In the Space Between Words and Silence

A conversation on books, ideas, and the life of a writer with Maria

Maria Westlund

Intro Today I bring you something a little different from the usual.

I’m delighted to share an interview with Maria Westlund, the writer behind the Substack Writer's Corner .

Maria is a writer, with 2 self-published books of essays and poetry. She is 88 years old, from Sweden, now living in BC, Canada. Her writing focuses on empowering and uncovering – our self-image, self-talk, fears, beliefs. She explores everything, even taboos.

I have followed Maria since the early days of her newsletter, and over time we developed a friendship behind the scenes of our writing lives. We have never met in person, yet there is a sense of familiarity between us that is difficult to explain.

Maria is 88 years old, a fact that I find both inspiring and fascinating. She is one of the oldest writers on Substack. And as you'll soon discover, she is also one of the wisest.

There is something remarkable about seeing someone of her generation engaging so thoughtfully and consistently with the online world. Through her newsletter, she shares poetry and essays that often become philosophical reflections on life, shaped by an extraordinary personal journey and a wealth of experience.

This is the first part of our conversation. The second part will be published here next Monday.

That said, buckle up, come with me, and prepare to experience Maria Westlund’s extraordinary journey through time.

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Could you tell me a little about yourself?

• Maria: I'm an immigrant from Sweden, living in BC, Canada since 2004. I'm half Austrian, half Swedish. I am now a widow, 88 years old. After finishing school and university I became an editor at publishing houses. I have been married twice and I have one daughter. Half of my professional life I was self-employed.

I’m curious about your multicultural experience throughout your life. What do you think you’ve absorbed from Austrian culture, Swedish culture, and now Canadian culture?

• Maria: Sweden in the 40s and 50s was I think very “insular”. I was early aware of “a world out there”, not only about WW2. Multicultural meant multi- linguistical. Emphasis was put upon learning other languages. And it meant emigration. My Austrian mother emigrated to Sweden when she married my father, so my parents spoke German between them (until I began to understand it!).

  
  My mothers parents and her brother with wife had emigrated/fled before the war to the States, to New York. This meant that I later wrote in English to them. My daughter married a Canadian man and emigrated 1992. 11 years later my husband and I emigrated to join her, making me the fourth woman in our family to emigrate. I never went back.
  

  I have not absorbed much from the Austrian culture. Having spent 65 years in Sweden, this was the dominant culture. Though I never felt at home there – I’m too “odd” and eccentric maybe or simply not compatible with the culture. Imagine a country that until recently had a state religion which was mandatory. I left it at age 15. Religious freedom is sacred for me.
  

  Coming to Canada was a relief. This is a multicultural country of immigrants. Salt Spring Island, where I live, has felt like home since I first visited and then later moved here.

Interesting. I sensed a certain rebelliousness of spirit in your words. How did that manifest itself in your family and social life?

• Maria: You sensed correctly. It DID manifest, it caused mothers fury and boxed ears for me. Unfair, I thought. I had just tried to protect myself from too much regulation. Later it showed up in me being both very accommodating and keen on cooperating and also prone to speak up when I thought things were crazy and needed to be changed. I was often met with a: “It can’t be done” or such, but defeatism was not on my menu. Still isn’t.

So, we have a woman with a free spirit and strong ideas of her own, shaped in part by a cultural mix that seems to encourage that. How was your educational journey like?

• Maria: I went through 13 years of school. Apart from the first four the rest, which coincided with my teens, was Struggle. When I was 12 my mother got breast cancer, and I became her part time caregiver for more than a decade. Family life was falling apart. My father was slowly sliding into mental illness: He took his life when I was 17.

  School was hard; with many subjects I needed extra tutoring. I also felt like a stranger among my class mates. Things improved during the last two years when I got the support of the principal, who also taught Swedish. She was a progressive person, feminist and pacifist, and she encouraged my writing. I graduated with good grades (to my big surprise!).

  This principal was instrumental in convincing my mother to let me to go to university to become a teacher, instead of quickly becoming a secretary so I could support her. The principal became my mentor while I studied – first to a BA, then a MA, then teachers university. During the university years I finally got my wings and took my degrees in record time. But when I finally had my license, I realized that I’m not fit for this, I can’t be a teacher! So, what should I do?

What an incredible story. But before we get into what you decided to do, what was your experience like as your mother’s caregiver and dealing with your father’s mental illness, followed by his suicide?

• Maria: We had a maid trice a week, my father was rarely at home, and my mother was mostly ill. I became an “adult”, did shopping and cooking and planned my schoolwork. Many evenings I was the “receptionist” for patients who visited the doctor who rented two rooms in our big flat for their private clinic for mental illnesses. I feared those patients because they often behaved oddly. It also interrupted my homework. I had mixed feelings around my “jobs”, pride but also stress and the added worry about not passing all the exams in school.
  

  Our family life was filled with tensions. My father and I tried to connect. We both liked playing cards, but mother often interrupted us. My parents tried to protect me from knowing about our shaky family economy. My father, in his efforts to live up to my mother’s material standard requirements, had left his profession as a pianist and became a CEO for a knitwear factory.
  
  He also did financial speculations, involving two relatives’ fortunes, ruined those and went bankruptcy. His mental illness worsened and at last he took his life.

  After his death my mother’s brother supported us financially. To help my mother and do the work I did was okay. To endure her temper tantrums and her hitting my face was not. I withdrew emotionally. When I married, my husband at first moved in with us, but the conflicts between mother and me finally caused my hubby and me to move out and leave her.

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What’s it like for you to relive these traumatic memories from your past?

• Maria: Here’s the thing. As long as I was IN the therapeutic process of dealing with all the events, feelings, reactions and painful details of those traumatic events, as soon as I brought them up I was emotionally “thrown back” into them, reliving them. That could mean getting a dry mouth, increased heartbeat, tears, anger or whatever came up. The memories were still wounds. They still seeped blood.
  

  What happened in this strange healing I have called the Shift, is that I literally shifted into a new version of myself, the most palpable, dramatic shift ever. This is as best as I can explain it. It didn’t happen over night. It took a while before I noticed that it felt so different to be me. I was happy, joyous and at ease all the time. Sometimes even euphoric. My physical challenges didn’t bother me. It was like having bounced from one extreme to another.

Fascinating, Maria. So you're saying there are two versions of you: one before the "Shift" and one after it. Could you tell us how that has affected your personal life, your interests, and perhaps even your behaviour?

• Maria: It is fascinating for me too. The Shift affected my personal life fundamentally. My interests basically stayed the same, although I went from being an avid reader to being an avid writer. I had started writing poetry in English when Covid started. Now I began writing essays too. Having slowly “conquered” the world of the computer (wrote my first email in 2020), I now explored the internet, especially YouTube.

  With the strange “isolation” of the 8 years I was my husband’s caregiver behind me, I began to socialize more. Given that my back injury five years ago had left me mobility challenged, this meant my friends came to me. In general my relationships deepened. I was more consciously identifying myself as soul, and then meeting other people as souls as well. I had a new sense of Self, integrity and “okay-ness”, being my own BFF.

  I had never lived by myself, and before my husband died that was a concern. I wondered for example who would “save me” if I had one of my recurring nightmares!? When I well was a widow the fear was gone. And I have not had a single nightmare since.

  Most noticeable was how different I felt. Safe. Calm. At ease. At peace. Living with with complex PTSD was often exhausting. The contrasts between Before and After began to register. I feel balanced and mostly happy. I don’t sweat the small stuff, no micromanaging. I don’t fear feelings or evade them. The difficult ones I just sit with, careful not to repress them. This is how I know that my change is genuine. I’m unprovoked by things that used to freak me out. One exception: I still have hang ups when tech stuff is at hand, and the learning curve of mastering computer navigation has been (and still is) a challenge. A major change is that I now feel that: “I can handle this”, while earlier so often panic took over.

  I feel ALIVE on a completely new level. It’s like waking up from a long dream.

That seems like a major change to me. I can see that you've experienced firsthand some of the things that great writers write about. So I have a question: Why poetry?

• Maria: That’s easily answered. It is a way of living and perceiving. It is an expression of my artist’s soul, the best medium I have found. If I had more talent I might have been a painter too. I have made many paintings – two of them adorn the covers of my two self-published books.

  Sadly, I am uninterested in learning about cameras and photography, so I never used that medium. Yet, all my life I HAVE taken pictures – in my mind. It’s simply how I perceive my world – visually, in images. When my husband, a very gifted photographer, was alive, I proudly acted as his muse and went with him on photo rounds, often pointing out possible motives.

  Writing poetry is something I have done since my teens. My first collection of poetry was in Swedish. Poetry is one way of giving birth to ideas, emotions and visions. In a poem I can paint an atmosphere, a mood, or a situation. I feel free to play and to experiment with forms and meter. It’s as if poetry combines both the visual and the verbal. It also has an element of rhythm, which I feel is important. Even landscapes have rhythm.

  But while my paintings never felt adequate as expressions of my inner images or ideas, my poems do.

Maria and me when we finally met in person

I can see that you’re a multifaceted person. But there’s something I’m eager to know: What makes an 88-year-old woman write online?

• Maria: I want to reach out to an audience, and I want to interact with people in this audience and others as well. I’m fascinated by interaction, as well as with the interconnection between all of us that exists on the deeper levels. Social media in general is not my thing, but on Substack I have found many creatives with whom meaningful interaction comes naturally – in the form of comments to my posts and my comments to other’s writing.
  

  When I say, “reach out”, I mean that not only in the way writers want to reach people. It’s also that I strongly feel that I have something to share that can be of help to others. I feel very privileged because of my life experiences – a lifetime of trauma, ten years of therapy and after that this strange “Shift” into being whole. This gives me the “double” perspective, where I can still relate to almost any painful or challenging scenario people bring up, but at the same time bring into the conversation what a healed perspective might look like.
  

  Add to this is that I am mobility challenged after my back injury, and I live rurally on a small island in BC. Going anywhere without my walker is a chore, and usually requires help. That makes me a bit restricted, so internet is my window to a larger world. I have a tribe of close family and friends, but most of my time I spend alone. With writing, thinking and reading. My online life is a tech challenge still.
  
  Thankfully, I don’t mind challenges because they make my inner growth possible and exiting as well. And let me add that being and writing online has been a lot of fun and meant a widening of both my horizons and my knowledge, which for a curiosity driven person like me is a great bonus.

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Our conversation holds even more surprises, so next Monday Maria and I will be back to share the second part of this interview.

I invite you to subscribe to Maria Substack:

© Rolando Andrade, 2026

Final thought: If these words stayed with you for a moment,
this space might be for you too.

I write here every week —
sometimes in the open,
sometimes a little closer,
for those who choose to stay.