My ex-husband and I wore identical white gold wedding bands. I sold my ring a couple of years back when my cash inflow became sparse as a newish business owner. Besides, it was not like I could wear it anymore either; it was just locked up in one of my drawers. But my wedding dress…

Starbucks coffee and a chicken sandwich in hand, I took my seat at the airport facing the bar from a few feet away. My flight to Chicago was delayed by about an hour. I decided to finish up client notes from the day before. A woman singing a vacation song entered the scene. She walked…

Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry posted Instagram pictures of attending Coachella in April 2026. They seem to have found their people, like honey and lemon or pastry and cheese. They also seem to share some features, and an astrologist or psychic once described them as past loves from another realm. As…

My dad always gifted me books on my birthday growing up. At ten, I had all the simplified versions of literary classics like Peter Pan, Treasure Island, and David Copperfield. My grandfather, a Sri Lankan postal service administrator who took to the typewriter after retirement, had his poetry published in an American publication of the…

During the first few sessions of a coaching engagement, my client and I, we try our best to get clear on their desired outcome, a subjective or objective way to measure progress towards that outcome, and the heaviest belief that’s keeping them from that desire. When we land on this heaviest belief, I might say…

I come from a meandering river of pain Bottled clouds on my mother’s face Doubled bricks on my father’s back Hushed guts of my ancestors And God knows what shrouds and droughts Before them all

I can’t swim, but I swam upstream, upbolt, upside, updown I can’t swim, but I swam away from the nice, kind, tight man towards new and exciting and grunt-worthy work I said I can’t swim, but I swam And a praise-gushing, rage-ramming swimmer I became because there was and is no other way Is there?

As winter began thinning here in Toronto, I have been going on more walks. On one of these walks on a sunny weekday afternoon, I saw a dead bird and a dead squirrel buried under the melting snow on the sidewalk. The insides of the bird were mangled by the winter cold, but the squirrel…

I first moved to Oregon, USA, in August of 2012. I was 27, technically a fully-formed adult, although on the metric of wisdom and openness, I would have scored pretty inadequate. I moved sight unseen, only aware of relatively high crime rates and rainfall. I didn’t care; anywhere would be better than where I was,…