every note I compose, every song I write, every space I hold, I carry the lessons of pain transformed into purpose, and the unwavering knowledge that even in stillness, life is full, vibrant, and victorious.