I’ve always believed words are more than just sentences on a page; they hold memories, truths, and sometimes, a quiet kind of courage. This space was created for those moments when life feels too loud and you just want to slow down. Here, I’m not only writing as an author, but as someone who is…
I was told once—in the careful voice people use when they’re wrapping criticism in silk—that it might serve me better to be “a little smaller.” Not physically, though the glance up and down my frame suggested even that wasn’t off the table. Smaller in presence. Smaller in voice. Smaller in the certainty with which I…
I have learned that “too much” is rarely about volume. It’s about comfort—specifically, someone else’s comfort with your existence. When people say a woman is “too much,” they usually mean she has not made herself small enough to fit inside the narrow silhouette they have drawn for her. She laughs too loudly. She dresses too…
My mother taught me to work hard, to speak up, to stand tall. She taught me to hold my chin high when others tried to bend my neck. She taught me to pray with the kind of faith that fills a room. But she never told me about the heaviness that comes with being strong….
We carry different versions of ourselves like separate rooms in a house. Some are bright and loud—filled with music, with the kind of laughter that shakes the walls. Others are quiet, lined with books and soft light, where we speak in low tones only to the ones who truly listen. We move between these rooms…
The first time I understood that language could shape my very thoughts, I was speaking in a tongue that was not my own. The words felt like gloves too big for my hands—awkward, heavy, and cold against my skin. It wasn’t that I couldn’t speak. It was that the words did not belong to the…
A name is not just a label—it is a story. It carries the echoes of ancestors, the hopes of parents, the weight of culture. It is a thread that ties you to where you come from, even when the world tries to pull it loose. To mispronounce a name is not merely a slip of…
We live in a world where culture is often treated like a toy—picked up, admired for a moment, and discarded when the novelty fades. Traditional dress, sacred symbols, and ancestral rituals are lifted from their roots, emptied of their meaning, and repackaged as something fashionable, exotic, or entertaining. But heritage is not a costume. It…
Some of us are born into one country, raised in another, and find ourselves longing for a third. Home, in these cases, is not a single place but a constellation of spaces where the heart has quietly planted roots. It lives in the smell of a street market you haven’t walked through in years, the…
Pride does not always need to shout. Sometimes it glows steady, like a lamp burning in a dark room—constant, warm, and unshaken by whether anyone notices. I have learned to carry the place I come from without the need to announce it, to honor its lessons and its beauty without waiting for applause. The world…
