Immigration is often framed as a decisive break, the before and the after, but that framing hasn't matched my lived reality. What I have experienced instead is a long, unsettled middle. An experience where one foot remains planted in what I lost (or still attempting to untangle from), while the other figures out how to step into a life that is still forming. This in-between space is not dramatic or cinematic. It is quiet, demanding, and persistent. It follows me through ordin

If you’re carrying U.S. student loan debt and dreaming of a life abroad, you probably feel overwhelmed by the idea of carrying your debt burden into your new life. For many, the burden of student loans feels like a locked gate, barring access to the kind of life they long. It’s common to feel torn between settling financial obligations and following the deep call to build a life that actually feels like home. The prevailing message in American financial culture is this: pay o

There comes a point in every great transition when the horizon disappears. The plans that once gave you direction crumble. The numbers stop making sense. The people who promised to stay fade into their own uncertainty. And suddenly, you’re left standing in the ashes of what used to feel solid, with no clear path ahead. It’s a hollow place. But it’s also where something sacred begins. Because when everything else is stripped away, hope isn’t just an idea anymore. It becomes an

Keeper of the damp earth, you rise from mud and moonlight, skin glistening like the memory of rain, eyes heavy with ancient knowing. You are not only lowly, but a vessel: the one who carries transformation in your dewey flesh. Your body bears the mark of both realms, water and soil, birth and decay, reminding us that life itself is a cycle of dissolving and return. Once, they feared your touch, said you carried curses in your skin, poison in your breath, that witches hid your