Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love

by Sarah Leavitt

In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo's death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink, and coloured pencil - for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics. The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Memoir, LGBT, Nonfiction, Grief, Comics, Queer

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2024

About the author

Sarah Leavitt is the author of the graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (2010), and the historical graphic novel Agnes, Murderess (2019).

Tangles was published in Canada, the US, UK, Germany, France, and Korea. It was the first comic to be a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize, was a Globe and Mail best book of the year, and is currently in development as a feature-length animation with Vancouver-based Giant Ant Media and a US production company. Tangles has been included in a number of exhibitions, notably at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and the National Library of Medicine. Tangles is part of the curricula in both health and literature courses from Canada to the UK to India.

Agnes, Murderess represents quite a departure from Tangles — Sarah describes it as historical fiction with a touch of horror. It all started when Sarah was visiting a small historical site in the Cariboo and found a pamphlet about a nineteenth-century serial killer. This led to nine years of research, writing and drawing, as she figured out how to tell the story of Agnes McVee, an historical figure who maybe never really existed.

Sarah has developed and taught comics classes for the UBC Creative Writing Program since 2012, where she is stealthily working on converting as many writing students as possible into comics makers.

Reviews

[Rosh ~catching up slowly~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: A graphic novel memoir dealing with the author’s feelings after the death of her long-time partner. Depicts the helplessness and frustration of death effectively. Emotional throughout. Philosophical at times. Not my cup of tea but it might work better for the right reader.

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In April 2020, the author’s partner of 22 years, Donima, chose to have a medically-assisted death after suffering for many years from various severe ailments, including worsening chronic pain. She was only fifty-four, but most of her life had gone in dealing with her various conditions and injuries. This collection of comics was sketched by the author during her first two years without her partner. As she says, they show her “exploration of the new uncharted territory of personal grief.”

As you might guess from the above, the book is full of pain. Some might assume that the book charts the course through the five stages of grief, but as many of us who have actually gone through personal loss know, the five stages are mostly found only in textbooks. In real life, grief and its overcoming takes a much more circuitous journey, and not necessarily in the forward direction. This book confirms the same.

The tone is obviously a mix of intense negative feelings: dark thoughts, anger, frustration, confusion, helplessness… The murky pathways of grief are visible through the plethora of whats and what-ifs circulating in the author’s mind. I thought a part of the book would also include some fond memories of their relationship, but such content is limited. Most of the book is quite impressionistic, focussing on the general than on the specific.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this book, but I doubt I’ll pick up such a topic again. The content is so painful that it feels like you are intruding on someone’s private thoughts, like you are watching someone go through an emotionally-shattering crisis and you can’t do anything but stand by. It is very awkward to see such fierce personal pain on page. Though I couldn’t personally relate to many of the thoughts, I had to take regular breaks because of how intrusive it all felt. Plus, the tone is too philosophical, with some thoughts going highly abstract and even poetic – totally not for me, even though some of this might be justified by the content.

The illustrations are mostly in B&W, thus fitting well with the grieving tone. A few pages use some light rainbow hues, but not necessarily to indicate positive feelings. The graphics are fairly unstructured, depicting the cacophony in the author’s mind well. Some pages are neater with clearer illustrations while some just feel like scribbles.

Basically, this was too esoteric for my taste. But the book has a highly positive rating on GR, so it definitely has many fans; don’t allow my opinion to dissuade you.

Recommended to those who find the content and style appealing.

2.5 stars.


This was a library read.

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Connect with me through:
My Blog || The StoryGraph || Instagram || Facebook ||

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, wow, I've never read a book so visceral and heartbreaking while simultaneously so life-affirming and full of love. This is a collection of comics the author made in the two years following the death of her partner of 22 years, Donimo. Leavitt writes in her introduction: “After Donimo's death, I continued living, which surprised me."

SOMETHING NOT NOTHING does so much more than nearly all the other comics I've read and does it so differently, it almost doesn't feel *like* a comic. But, of course, it is. The formal experimentation and abstract watercolour art pair perfectly with Leavitt's words, like:

"Honestly I kind of thought you'd be back. Probably after a year. If I could just keep it together and the house was clean and the dog alive."

On a trip to a beautiful place in nature: “Fuck the rocks and their ongoing never-ending lives.”

“Delight: Hold out your hand step forward bow your head fall and let yourself see the let yourself into the step aside let yourself fall until she has you and you are caught and her eyes and teeth and never so scared or so much bright”

Leavitt oftentimes finds just the perfect way to describe and depict the illogical way your brain works when you're grieving.

I know this sounds like a heavy book, and it is of course, of course I cried many times reading it, but it is so worth it.

[Maia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2020, Sarah Leavitt's partner of more than 20 years, Domino, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. Leavitt, a cartoonist and writer, tried to make sense of this decision through comics and abstract watercolor paintings. The result is a gorgeous, heart wrenching, deeply human meditation on love and loss. There were pages that lifted my spirits and pages that pierced me to my core. I sobbed through the majority of reading it, but couldn't put it down. Leavitt's mapmaking of the landscape of grief is a gift to us all.

[Pelin · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow that had me fighting tears during my lunch break at work. Glad I saw Sally's review for this and that VPL holds it! This made me feel grief when I have nothing but future grievances to feel. An incredibly raw and heartwrenching artistic expression of emotion

[bri]

very very beautiful exploration of grief

[Sally Elhennawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few words for how hard this one hit. So beautiful and heart wrenching I can’t even wrap my head around it. Shout-out creative writing lounge for displaying faculty books such that we can actually read them (English department take notes!). This book is going to linger with me for a while.

[Ags · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first comics, initially depicting a partner's assisted death after decades of chronic pain, totally floored me. So beautiful, sparse, poetic, and wow I CRIED.

The rest of the book is often lovely, often simultaneously sad + life-affirming. From the comic style to the words/verses included, it felt like I was peeking into an artist's private journal (which is sort of the back-story to this book). Sometimes, this felt raw and beautiful - other times it felt more half-baked than finished. But!! That might totally be the intention.

[Cesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just gimme depression.

But actually, this is a beautiful portrayal of grief and how it feels and doesn’t feel. It simply isn’t something you can describe with words alone.

I enjoyed this read.

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you rate someone's experience moving through grief? I don't think you can. This graphic novel, while named comics, feels more like meditations on grief and loss, or even poetry at times. This hurt so much to read and I was sobbing through most of it, unable to see and just in so much pain for this author. It was beautiful and the art paired with it layered this depiction of grief in new ways. I can't express how much I love and needed this, and while I can see this may not be for everyone, it was exactly what I needed.

[Victoria]

read for class. this made me cry :(

[lisa van dieden · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was so beautiful, and i cried so much

[Jeanelle d'Eon · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you even begin to write a review on a book like this? The only option is 5/5 stars.

I could only read a few panels at a time. The grief radiated through both the art and the writing. Sarah was living through my nightmare. I don’t know how I would put one foot in front of the other if I had to help Cody make an appointment for medical assistance in dying.

The art was beautiful. The heartbreak was crushing.

[Tenli · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary work of expressive art, beautiful to look at and to read.

[Kathy Kubik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, heartbreaking.

[Mariam · Rating 5 out of 5]

So fricking sad

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

Formally excellent comics exploring a deeply devastating grief. Lots to learn from Leavitt’s approach. Raw, real, heartwrenching.

[Max Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, such a beautiful, heartfelt and tender graphic novel about grief and love. I’m really grateful I picked this one up. One of my all time favorites

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone with ME/CFS I found this pretty traumatizing and others with this condition should keep that in mind going in. That said, this is a monumental work of art on death and grief (and illness). The visuals are so staggering, so gut-wrenching in a way that’s hard to articulate — which is part of why I found it so brutal to read.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

2025 Eisner-nominated Best Graphic Memoir

Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love (2024 by Sarah Leavitt is the anguished, inventive, deeply inspiring, deeply sad story of the passing of her lover of 22 years and how she recovered through art. So it's a familiar story, but what is surprising--and what was surprising for her--is that she felt led to describe the experience of loss and recovery with such (for her) accuracy, even the surreal, out-of-body strangeness/madness and it led her to use artistic materials and directions she had never tried before. It's all here, or enough of it (not too much!) so we get a sense of it. That's the most interesting part of this, that she was almost like on auto-pilot, led to creative regions she had never known or anticipated knowing in her experience.

Sarah's partner was in unrecoverable, excruciating pain, and needed to go the direction of assisted suicide, so that is part of this story.

And yet, as heavy as this sounds, there is so much invention and color and life and love as a kind of tribute to her partner that this became inspiring. We all grieve and will grieve again. We need these evocative guides to help us through this. . . land we enter as we don't want to, like a land of dreams (and nightmares, of course). She calls it a journey, familiarly, but it is arduous and meaningful. Highly recommend.

[Jordana Raine-Spak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know if words can truly describe how I feel about this memoir. I think in many ways, this will stay with me. I will go back to this and reread and see new things in the art, the words. A new line to haunt and take hold of me.

I was lucky enough to hear Sarah share parts of her memoir. It was a moving panel, one that left me teary-eyed, and I swear my aunty was sitting behind me, saying, “I’m here,” while another family friend put their hand on my shoulder. It was beautiful and I knew I had to buy this memoir.

This week, while reading the words and absorbing the art, I thought of my Aunt and family friend, and my dear best friend who passed away too many years ago and at too young of an age. I felt the grief come again while reading Sarah’s words. I cried while I said them out loud.

I’ve told different people this week that I love this memoir. I love the accessibility that graphic memoirs provide to readers who may not enjoy memoirs, or non fiction writing. I have also told them, that while I love this memoir, I have cried every single day while reading it.

I know I could go on and on about how this memoir blurs the lines between a genres and then reinvents the wheel of the art of graphic novels, with the water coloured panels of abstract art. I hope people pick this memoir up. I hope they find the same beauty that I found.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was stunning.

I mean that literally. I had to read this in pieces, because just about every page felt like it broke my heart open.

I try to read at least one graphic novel a year. It’s a challenge I set myself: they’re not a favourite format of mine. I always find that my brain keeps separating the art and the words – it’s a choppy experience, and hard work for me to get through.

Something, Not Nothing, is the first time I’ve read a graphic novel where this wasn’t the case. It barely felt like reading – it just felt like a beautiful, heartbreaking absorption of heartache and life and loss. The watercolour images bleed saturated feeling into Sarah Leavitt’s achingly gorgeous observations about grief. The whole thing felt less like reading and more like just feeling and sharing an experience. It felt like Leavitt opening her heart, and like mine responding.

Something, Not Nothing talks about medically assisted death, which is how Leavitt’s partner, Domino, passes away. It’s a controversial subject, and I’m glad the book highlights it, but this is primarily an account of grief. I cried often, as will anyone who has grieved, but in the same breath, and in the same beautiful painted panels, there is hope, brimming with life.

Astonishing.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah is someone I know, and I respect her as a person and an artist. But I don't know her well enough to have known the heartache she went through when she lost her partner Donimo. I knew about Donimo's long history of pain, and their struggles with the medical system, and I could only imagine how devastating it was, to make the decision to end Donimo's life, and what that would mean to Sarah after spending nearly half her life with this person who she loved deeply. Sarah expressed so well the experience of losing her mother to Alzheimer's, in her previous book, I knew I needed to read this book as well. This is a very different book, as much an art project -- the very definition of a graphic memoir, really. It is expressed with chaos, as her mind and heart felt chaotic, in the days and months (and years) leading up to Donimo's death, and the days and months (and years) afterward. I truly felt her anger and sadness and eventually, her acceptance, of both the grief and the moving on from the grief. The confusion of moving on. Sarah is an exceptional artist, with the ability to express her emotions honestly and intensely.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gorgeous testament to a loving relationship and an honest, artistic exploration of grief. Sarah Leavitt's art and prose captures the immense difficulty of losing a long-term love. When her partner of 22 years, Donimo seeks medically assisted death after decades of undiagnosable, untreatable pain and decline, Sarah finds a way to honor her, examine her own profound feelings of loss, and make sense of life that continues on, with half missing. The title refers to their shared belief, based on a rabbi's writing that after death, there is something, not nothing. Though that is a comfort, it still leaves a myriad of unknowns that Leavitt explores through her drawings and watercolor panels. The colors alone express her journey with black and white line drawings and beautifully colored washes that accompany words. Both are equally powerful and could probably tell the story individually, but that would also be missing half. I'm continually impressed and intrigued by the graphic artform and the unique way it 'reads.' We are richer for it.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book both beautiful and very evocative. It certainly made me remember what extreme grief feels like, even though I have never experienced this particular form of grief.

Sarah Leavitt (the author) and her partner, Donimo have been together for 22 years. But Donimo is not well. She suffers a number of ailments that make her sicker and sicker. She has chronic pain, nausea and exhaustion. She develops fibromylgia,, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and POTS as well as a number of other conditions. Eventually, she is bed bound. She begins to plan for medically assistance in dying.

This book is sad, and beautiful and starts with Sarah's slow doodles as she tries to get herself back into making comics. At first she is simply drawing frames, but then they turn into little poems/stories. There is also some joy in this book, as Sarah has some adventures, and remembers happier days.

However, I'm writing this review and my eyes are welling up. I was definitely affected by this book. I think it would be hard for me to talk about without crying.

[Mike Broderick · Rating 3 out of 5]

With respect to Sarah and her loss, also to the opinions of my fellow readers, I am in the minority too.
In fact, in the category of Graphic Novels, I like Salt, Green, Death better.

I agree that this was an emotional piece with a beautiful message.
I don’t appreciate graphic novels. That should be noted. There are some that I have enjoyed, but none I enjoy at any level close to true novels.

I did not think the artistic part of this was great. It is quite possible my own inability to appreciate the art may be impacting my appreciation for this title. I also thought that at times, it looked like she just threw down whatever was coming into her brain, without organization. Perhaps this is part of what moved many readers.

I think the story is a good idea. I think that more awareness of what is trying to be achieved through assisted suicide is important. I think this book goes a long way to highlighting the ability for people to leave this earth with dignity, on their own terms.
But, it missed the mark for me.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part poetry, part art, part memoir; this holds selections of the author's artwork from the two years following the death of their partner.

The illustrations are mostly watercolor blocks of no specific thing, mostly colors and vibes. Some have pencil or pen drawings over the top of the watercolor; they aren't pretty, and this style might not be for everyone, but it worked well with the text.

The text tends to be repetitive as the thoughts spiral, but this felt very... accurate. This is how my mind spirals. Written down, it looks like how record skips sound.

If connecting to another person in the middle of grief would help a person in the first year or two after loss, this could be a good suggestion. Maybe save, for most readers, until they have some more distance. The description of the author's partner's illness, pain, medical providers (or lack thereof), and choice to die with dignity could make this useful in a book group or with medical programming (End of Life Ready or Death with Dignity) or exhibits.

[Elizabeth Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content Warnings: Chronic Illness, Assisted Suicide, Grief, Existential Anxiety/Dread, Aging Anxiety/Dread

Leavitt's graphic memoir collects comics from two years after the loss of partner of 22 years, who chose assisted suicide as a relief from her chronic illness. The raw emotion imbued into the art, with its mixture and variations between heavy, dark colors, and blends of brightness, can be felt immediately as the manifestation of grief and the journey through it. The comics are presented in the chronological order in which they were created, which allows readers to follow Leavitt as she navigates from the beginning of her loss.

While this is a powerful memoir, there are many comics where there's not much story or text to help interpret the images, which means some parts may feel unrelated or skippable. As artistic renderings of grief and recovery, I think these work, but I can see others wanting more direction in how to interpret them.

[Aurakinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man this was a rough read, emotionally. 15 pages in I started crying, and then it just continued. It's always hard to know how to describe personal works like this. The subject matter was very close to heart. The narrative style itself wasn't really my thing, which is why it gets 4 stars rather than 5. But I really admire people putting their souls out like this. The art and wordings felt so intimate, like I was reading a picture based diary. Especially when I got to the rough pencil sketches, I got the startling feeling of "wait, am I too close? Am I allowed to read this?".

It was brutal reading about the author's journey and her different stages of grief and finding her footsteps again. So much of it hit close to home, and I'm so grateful I got to read a story by someone who understands the feelings and is able to put them on paper like this.

[Mik]

This book is so intimate. As a read I feel like we act as an ear to someone in grief. I loved some of the visual moments in this book, the abstract invited me to sit quietly for a bit and let how ever the images made me feel wash over. I think that is part of grief; not fighting the currents as they sweep you up, hold you down, and allow for moments of air.

It is for the reason that I feel such a vulnerable piece should be judged by its quality or "value" by a star system. In all honesty it wasn't my cup of tea. But I respect the courage it takes to be with this level of pain. I hope the author/illustrator found what they needed in the process of its creation. And I know many readers out there will connect deeply with what is shared.

[Caleste Hawthorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really lovely read. I want to call it a story but that doesn't seem right with the work and processing of grief. The artwork was also really beautiful to support the written journey. I had been talking to my mom about grief and she mentioned how no one is ever prepared for it. I was able to talk about this book and how even in a case where a person is going with a medical assisted death, a situation where you have to do so much preparation, you still won't be prepared for the grief.

On a global level, I was really happy to see that this author who shared their grief so beautifully has also been vocal in calling for a ceasefire. As much as I do love engaging with work, the author's values really impacts how I engage with the work.