About
Grief Dumpling is the blog of me, Alex Barnes, a 30-something year old from Glasgow, Scotland who now lives in Toronto, Canada.
It explores my journey through the grief and processing of being a young widower following the death of my partner, Julie-Rae
Why Grief Dumpling?
The name Grief Dumpling came from a few places. First is that ‘Dumpling’ was a nickname that I used for Jules for a lot of our time together.
Secondly, a long running dream amongst our closest friends was to have a ‘Dumplings of the World’ party as we were all of the belief that dumplings may be the greatest food of all time. Unfortunately, Jules died before we were able to make this dinner a reality but it has since become a yearly celebration of her life around the time of her birthday.
Lastly, in our Dumplings of the World chats, we quickly realized that there are a near endless list of things that could be considered dumplings. I found this a nice analogy to the concept of grief. Each person has their own definition of what a dumpling is and each person’s experience of grief is unique to them. Dumplings are best enjoyed as a group, and the weight of grief is (for me at least) best managed with the support of others.