Prose

Making Room for Truth: Compassion

Posted on by Khaya Ronkainen / 5 Comments

Recently, I was listening to the Slowdown poetry podcast when Maggie Smith said something that stopped me in my tracks: “We are imperfect, and the people we love are imperfect, and the people who love us are imperfect. [My children] know I’m only human, that I’m not always my best self, and they’re kind enough to give me grace and love me, anyway.” Even though I knew this, it was as if I were hearing it for the first time.

George is one of the hardest characters I’ve had to write. Perhaps because some characters ask more of us than affection. They ask us to stay long enough to see the wound beneath what is frustrating, selfish, disappointing, or damaging.

A character, briefly introduced: George

George—tobacco sales, husband, father—is the seeker: a man who wants to matter at home, but carries shame and a love that does not always know how to stay put.

He is not an easy man to love on the page. In some ways, I did not make him easy. I needed the reader to feel the force of disappointment around him, the ache of absence, the harm a person who does not know how to remain steady inside love can do. But as I lived with him longer, he became my greatest teacher. He taught me compassion.

It’s not the compassion that excuses and erases damage. But compassion that asks what shame does to a person. And how longing can become clumsy, restless, and destructive when it has nowhere honest to go. The kind that allows a character to be fully flawed and still fully human.

George reminded me that some people do love, and fail at love at the same time. They want to be good and still cause hurt. They want to stay and still keep reaching for escape. This does not make them guilty or innocent, but more complicated than our anger first allows.

A line George might say: I knew how to work for the people I loved. Staying still inside that love was the part I did not know how to do.

A small beauty I noticed along the way: compassion sometimes arrives late, when the sharpest edge of anger has passed, and what remains is sorrow, tenderness, and the wish to understand more truthfully.

A question for you: Have you ever come to see someone more clearly only after your anger made its full, necessary pass through you?

P.S. Distorted Is The View is coming out on June 9th, 2026.

Photo by Sheila Swayze on Unsplash

Prose

Making Room for Care: Devotion

Posted on by Khaya Ronkainen / 9 Comments

It’s International Mother’s Day today, and I think not only of mothers but of the women who helped mother us. These are mothers who may not share our surnames, our blood, or our homes forever, yet help raised us all the same.

Gen X is often described as the generation that largely parented themselves; there’s some truth in that. But aunts, grandmothers, neighbours, godmothers, older sisters and nannies held some of us. While our parents strove for dual-income households, these women were always a gentle presence that provided care without fanfare.

That’s why it feels like a good day to introduce Teresa, because she belongs to that world.

A character, briefly introduced: Teresa

Teresa, the no-nonsense and loving nanny in Distorted Is The View, is the holder. She wants dignity and safety, and a life that isn’t only service. She balances devotion and loyalty but also the weight of holding other people’s secrets.

As a guardian of continuity, she is the steady presence who keeps the Klaasen household from total collapse and gives the children something solid to lean against when other adults falter. She is emotionally and morally invested in holding a fragile world together.

In Making Room for Care: A Day in Hands, I called care “labour; a skill hidden in the architecture” and wrote of the “soft” tasks that require a whole body’s attention.

But what Teresa has taught me is this: care is not soft because it is easy. It is soft because it resists hardening. It keeps showing up and carries more than anyone sees.

A line Teresa might say: Some people call it helping. I call it holding what would fall if I let go.

A small beauty I noticed along the way: the many forms of mothering that ask for no title before they give love. These are aunts who remember what comforts you, the godmother who checks in at the right hour, the woman who is not your mother and yet leaves you feeling more held in the world.

A question for you: If you had a Teresa in your life, what is one thing you still remember about the way they cared for you?

Thanks for reading. May you remember the care that steadied you, especially when no one thought to name it!

Happy International Mother’s Day to all who celebrate it!

P.S. Distorted Is The View is coming out on June 9th, 2026.

Photo by Ashlee Marie on Unsplash


Prose

Making Room for the Child’s Knowing: Mercy

Posted on by Khaya Ronkainen / 7 Comments

Over the years, the characters of my forthcoming novel, Distorted Is The View, have become companions to me—sometimes mirrors, sometimes teachers. In my newsletter, I’ve been sharing a little of what they have taught me. Today, I’m bringing that series here to the blog.

A character, briefly introduced: Sam

Sam, the nine-year-old daughter at the heart of the story, is a witness. She notices but cannot safely say what she sees. What she wants is steadiness, a home that doesn’t crack.

She taught me that a child’s heart can hold far more than adults realise. Confusion, fear, disappointment, love and hope; all of it can live together there, without neat answers.

What moves me most about Sam is not innocence, but the quiet strength of her tenderness. She does not yet know how to harden herself in the way grown people do. She reminds me that love can remain present even where disappointment and hurt have entered the room.

We live in a culture that often has little patience or no room for human frailty. A culture that is quick to judge, cut off, cancel, decide who deserves mercy and who doesn’t. But children often reveal something else: an instinctive tenderness, a grace that feels close to mercy. Even when the adults around her falter, Sam keeps reaching toward love.

Mercy, forgiveness and grace are some values this novel kept asking me to consider. They are the very reason it took me years to finish writing this book. I was steeped in judgement and having a hard time forgiving a wrongness in my real life. That’s why now I plan to bring these values into every room I speak about this book.

A line from her (or what she might say): I only knew I was happy he had come, and for a little while that felt bigger than everything else.

A small beauty I noticed along the way: The sound of a child’s laughter arriving before the child herself, reminds me that joy can sometimes enter a room ahead of us and make space.

A question for you: What part of you still knows how to love without keeping score?

Thanks for reading. May your heart remain child-like, make space for love, even when it doesn’t feel earned.

P.S. If you’ve already read this in the newsletter, thank you for meeting it again here.
And Distorted Is The View is coming out on June 9th, 2026.