That moment, a very quiet moment, when I hold him close to me and both my arms are wrapped around him. His head is on my shoulder and his chest gently vibrates against mine. I feel his sweet breath at the side of my neck along with soft tiny arms clinging onto me. Everywhere is… Continue reading When the coffee’s cold and life is on hold
It’s been two weeks since I became a mom, and never have two weeks felt so long and so fast at the same time. I knew then that our lives would change. We had planned for, dreamed of, and prepared for this baby. But knowing and experiencing are at times as distant to each other… Continue reading Becoming a mom
The most powerful thing my body has ever done is to grow a life inside of it. No personal miracle that I have ever experienced comes close to discovering the scale of my body’s capacity: to create, transform, and nurture another life. It is a physical and emotional journey so incredibly overwhelming that I still… Continue reading What I really think about pregnancy
“Sometimes chaos is the very thing that deliberately shakes up our neatly ordered worlds in order to get us out of the neatly ordered ruts that have kept us stuck,” says Craig Lounsbrough. I just stumbled into a place commonly called a limbo. There are three big things that may have brought me here: becoming… Continue reading When being lost is okay
Dear Baby Willey, Currently, you’ve been in my tummy for 18 weeks. My app says you’re as big as a sweet potato, about 5.5 inches and 5 ounces. Another app says you’re the size of a croissant, and I’m imagining how your little face is reacting to the size references these pregnancy apps are giving… Continue reading To our baby inside me
We were biking along the streets of Luang Prabang, Laos. It was a December morning and another particularly chilly day (for my tropical standards). The streets were quiet---almost meditative. We stopped at a neighborhood pharmacy, parked our vintage Japanese bikes on the curb, and navigated our way into asking the middle-aged Laotian proprietress for a… Continue reading Really, we’re pregnant?
In multiple ways, I was prepared to do well as a first-time expat leaving my country, family, friends, career, routines, lifestyle, and almost everything that I knew too well. My husband and I decided to move to the Middle East when he accepted a new position. I “retired” from my career as assistant vice president… Continue reading What I didn’t expect about being an expat
We were seated on a long table out in the garden, an exquisite vintage blue and white ceramic plate across from each of us, and the sun straining through a half-arch vine of greens above us. From where my husband and I were seated, we could see the hill-like garden of Villa Galleotti, sprinkled neatly… Continue reading Hearts and bellies full in Tuscany
For weeks, I’ve fallen into the habit of over-rationalizing everything, suspending emotions over reason, getting too busy to pause, and keeping a neutral face amidst all the hasty changes that come with goodbyes.
Millennials (born from 1980 to 2000) have acquired a bad name. I am not alone in shunning this category to the point of disowning it. Insisting that I’m way older than my age, I pushed back from this purportedly lazy and entitled generation. Some realizations hit me as of late. Fifteen years ago, we had mobile phones… Continue reading This is how millennials are changing the world
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