A new graphic novel hopes to show that there isn’t one right way to grieve after a family member goes missing.
In Little Moons, author Jen Storm highlights how when a loved one goes missing, your heart searches for them everywhere.
“I felt that there was a presence. I would feel lights flickering and you’re just looking for that connection,” says Storm about her own grieving process after a close friend went missing.
Though Little Moons isn’t based on her personal experience, Storm, an Ojibwe writer from Couchiching First Nation in northwestern Ontario, says it’s a subject that’s all too common within the Indigenous community.
She’s not the first person to write a story about the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S) but says the focus on a grieving family sets it apart.
“I think what is missing from a lot of stories is… how they go through grief while waiting for answers or waiting for this person to show up,” says Storm. “I think that was a really hard thing for me to experience and I know it’s hard for other families to experience who deal with MMIW because not everyone is found, right?
“So, there’s like this weird grief you go through when you’re expecting the worse news – you kind of already know, but you don’t have the answers, or the mourning, or the body.”
Through vivid colours and thought-provoking illustrations by Ryan Howe and Alice RL, Little Moons follows 13-year-old Reanna while she watches her immediate family deal with the disappearance of her older sister Chelsea.
“Chelsea, what happened to you? Can you talk to me somehow, Chelsea? Chels, please, we need you,” says a desperate Reanna while grieving in Little Moons.
Each character in the story has their own process for dealing with the pain of missing their loved one.
Reanna feels abandoned by her mother, who leaves their reserve to live in the city when emotions get too difficult to handle.
“People don’t react ideally, they react humanly,” Storm tells APTN News, who adds that she wrote the characters to be relatable, not perfect. “If you lost a daughter … you don’t know what would go through your mind or how you would cope.”
Storm has written and contributed to a handful of other books in her over two decades of storytelling – the first, Deadly Loyalties, being when she was just 13 years old.
She says she likes the graphic novel format of Little Moons because “you have artwork to do so much more of the storytelling that you don’t have to paint with words anymore”.
Amongst drawings of Reanna dancing at a powwow, and panels showing the seasons change, readers are also introduced to an unsavoury character, Tom, who Storm says is an example of the vices we go to when in pain.
“He was somebody [Reanna’s mother] sees as a comfort or a distraction,” says Storm, “He symbolized the terrible things when you turn your back on who you are – the kind of treatment you welcome or accept when you’re not being true to yourself.”
Despite the pain, there is also hope found within Little Moons.
Reanna finds strength and comfort in connecting with spiritual practices.
“It was really important to me for the main character to really have that connection to her community and her traditions and to find comforts and then also have that parallel of her mother who felt she had to run away from it.”
Connecting with lost loved ones through other realms of existence was important for Storm to include in Little Moons, with Reanna and her younger brother Theo experiencing paranormal happenings while missing their sister.
Storm says the title was inspired by her own young son’s experience of seeing a ghost of her late childhood friend, who had gone missing prior to her death.
“He was in his crib – he was saying ‘I saw auntie, I saw auntie!’ and he’s never met her,” says Storm, “I just kind of played along and I was like ‘well, what did auntie look like then?’ and he said ‘she looked like little moons’.”
Storm hopes Little Moons can be a resource for any person, young or old, who is struggling with a missing loved one.
Readers can find it on store shelves when it comes out Sept. 3.
