On March 1, 2021, I sat in my car outside the Sevier County Health Department for the required 15 minutes to ensure I didn’t have an allergic reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine a woman had just injected into my arm. My eyes brimmed with tears—after so much time isolated in a town that still felt new to me … More January/February: Isolation/Belonging
On the first evening of the new year, my friend Steph and I crouched on the cold concrete floor of my garage with hammers in hand. Small metal rings were scattered before us, along with metal stamps of the alphabet. We’d spent the prior hours journaling about our intentions for the year ahead and distilling … More An Introduction to Routine
“That morning, my understanding of listening expanded and I was reshaped yet again. It sounds simple and obvious but it takes time to listen; time for the deeper things to show themselves. Just as we can’t see all the phases of the moon on any one night, we can’t hear the phases of truth or … More An Everglades Return
I sat on my new balcony patio, still in pajamas, sipping coffee in the warmth of the rising sun. I read a book by a woman who had set out to write a scholarly account of two Wyoming botanists. As she followed the research, her writing morphed into a memoir of plants and place. This is how it goes, it seems, when we allow our thinking minds to slowly cede back to our open hearts. Who knows where we’ll end up, where we’ll return, what wisdom we’ll find in the flora. … More Fresh Starts to Fresh Starts
I walked up to the front door of the little country house, breathing in the calm of the surrounding farmland and mountains. Thirty minutes prior I’d been in the bustling little city of Asheville, my latest hometown, cars zipping down Merrimon Avenue with little respect for life. Arriving here felt like home. I knocked on … More Stories Around the Table
For whatever reason, there are certain memories that stick with you. The details may become fuzzy as the years pass by, but there’s usually some defining moment within the memory that ties you to it. I remember being in elementary school, rollerblading in circles in our garage, and having a moment where I thought, “If … More Kindness for Unkindness
I stood anxiously with the others. We all waited, silently, many staring down at bright little screens, to board the long elevator down to the metro. None of us looked at each other, and the man with the sign didn’t look at us either. He didn’t call out, forcing us to acknowledge his existence, pushing … More Angels in “The Swamp”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she said, “No one is prepared.” In about a week, I’d be biking 150 miles as part of the Johns Hopkins Ride to Conquer Cancer to honor the life of my grandmother who had passed away from esophageal cancer three years prior. I’d had grand plans of fully training for … More Why I Rode: In Suffering, There is Joy
During our junior year of college, my roommate, Tiffany, made a short film for her digital arts class as a first attempt at video editing. Knowing my penchant for acting foolish, she asked me to be in it. The film was titled, “…It Was Okay,” and chronicled two women’s very different days—one terrible and one … More The Secrets of Returning
In January, I attended the Martin Luther King, Jr. joint Shabbat service of Sixth & I Synagogue and Turner Memorial AME Church. During his sermon, Turner Memorial’s pastor remarked, “There is faith and there is fear, and they both require belief.” I remember my mom taking me to the airport once and saying with the … More Woman Solo: An Everglades Love Story
ROUGH OUTLINES 