On one of my days off, I was sitting at a coffee shop when my phone buzzed with a message from a coworker. “Tech issue here, any chance you can stop by?” they asked. I’ve never been much of a computer whiz, but at the independent bookstore where I’ve worked for two years, I’m the
Nearly three years ago, my husband and I moved from New York City to a hillside Sicilian village. We’d bought a house here remotely, without seeing it in person until several months after the closing. During the unconventional process, my now-75-year-old parents, based in Colorado, were our biggest supporters. We had long phone calls, during
Moving to a new country comes with plenty of adjustments, from language to social rules, but I didn’t expect to feel out of place in my own body. Before moving to Japan from New Zealand, I was mostly content with how I looked, having already survived the body-image hurdles of early motherhood. Despite being a
I’d been up since 4 a.m., sitting at my computer with an email ready to rescind my acceptance of a customer-service job at a large department store. It was August 2025, and I was supposed to start that morning. Shame had me hovering over the “send” button. I wondered how it had come to this.
In my 20s, I fell in love with my partner’s ambition. His dream was to own a restaurant, and I admired his willingness to reject a traditional 9-to-5 to build something of his own. He entered the industry as a teenager, worked his way up to general manager at a local restaurant by his mid-20s,
The day after Thanksgiving, I learned I’d have to move out of my beloved century-old, two-bedroom apartment in Kansas City. My building had been taken over by a management company in another state. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the beginning of a Hallmark movie in which the protagonist unites with her neighbors to successfully push back against
