Published Essays | Online
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The commotion outside our apartment highlighted the quiet within. Unspoken words poked at the cracks in our marriage, picking them apart, unravelling their edges. They were becoming harder to ignore.
I was in Dhaka, Bangladesh for the summer, spending time with my husband and our fourteen-year-old daughter. He was Bangladeshi American and working on a project here.…
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My daughter is an only child, so our relationship is supremely precious to me. Admittedly, I helicoptered my way through the first 18 years of her life, likely inserting myself a little too much at times. Now that she's in college, I'm shifting the parenting balance to honor her independence. In the three years since she's gone away to school, I've learned new ways to support her at this stage of life.
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My husband of nearly 20 years dumped me unceremoniously on an otherwise unremarkable Friday evening in January. We'd spent the day together, running errands and sharing fries at lunch. Sitting down to dinner in our dining room, I'd asked whether he was OK. He'd been distant lately, but I hadn't seen this coming.
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At 56, I'm a member of the "sandwich generation," the aptly named in-between time when family ties are both fleeting and consuming. My parents recently moved into a retirement community and in a few months, my daughter will graduate from college and…
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The Thanksgiving after my 20-year marriage imploded, I flew solo to Brussels. I'd never traveled alone, but the thought of facing the holiday without my family gutted me, so I booked a plane ticket. The trip was transformative. Since then, I've traveled solo to…
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Dusk at Kathmandu’s Pashupatinath Temple is monkeys. Settling into the November chill, succumbing to the dark vignette of the horizon, this time is theirs.
The monkeys don’t care about doorways marked “Hindus only.” Spirituality is a privilege. They choose their doorways, whichever they please, whichever they need, amongst the myriad…
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Editors’ Choice Articles
Solas Awards Gold Winner | Adventure Travel
The night is black. I can’t read your features, but I know you’re scowling. We’ve been held captive behind your blockade for the past six hours and we’ve found a way around it. You threw rocks at the car that came to rescue us and now I’m running to it, through the frigid Bolivian desert, clinging to my suitcase. We don’t speak a word to each other–I don’t speak Spanish, and you don’t speak…
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Editors’ Choice Articles
Solas Awards Gold Winner | Women’s Travel
I hear them before I enter the Kora. Flapping and cooing, they feast on corn offerings from red plastic bowls. I know this because I’ve been here before, in what feels like a different life. I watch a woman crouch down in a position not available to me since I was five, hands busily tying a piece of brown straw around the base of a small piece of bok choy. Finished, she tosses it neatly into a pile…
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‘Who is she?’ I ask in a hesitant whisper, simultaneously dreading the answer and needing to know.
Our bedroom is dark, though it’s only 7PM. The January cold seeps through the windowpane of our New Jersey home and I shiver. I’m twenty-four hours into the hell he dropped me into last night when he ended our twenty-year marriage over...
Writing awards.
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Solas Awards, Best Travel Writing
2025 Silver, Family Travel
2025 Silver, Travel and Healing
2024 Gold, Adventure Travel
2024 Gold, Women’s Travel
2024 Silver, Bad Trip
2023 Bronze, Animal Encounters