Thanksgiving used to be one of the most intentional days of my year. Not because of patriotism or tradition—actually the opposite. For a decade, I opened my home to anyone who wanted a place to land. My table wasn’t about turkey or spectacle; it was an annual practice in truth-telling and community. I cooked Indigenous foods, played PBS’s We Shall Remain , and held space for conversation about the real history of the holiday. It was part education, part ritual, and part quiet

There are cities that decorate for Christmas, and then there is Brașov, a place that seems particularly made for winter. As December settles over the Carpathians, darkness comes early, snow gathers on the mountains, and the medieval center transforms beneath thousands of lights. Garlands stretch between centuries-old buildings, stars hang above the streets, and Piața Sfatului glows beneath the surrounding rooftops. This is my first Christmas in Romania, and one of the things

My need to explain myself was louder when I was younger. My confidence filled rooms, asserting things I only half understood, held opinions the way you hold something you're not sure you're allowed to put down. I look back at some of those positions and wince. But I was also learning something in that period that took years to finish learning: what my own voice actually sounds like when it isn't performing for a room. Over time, my fire settled into something steadier and mor

In the United States, higher education is supposed to represent possibility. For many people, it feels more like a locked gate with a price tag hanging from the handle. Families watch tuition climb into numbers that once would have sounded absurd, while students are asked to make enormous financial decisions before their adult lives have properly begun. Some eventually decide that college “just isn’t for them,” not because they lack curiosity, ambition, or ability, but becaus

When the recent Epstein emails surfaced, I expected an appropriate response to the gross exploitation of minors by powerful men. What I did not expect was to hear a familiar argument entering mainstream discourse: not that sexual exploitation of children is acceptable, exactly, but that perhaps some of these girls were old enough that we should think about it differently. “He wasn’t a pedophile. He was into the barely legal type.” “He liked 15-year-old girls.” “He wasn’t into

Romania stands at a cultural crossroads. It is a member of the European Union, governed by European human-rights obligations and increasingly connected to a continent where LGBTQ+ rights have expanded dramatically over the past generation. At the same time, it remains a deeply traditional country in many respects, shaped by Orthodox Christianity, family-centered social expectations, the complicated inheritance of communism, and a strong instinct toward privacy in personal lif

Everywhere I go in Romania, there seem to be cats. They stretch across sunlit steps, curl themselves into café chairs, disappear beneath parked cars, and nap against old stone walls as though they have inherited the streets. Some clearly belong to someone, while others seem to belong to a courtyard, an apartment block, a restaurant, or perhaps simply themselves. What fascinates me is not their presence so much as the small infrastructure of care that surrounds them. I notice

When I asked a local in Brașov to explain the difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, he didn’t quote scripture or mention rituals. He smiled and said simply, “We didn’t have crusades, the Inquisition, or witch trials.” It was such an abrupt answer that I have remembered it ever since. I had expected something about the pope, perhaps, or icons, saints, liturgy, or the theological dispute over the filioque. Instead, he answered a question about religion with history. Mor