January 20, 2026
Sharing the Light, by Monique Gray Smith
I think it’s because I already know her light that Monique Gray Smith’s Sharing the Light: Stories and Reflections means a little more to me to me than it might have otherwise. Having personally received its brilliant warmth, I can attest to the goodness—though that stunning cover would have attracted my attention all the same.
In November 2019, after her picture book My Heart Fills With Happiness was selected for the TD Grade One Giveaway and distributed to students across Canada, including my daughter, which I posted about on social media, Smith DM’d me to say she would be visiting Toronto to receive an award from the First Nations Community Reads Awards program, and she wondered if she could squeeze in a visit to my daughter’s school, the response from me and the school and everybody an emphatic YES, PLEASE. And what transpired was the most beautiful gathering, Smith sharing her light in the most gorgeous and generous way, the kind of togetherness whose loss I so grieved as the pandemic began not long after, and my children didn’t go to school for a long time.
And then sometime during that sad pandemic year, Smith created a short podcast series called “Love is Medicine,” whose message I clung to as I dealt with my own anxiety and grief about what we were all experiencing, and it helped me so much, such a counter to the messages of doom and gloom that were permeating my consciousness from everywhere else. Instead, with calm and kindness, and born from her own experiences of overcoming adversity, Smith told a different kind of story, one of quiet strength, persistence, possibility, and the hope that is found when we connect to each other.
These same messages are what Smith conveys in Sharing the Light, a book that seems very simple on its surface (some of its pages have just a handful of words), but which is quietly profound, and brave, and not without its twists (the part where she drives 150 miles an hour around a race track!!). Smith writes about gratitude, love, joy, happiness, and hope, about the power and abundance of these elements, and how the simple act of paying attention to them can strengthen our hearts and transform our lives, even in the most difficult of winters.
