Kim (not her real name) and I bonded when our sons played on the same travel basketball team. For years, we spent weekend after weekend together in loud, testosterone-filled gyms, rife with the smell of boy sweat and breakfast sandwiches. We always sat in the same place on…
At 17, I Gave My Baby Up. I Never Expected The 2-Word Message My Child Would One Day Send Me.
January 5, 2026
Three years later, when I turned 20, I moved cross-country, a thousand miles away from my friends and family — and Hanna. Leaving my hometown was another part of my letting go of my daughter, a process I began the day that I put her in the arms of her new parents. Seeing…
One of the challenges of my childhood, I grew to understand, was that my parents’ narrative looked true — we seemed to be living a privileged life by being able to sail to gorgeous places like Vanuatu and Fiji in the South Pacific. But the reality was very…
I Took My White Husband's Last Name. I Didn't Realize How It Would Affect The Rest Of My Life.
January 4, 2026
I didn’t want to change my last name. I dragged my feet as a young 21-year-old bride, waging an internal battle between my desire to maintain my identity with the desire to embrace my new husband, which, tradition insisted, included his name.
For months after our wedding…
As a child, my first brush with a ghost wasn’t Casper or some other spook from a children’s book. I encountered the real deal in the house we rented in Pennsylvania after my family emigrated from Kuwait. It was over a century old, essentially the size and strength of a…
My Historic Home Was Beautiful. It Was Also Slowly Killing My Triplets.
December 28, 2025
When I first saw our home, I was absolutely blown away. The 4,500 square-foot 1906 Detroit house boasted giant historic windows, two staircases and so many doors that little kids could run circles through every floor of the house. There were nooks and crannies, tons of…
