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Last February I had what I can only describe as the wedding rush of my life. My two oldest kids got married twenty days apart. Twenty days! Both were destination weddings, and both were in Mexico (don't ask why, it's a long story). So I packed, flew, danced (a lot), and cried (also a lot). Then I flew home, came down with COVID and bronchitis, pumped my body with every medicine available so I'd be ready for the second wedding, miraculously recovered, and did the whole thing again. The energy in our family that month was through the roof. I ran on deep, deep joy and very little sleep, and I wouldn't trade a single minute of it.

The whole time we were planning, and all through the celebrating, I knew deep in my heart what my real gift to them was. It wasn't the wedding, and it wasn't anything…

When I want to take a break from all the technical or spiritual reading I usually dive into, I tend to lean toward historical fiction. But a dear friend recommended The Midnight Library, so I decided to give it a try—and I’m really glad I did.

At first, I found it tough to get into. The main character, Nora, is in such a dark, depressive state at the start of the book that I honestly felt like dropping it. It was heavy and sad, and I wasn’t sure I could go through a whole novel in that emotional tone.

But I trusted the many positive reviews and stuck with it—and in the end, I was happy I did.

The story unfolded into something quite magical, literally and figuratively. It blends elements of fantasy and magical realism in a way that feels thoughtful rather than whimsical. The central idea—that between life…

If I look back at my life honestly, the path that eventually led me to service did not begin with service at all.

It began with some (or a lot) of pain, and a genuinely embarrassing amount of searching.

Since I was very young, I've been searching for clarity and emotional regulation, though I didn't have those words for it then. I just remember a deep curiosity about why we feel what we feel, why we suffer, and how we find our way through hard moments. Something in me always wanted to understand life more.

For a long time, that search lived mostly in my head. I read. I studied. I went down many, many deep rabbit holes with teachers, gurus, shamans, you name it, gathering perspectives, making sense of the world.

But life has a way of asking us to go beyond understanding, and my soul is actually quite persistent,…

I stumbled upon this gem in a Spanish bookstore—one of my favorite places to find unique titles. Laura Imai Messina’s WA: La vía Japonesa a la armonía is an exquisite reflection on the Japanese way of life, where beauty, harmony, civility, and moderation prevail. As someone deeply connected to Japanese culture, this book has been an absolute treasure for me.

The concept of wa—harmony—is explored through 72 carefully chosen Japanese words. Each word serves as a doorway into the heart of Japanese traditions, values, and philosophies. Messina’s prose unravels the profound meanings behind these words, painting a picture of a way of life deeply rooted in balance and unity.

What’s especially beautiful is how the book is structured around the four seasons, with each season exploring a set of words that embody the essence of that time of year. It’s a perfect reflection of the Japanese reverence for nature and the cyclical…

The earthquake hit on a Wednesday afternoon. I found out the way most people find out about something this large — messages arriving from everywhere, all at once, overlapping. I read them standing still. I was already in my day, already fully awake, and then suddenly I was in something else entirely, something not real, not possible.

I want to be honest about what the days that followed looked like, because I think honesty is the point. Wednesday night I collapsed into it — into Instagram, into X, into the relentless scroll. I was in shock, still I cried hard, but not in a straight line. That's what I want to share, because I think it matters more than the grief itself: none of this moved in a straight line.

In the days that followed — really, within the same minutes — I could be watching footage of government teams blocking…

There’s something I’ve been sitting with for many years now — something that began to take shape after my divorce, and deepened through the loss of another very meaningful relationship.

No one really teaches us how to be in a relationship. We’re taught how to succeed, how to perform, how to navigate the external world. But when it comes to love, intimacy, and building a life with another person — most of us are left to figure it out as we go.

That was certainly true for me. I got married completely in love. We built a family, shared twenty-five years, and there was so much goodness between us. But if I’m honest, a lot of what worked was also luck. We didn’t have the language. We didn’t have the tools. We were improvising with something that deserved to be built with intention. It wasn’t a lack of love. It…