Tony Stewart

Tony Stewart is the author of the award-winning memoir Carrying the Tiger, a deeply intimate account of loving, caregiving, and grieving alongside his wife, the painter Lynn Kotula, through her terminal cancer.

Together, Tony and Lynn traveled extensively through India and Southeast Asia, living simply, staying off the beaten path, and learning to trust the body — eating with their hands, adapting, surrendering to what was. That same orientation toward life — presence over control — became essential as illness entered their marriage.

After Lynn’s death, Tony continued to live inside grief rather than around it. Inspired by the writing of Carrying the Tiger, he studied with David Kessler and is now a Certified Grief Educator, offering peer-to-peer grief support and speaking with grief communities — not as an expert standing above grief, but as someone who has lived it.