Seven years ago today, for a few moments, my entire world stopped spinning. After bravely fighting stage 4 lung cancer, my mom’s courageous battle finally ended. She was free of the suffering she had relentlessly endured during her countless rounds of radiation, chemo and other procedures. On March 15th, 2016…

Home. Over the years, “home” for me has been defined in many different ways. My first home was my childhood house in Maryland, where my parents raised me and together laid the foundation for me to become who I am today. When I left for college, I created a new…

Rocket attacks. Bombs falling from the sky. Residential buildings, hospitals, roads, all going up in flames. Unexploded missiles resting near a kindergarten playground. Mass evacuations. Oversaturated highways, buses, trains. Fleeing on foot as snow falls when no other option is available. Sick babies being cared for in makeshift bomb shelters. …

The fatigue in her eyes is undeniable. I reach for Chantal’s luggage, wanting to lighten her load as much as I could while we walked together to the closest train station. All of her worldly possessions are contained within these two small duffel bags. Without even saying a word, her…

“I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing,” I told myself as I slowly peeled away the layers of the dirty bandage wrapped around his foot. Sitting on the sidewalk in the mid-afternoon, surrounded by passersby, a few beads of sweat dripped from my forehead onto the hot July cement…

“Sis, it’s mom… she died.” Five years since you tiptoed into my bedroom early in the morning and whispered the words that no child should ever have to say to their sibling. You were only 16, still just a kid. I had a decade more of life experience, but even…

While 67 million people across France are grappling with the new confinement measures imposed by the government to slow the spread of COVID-19, a particularly vulnerable group of society is once again glaringly overlooked: asylum seekers. In northern Paris alone, more than three thousand migrants are living outside in camplike…

Mother’s Day. A day to celebrate the woman who gave us life. More precisely, a day to celebrate the woman who labored and cried and despite her fear, literally pushed us through her body to bring us into existence. No small feat indeed. If we’re lucky, that mother stays around…

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” ― Charles Dickens My heart has been particularly heavy these past few months, reading the news coming from the United States and Europe. Stories of xenophobia, bigotry and discrimination have been on the rise. …