( continues...) so much more about her to tell—her love of pink gingham and combat boots, often worn together; her fascination with scars and the stories they represent; her wonderfully complicated accent, a mixture of Jamaican, British, and thoroughly American, with some Canadian sounds thrown in; her fervent love of her sister, and her parents; her baking experiments and her favorite foods (bacon! goat!); her stories, her laugh, the hot-button issues that she was always ready to argue. Like anyone, she was made up of a million moving parts, but her heart was the steady, beating center of her, and she was incredibly generous with it. I can still remember my shock the day we heard that she had died. And somewhere in the memories and regrets and tears, I found myself wondering if you all knew, too. Which was absurd, of course, because you didn’t know her (she knew Colin Ferguson from university, and he knew just how much she loved Supernatural and especially Misha Collins’ Castiel), but it was unimaginable to me that people who had meant so much to her didn’t realize that she was gone.
Just like Bobby said on the show, family don’t end with blood. ita was family to so many of us, and a loud, proud member of the extended Supernatural family. It may not mean much to anyone but me, but I wanted you all to know her a little bit, and to understand what the show meant to her for so long. She would be so thrilled that it’s still going, and I know the Always Keep Fighting campaign would have resonated for her on a lot of levels. Thank you for that, and for letting me introduce you to ita.