My name is Shannon Smith and I became a widow in November 2022 after my husband and best friend Lorne passed from Metastatic Melanoma. 

We were married for fifteen years and have two amazing kids; Sam who is now 11, and Ainslie who is now 6. I live just outside Toronto, Canada but grew up on the Atlantic Ocean in Nova Scotia.

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I am also a Special Education teacher in a K-8 school. I've been an educator for over 23 years and after losing Lorne and having to send my own grieving children back into the school system, I realized that our system was very ill-equipped to care for my kids. I also realized that I had done a disservice to kids who had previously been in my care when they were dealing with grief and trauma. 

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So here I am, as someone who now knows better, trying to do better. I know that I am only one person, and that changing the system would be too challenging a task on my own. But if I can help you find your voices, we can change many systems, one educator, one school at a time.